Inequality has become more and more apparent in the last few
decades; China is now starting to be highlighted more extravagantly as a high inequality
nation. During their Spring Festival
holiday, rich Chinese spent 7.2
billion dollars abroad on luxury goods and this festival is only a week long. Over the past few years this costly spending
has become a trend among the rich in China. In most high-income Western countries,
traveling abroad is a status symbol. The more money you make, the better
vacation you can go on. However, due to economic crisis spreading throughout
the developed world, many are becoming more frugal. China is doing the opposite.
While many people are surprised by the spending of rich Chinese, people in rural China, on average, don’t even earn
7,000 yuan (1,100 dollars) a year and more than 120 million still live in poverty
at only around 6 yuan a day. Of course, China is not the only country where the
wealth gap is widening. Many countries face a difficult year in 2012, and
economic inequality threatens to make life more difficult for low-income people.
In this difficult time for the global inequality, if China wants to lessen
inequality, while still boosting consumption, they need to improve incomes of
lower earners and invest more in rural areas to narrow the income gap.
When you compare this type of spending to migrant workers
struggling to travel home and back for that important annual family reunion,
with many even riding saddles on motorcycles to save money, it seems a bit ridiculous.
There are people committing suicides due to lack of money and then you have presidents
spending over 1,000 dollars on a winter jacket. In a documentary we watched in
class, titled, China Blue, we saw the
inside look of a blue jean factory in China, where teenage workers struggle to
make ends meet under harsh working conditions. This provided us with the
complex issues of globalization. Though globalization does help the economy, it
has negative effects, especially for those that are part of the lower-class. China
has become one of the most affected by Inequality and it seems as though the
world is almost taking a step back, rather than moving forward with this issue.
No comments:
Post a Comment