His 106 g:Final Exam - Essay Example

Income Inequality in China Like other developing economies, China has struggled with the wider income inequality between the rich and the poor. The income and wealth inequality in China dates back during the 20th century. A publication by Zhang and Kanbur (99) indicated that income inequality in the Republic of China reached peak during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s, a period that were characterized by Cultural Revolution, the Great Famine, and global integration. The study further revealed that the income inequality during these periods was attributed to the leading policy variables such as heavy industrialization, economic openness, and decentralization.

In particular, the widening of the rural-urban income gap was fuelled by the heavy-industrialization. Decentralization and openness, on the other hand, formed the foundation for the inland-coastal income disparity. The gini coefficient for the rural-urban inequality as at 1978 was 0.16. The figure increased in the subsequent years, reaching a record high of 0.474 in 2012. With the income and wealth disparity between the affluent and the cast classes further widening, the Chinese government formulated policies and reforms aimed at addressing this issue.

Some of these proposed reforms included open-door policy of the 1970s. This problem was profound by the Chinese Communist Party leadership. The CCP believed in a communistic and socialism economic system. Communism and socialisms encouraged economic reforms and policies that favored upward flow of income. The socialistic and communistic economic policies encouraged skewed wealth distribution that benefited the rich, but instead exploited the poor, hence the widening of the income disparity in China.

History of the Territorial Disputes in China during the Qing DynastyOver the last century, China has faced multiple territorial disputes that have their history in the Qing dynasty. One of these territorial disputes in the Chinese history is the Senkaku Islands (Japan) disputes that were disputed over by Japan and China. The onset of the territorial dispute over Tiaoyutai Island (Taiwan) and Diaoyu (China) was immediate after the U.S. handed over the islands to the Japanese authority in 1971, a move that was opposed by the Chinese government (Lee 51).

Notably, these islands were originally controlled by the Japanese authority as early as 1895. The PRC (People’s Republic of China) disputed this proposed handover, making the beginning of the dispute that has lasted for decades to date. The dispute has been fueled by the fact these islands are endowed with oil reserves, and also rich fishing grounds. It is the presence of these resources that has sparked the territorial dispute between China, Japan, and Taiwan over these islands. According to the Japanese authority after conducting her survey of the island during the 19th century, the island belonged to no country, thereby claiming the territorial ownership (Lee 71-2).

On the contrary, the ROC and PRC urged that the islands were within the Chinese boundary before the Sino-Japanese War; therefore, the Japanese authority must surrender the ownership right. Works CitedKanbur, Ravi; and Xiaobo, Zhang. "Fifty years of regional inequality in China: a journey through central planning, reform, and openness". Review of development Economics, 2006, 9 (1): 87–106. Lee, Seokwoo, et al. Territorial disputes among Japan, Taiwan and China concerning the Senkaku Islands, New York Times, 2011: 45-78.