每日电讯报 中国的平等长征看不到尽头

在中国西北宁夏，一群十几岁的少女在路边建一条排水沟。搅拌沙子和水泥一天可以赚30元人民币，对她们以及该地区生活在中国官方贫困线之下的110万人来说，这是一份高收入的工作。

　　在宁夏中部的同心县，其偏远的山区是全国最贫困的部分。人们靠政府分发的大米以及668元人民币的年平均收入过活。这片土地十分荒芜，联合国教科文组织宣布该地区不适合人类居住。如今政府已经计划把成千上万的居民迁移到更北的地方。但许多人已经离开了，因此留在路边辛苦工作的是年轻的妇女。据说村里已经没有青壮男子，他们都到城市的工地上工作了。

　　五百英里之外的北京人民大会堂铺上红地毯，准备举行中国共产党十七大开幕式，仿佛处于不同的国家。

　　五年一度的党代表大会是中国最重要的政治大事。在未来一周左右，代表们将设计出在2012年前指导这个新兴超级大国的政治、经济和外交政策。

　　当中首要的是把胡锦涛的“和谐社会”写进党章。但普通中国人的生活和那些受庇护的人们的生活是非常不同的。贫富之间的巨大鸿沟是怨恨的源头。它可能显示“和谐社会”的构想不过是空洞的口号。以基尼系数来衡量，中国（世界上唯一重大的共产主义国家）的收入差距比美国（领先的资本主义大国）的大。

　　根据最新的《福布斯》中国财富榜，中国有106位亿万富翁（以美元计算），仅次于美国。但在2006年，农村年平均收入仅为人民币3600元。城市居民的平均收入是9亿农村居民的三倍多，但他们是通过长时间的工作来做到的。

　　繁荣的股市和高扬的房地产价格助推了中国超级富人的财富。而富人的消费助燃对贫富差距的愤怒。北京健身教师李朋（音译，Li Peng）表示，他在山西念书的时候，有些同学的父母拥有煤矿，他们入学分数低，但他们的父母“赞助”他们，他们开着宝马上学，而一些贫困的学生却没有足够的钱购买食物。

　　通胀率到达6.5%，上升的食品价格是不满的另一个源头，而且党官员强烈地意识到猪肉价格的猛涨煽动社会动荡恐惧的风险。

　　中国多年来是“世界工厂”，如今却要对付美泰等公司的产品召回的暗示。该国的工厂如今面临在海外变成赝品、危险商品的代名词的危险。

　　同时，对官员腐败的愤怒是去年大约2.3万街头示威中大部分事件的起因。根据华盛顿卡耐基国际和平基金会的报告，腐败侵蚀了中国3%的国内生产总值，比2006年花在教育上的还多。

　　但普通中国人没有机会在代表大会上表达他们的不满。中国13亿人口中只有7300万共产党员，而只有处于阶梯顶部的官员可以参加。

　　然而，似乎很少中国人关心谁将是他们的下一任主席。被排除在政治进程之外，他们更关心赚钱，或者像宁夏同心县的人们一样，关心生存。（作者 David Eimer）

No end for China's long march to equality

By David Eimer

Last Updated: 1:37am BST 15/10/2007

In the heart of Ningxia in north-west China, a group of teenage girls are building a gutter by the side of a road. Mixing sand and cement for 30 yuan (£2) a day is a prized job for them, as it would be for any of the region's 1.1 million people who live below China's official poverty line.

In pictures: China's wealth divide

In Ningxia, young women graft for the equivalent of £2 a day

The remote hills of Tongxin County in central Ningxia are the poorest part of the country. People rely on government handouts of rice to survive and the average annual income is 668 yuan.

So harsh is the water-parched landscape that Unesco declared the area unfit for human habitation. Now, the government has plans to relocate hundreds of thousands of its residents further north. But many have left already, and so it is the young women who toil on the roads.

"There are no young men in the villages any more. They've all gone to the cities to work on building sites," said Bai Yinliang, the head of Maogaozhuang Township, a collection of 22 villages in Tongxin County set to be moved by the end of 2008.

