Distribution problems in current china - Essay Example

This paper explores the apparent discrepancy in wealth or resource distribution in the PRC and its impacts on the life and social welfare of the PRC’s citizens, especially with references to accessibility and utilization. The effects of these discrepancies on peoples’ capacity and ability to access and utilize education, housing, health care, employment, human rights services and transportation are also explored. By extension of the effects of the unequal wealth distribution in the country, this paper also explores the effects of sexual, racial and class discriminations on the peoples’ patterns of consumption in the PRC.

Finally, the paper discusses the how popular culture is defined and promoted in the consumption patterns of different social groups in China. Effects of Unequal Distribution of Wealth in PRC According to the June 12, 2010 online edition of the China Post, in the 2008 and 2009 period, PRC’s millionaires had an accumulated wealth or assets worth more than 10 million renminbi. In this period, the number of these millionaires rose from 825,000 to 875,000. In other terms, in a year, more than 50,000 Chinese became millionaires.

In more specific terms, the 2008-2009 period recorded an increase of 4,000 millionaires worth more than 100 million renminbi. What is worse, China boasts of more than 2,000 billionaires whose net worth stands above 1 billion renminbi. In addition to these, PRC has more than 100 mega rich people with assets worth more than 10 billion renminbi. While the super rich people of China continue to realise the most rapid of increase in their net worth, the average Chinese peasant at the bottom of the pyramid continue to earn less and languish in abject poverty.

According to government report in the same period, the average Chinese peasant earned less than US$5,000 annually. While less than a million people in the PRC are millionaires and billionaires, a whooping 310 million people in PRC have incomes at same levels as people in the US, France and other Western states. Lamentably, more hundreds of millions PRC’ people live at the bottom of society in untold suffering and poverty. The first effect of this discrepancy in wealth and resource distribution is that PRC enjoys economic and industrial success as about 300 million people exploit more than 1 billion citizens’ cheap labour.

These challenges and suffering are made worse by the unfair judicial systems. The unequal distribution of wealth in China also has social implications, more so on the oppressed citizens. First among these effects is social stratification, which has caused even residential areas to be stratified, especially in major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. In fact, this stratification of residential areas is the most obvious of the consequences of unequal wealth distribution. Whereas the richest of China’s people live in posh and up-scale houses, the poor labourers, moving into the cities from the countryside, live in old neighbourhoods with ramshackle structures as their homes (Madson & Pickowiez 12).

The poor are also forced to work long hours to manage the expensive life in the cities while the poor in the countryside have to do with little or no health care, transport services and social