People's Daily hails China's income redistribution plan

China's newly unveiled income redistribution plans have been praised in a commentary on Wednesday in the People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The State Council, or China's cabinet, released guidelines to reform the country's income distribution mechanism on Tuesday, with the focus being put on how to increase residents' income, narrow the income disparity and regulate the distribution order.

The commentary, entitled "An important step forward", said the move was in line with the spirit of the 18th CPC National Congress, calling it of great significance to boosting sustainable economic growth and social harmony as well as completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all aspects.

Since the reform and opening up, Chinese people have seen rising levels of income, along with the country's economic boom. However, problems also occurred, as income gap is yawning, income allocation is poorly ordered, and there are stark problems with invisible and unlawful sources of income, the article noted.

The CPC and the Chinese government have paid great attention to solving the problems, the paper said, listing a string of measures that were rolled out to help increase residents' income.

Despite narrowing disparities in urban-rural incomes, however, the Gini coefficient, a rich-poor index, still stood above the warning level, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics. "To speed up income distribution reform is an urgent task, and represents public expectation," it said.

The commentary also highlighted key issues addressed in the guidelines, such as boosting employment fairness, expanding the middle-income group, spending more government funds on social security, and strengthening the regulation of taxing the rich.

"After a long time of preparation, the country has made a major step towards reforming its income distribution system. The reform should be proceeded in tandem with re-engineering other key areas including the state-owned enterprises, administrative system, and financial and tax systems. The guidelines primarily laid out some guiding principles. However, to attain the expected outcome, the country needs to map out detailed plans and instructions," the paper wrote.

"Meanwhile, deepening the income distribution reform concerns re-allocation of various interests. It cannot be achieved in one step, through just one government document. Therefore, we should fully realize that the task is extremely arduous and complex, and exert unremitting efforts for it," the commentary concluded.