Billionaire tally shows shameful wealth gap

Illustration by Zhou Tao

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SHANGHAI Daily reported on Wednesday that "China's mainland is home to 115 billionaires," outnumbering those in Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

That's a real miracle in a country where many rustics have difficulty sending their children to school, and except for our pampered civil servants, many wage earners have not seen wage increases in real terms for the past decade.

And that number of billionaires is vastly understated, for a huge number of our citizens prefer to be extremely modest about their economic circumstances.

By relying on published data only, one may easily conclude, as in the report, that "billionaires on China's mainland are more likely to get rich through manufacturing," while those Hong Kong tycoons prefers to make their fortunes in real estate.

Some of our civil servants are much richer than they appear to be. Since they are not legally required to state their income, we can only get a glimpse of the picture from the occasional exposure of disgraced officials.

Last week Xu Zongheng, the former mayor of Shenzhen who once styled himself as "incorruptible," went on trial for taking bribes of more than 33 million yuan (US$6.3 million).

Known as "Metro Mayor," Xu launched the construction of five metro lines, which also lined his own pocket.

Last month, the Higher People's Court of Jiangsu Province upheld a death sentence for former deputy mayor of Suzhou, Jiang Renjie. He is guilty of, among other charges, taking bribes exceeding 100 million yuan, from property developers.

And former deputy mayor of Hangzhou Xu Maiyong is still waiting for a verdict for allegedly taking 160 million yuan in bribes, nearly all from property developers.

Any rich survey that fails to take into account of officials, incorruptible or otherwise, would necessarily misrepresent China's wealth picture. That misrepresentation leads to misconceptions about the origins of the wealth.

Get rich first

It has never been honestly explained why some Chinese officials are so fond of infrastructure development. That affinity clearly sets them apart from their foreign counterparts.

Last year at this time we were at the end of a construction-renovation-face-lift boom of epic proportions, but we were somewhat consoled by the promise of a grace period following that historical event, the World Expo.

One year later, I am wondering if the infrastructure boom I am witnessing from our office windows can in any way be less spectacular than the one last year.

To the west, three scaffolded high rises are soaring to the sky. To the east, two extended traditional neighborhoods have been totally wiped out and dozens of old plane trees uprooted overnight. Even an old road has been abolished.

Some officials are ready to turn anything in sight into a construction site, and ready to destroy anyone who dare to stop them.

In this regard, we are never lacking for examples.

In Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, a home owner set himself on fire last Friday in protest against a forced demolition.

Unlike a pig farmer and his son whose self-immolations last March failed to stop bulldozers, this time the victim's desperate act did temporarily put on hold the forced demolition.

But for how long?

The spate of forced demolitions in recent years led to a state decree banning administrative forced demolitions. But our courts prove to be no less efficient in evicting occupants.

It is strange that officials who are supposed to be representative of the people's interests are driving the people to suicide.

One explanation of this apparent incongruities is that fact that part of our government has evolved into a sort of real estate company, that exists solely for the purpose of maximizing profits.

At the beginning of reform in the early 1980s, letting some people get rich first became part of the reformist policy, in the belief that those who were richer would serve as examples for others to follow.

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