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Chinese ‘confident about anti-graft efforts, but income gap a concern’

BEIJING — The Chinese Communist Party’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign has resulted in high public confidence about the country’s anti-graft efforts, but citizens are more pessimistic about the government’s efforts to narrow the income gap in the next five years, a Chinese newspaper poll has shown.

Migrant workers sleeping on the ground in Hefei, Anhui province. Respondents were pessimistic about efforts to reduce social disparity, giving it a 2.64 score. Photo: Reuters

Migrant workers sleeping on the ground in Hefei, Anhui province. Respondents were pessimistic about efforts to reduce social disparity, giving it a 2.64 score. Photo: Reuters

BEIJING — The Chinese Communist Party’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign has resulted in high public confidence about the country’s anti-graft efforts, but citizens are more pessimistic about the government’s efforts to narrow the income gap in the next five years, a Chinese newspaper poll has shown.

In the poll conducted by the Global Times’ Global Poll Centre, respondents indicated they had the highest level of confidence in the government’s anti-graft efforts, among other aspects of social development. It scored 4.01 on a five-point index.

“This is a natural result of China’s recent anti-corruption campaign, which cast a huge impact on the public,” Peking University’s Professor Zhang Yiwu was quoted as saying by the widely-read tabloid.

But people were pessimistic about efforts to reduce social disparity, giving it a 2.64 score.

“Fighting corruption and reducing social disparities are both fundamental issues for the (Communist Party). The party chose to fight corruption as its top priority to ensure healthy development of the party,” Professor Zhang Xixian of the Party School of the Communist Party’s Central Committee was quoted as saying by the Global Times. The school trains officials for the party.

“The wealth gap, on the other hand, has historic reasons and cannot be fixed in the short term. The reform and opening-up policy allowed some people to get rich first. It was necessary back then to break the pattern and accumulate social wealth,” Prof Zhang reportedly said.

The newspaper surveyed 2,218 respondents from 15 Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Urumqi. The poll’s findings were released on Monday.

The Communist Party launched its anti-graft campaign in November 2012 and last month placed six officials who were at the provincial level and above under investigations.

Last week, the party formally launched an investigation into Zhou Yongkang, the former head of the secret police. He is the most senior figure to be accused of corruption in the history of the People’s Republic of China.

Prof Zhang noted that reducing social disparities would be an important objective for the government in the next 30 years.

Already, China has shifted polices to better distribute resources.

Last week, the government made tweaks to the dual-household registration system so people would no longer be officially categorised as rural or urban dwellers and all will enjoy equal access to public services including housing, healthcare and education. The move will benefit about 174 million migrant workers in the country, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The Global Times poll also showed that respondents were more optimistic about Chinese economic growth, compared with other surveys in the past three years, the newspaper said. Just under half of the respondents felt economic growth would increase annually.

While 81.7 per cent of them said they saw China as a developing country, the highest figure in the past five years, 79.6 per cent felt it is on the right path and 52.6 per cent believed the country will continue on its path of socialism, the Global Times reported.

About 68 per cent also felt China’s sovereignty integrity would face threats in the next five years, while 46.4 per cent believed the military was capable of preventing the country from being invaded by another world power, the newspaper said. AGENCIES

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