Ningxia could be in a different country from the red-carpeted splendour of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, 500 miles away. That is where, tomorrow, China's ruling elite will gather for the opening ceremony of the 17th national congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

advertisementHeld every five years, the congress is the most important political event in China. Over the next week or so, President Hu Jintao's successor will be anointed and delegates will map out the political, economic and foreign policies that will guide this emerging superpower until 2012.

Chief among these will be the enshrining of President Hu's vision of a "harmonious society" in the party's constitution. But life for ordinary Chinese is very different from the sheltered existence of those in the Great Hall of the People. The widening gulf between rich and the poor is a source of deep resentment. It threatens to show up Mr Hu's vision as nothing more than an empty slogan. Income disparity in China, the world's only significant communist nation, is greater than in America, the leading capitalist power, when measured by the Gini Coefficient, the most commonly used measure of inequality.

According to the latest Forbes China Rich List, there are 106 dollar billionaires in China, second only to the US. But average annual rural incomes were 3,600 yuan (£236) in 2006. City residents earn on average three times more than the 900 million Chinese who live in the countryside, but they work long hours to do so.

A booming stock market and soaring property prices have boosted the wealth of China's super-rich. Top of the Forbes list is Yang Huiyuan, Asia's richest woman, whose £8 billion fortune comes from her shares in her father's property company. Also listed is Huang Guangyu, 38, who started his career selling radios by the roadside. Now, his Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings Ltd has 850 outlets across China and he is worth £1.77 billion.

Conspicuous consumption by the wealthy is helping to fuel the anger over the gap between the haves and have-nots.

"When I was a student in Shanxi Province, some of my classmates' parents owned coal mines," said Li Peng, a fitness instructor at one of the many gyms to have sprung up in Beijing.

"Often, they had got low scores on the college entrance exam. But their parents 'sponsored' them and they drove BMW cars to school, while some poor students didn't have enough money to buy food."

With inflation running at 6.5 per cent, rising food prices are another source of discontent, and party officials are acutely aware of the risk that a sharp increase in the cost of pork has stirred fears of social unrest.

Shanghai's Pudong district, with its futuristic skyscrapers

After years of being dubbed the "workshop of the world", China is now wrestling with the implications of product recalls by companies such as Mattel, the world's biggest toy-maker and a major supplier to the British high street. The country's factories are in danger of becoming synonymous abroad with shoddy, and sometimes dangerous, goods.

Meanwhile, anger over official corruption was the cause of many of the estimated 23,000 street protests last year. According to a report from the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, corruption costs China three per cent of its gross domestic product, more than it spent on education in 2006.

It it so pervasive that many Chinese regard it as normal. "I used to be angry about corruption, but now I'm resigned to it," said Han Yu, a 35-year-old Beijing businessman.

But ordinary Chinese will have no chance to express their views at the congress. Just 73 million of China's 1.3 billion people are CCP members and only the top echelon of officials attend.

In effect, China's future until 2012 will be decided by 2,200 mostly male and middle-aged senior party members. At the highest level, they are split between Mr Hu's supporters from his power base, the Communist Youth League, and those of his predecessor Jiang Zhemin, who are known as the Shanghai Gang because so many of them came to prominence in that city.

In secret sessions the congress will decide which up-and-coming officials – the fifth generation of party leaders since Mao Tse-tung – will be elevated to the standing committee of the politburo, China's cabinet.

Those promoted will be regarded as the frontrunners to succeed Mr Hu when he steps down in 2012 after 10 years in power. Li Keqiang, a protégé of the president and the CCP secretary of Liaoning province in north-eastern China, and Xi Jinping, Shanghai party secretary, are the favourites. Also tipped for elevation is Bo Xilai, the commerce minister, who may be made vice-premier in charge of foreign trade.

Few Chinese, though, seem to care who will be their next president. Excluded from the political process, they are more concerned with making money or, like the people in Tongxin county in Ningxia, with mere survival. "It's not important to me who takes over when President Hu goes," said Mr Han. "It's almost pointless for ordinary people to be concerned about politics."

•Additional reporting by Mark Kleinmann in Hong Kong