A Study of Income Distribution in China

As the country with the fastest economic growth in the world, China is faced with the extremely complex income distribution showing both the commonalities of market economies with rapid development and the particularity of China’s institutional mechanism. To study and understand income distribution, it is not only necessary to start with the general law of the development of market economy but with China’s unique system and mechanism. Otherwise, it will be difficult to clearly depict the essence of China’s income distribution. This book is the result of the major project of the National Social Science Fund. This project on China’s income distribution, one of the four major issues when central government leaders came to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in spring festival of 2011, becomes the task of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics. According to the plan, the project was aided by experts from other institutes of the Academy of Social Sciences and well-known experts from other institutions outside the Academy of Social Sciences. China’s implementation of a socialist market economy determines that China’s income distribution has its own unique law in marketization. China’s basic economic system changes into public ownership as its main body with a variety of economic components developing together, requiring its income distribution to change into distribution according to both work and its production factors. Therefore, from the perspective of distribution system, China has both its commonalities and particularity compared with other market economies. Among them, distribution according to production factors reflects the distribution law of market economy and distribution according to work reflects the distribution characteristics of socialist public economy. Different distribution modes will inevitably result in different distribution. China’s income distribution shares that of average market economy and particularity of its basic economic system. These two is intertwined and influence each other, thus leading to the complexity of China’s income distribution. With the transition from planned economy to market economy, China’s basic economic system has changed from single public ownership to public ownership as the main body with a variety of economic components developing together and the distribution system has also changed from distribution according to work into distribution according to both work and various production factors. In this process, the relatively average income distribution pattern according to work formed under public ownership will be broken and the distribution mechanism of contribution according to production factors will be gradually formed with the income gap widening, giving rise to serious income distribution.

Cai Fang, former Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), secretary-general of the presidium of CASS, Member of CASS, chief researcher of the National High-end Think Tank at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People's Bank of China. His main research areas include labor economics, population economics, economic growth, income distribution, China's economic reform, etc. His main works include China's Economic Development and Its Implications to the World, Beyond the Demographic Dividend, Perceiving Truth and Ceasing Doubts, The“Belt and Road" Handbook (editor-in-chief), and China Wisdom (editor-in-chief), etc.
 
Zhang Juwei, Director General of Institute of Population and Labor Economics (formerly Institute of Population Studies), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Major Publications are Poverty and Nutritional Elasticity in Rural China, A Study of Employment Elasticity in China, , Monographs such as Population, What Will It bring to China (With Cai Fang et al, Population, Ecology and Sustainable Development in China, etc.
 
Wen Yayun, an associate professor of Foreign Language School，Zhejiang Gongshang University. She received her Master's degree in English Language and Literature from Zhejiang University in 2000. She has published over 10 articles.