China's Possible Future Problems

Introduction:

I have been in China now for 2,5 months. I know this is not a long time to spend in a country and I do not claim to know everything what is going on in this very interesting, beautiful country with a lot of open and friendly people. In many ways the country has surprised me and has changed the image that I had of the country before I came here. The government that is so often criticized in the Western media is actually doing a lot of good for the country and has a good system going on to select the best people to rule the country. They try to take into consideration the voice of as many people as possible.

However there are some things going on that in my mind (a guy born and raised in a very open society, which isn’t perfect either) are things that would not be acceptable to me. I also think that the more the Chinese society will open up and interact with the international community, the more these issues will become problems for the Chinese government and cause a threat for the Chinese economy growing at a rapid pace.

Income Gap:

One of these problems is the income inequality that appeared in the Chinese society. In 2014 China was rated higher than the US in its Gini coefficient. A survey done by the University of Michigan showed that in 2012 the people in China find this the biggest concern of Chinese society now a day. The standard for the UN to predict social unrest in a country lies on a coefficient of 0.40, where that of China last year was at 0.473. Especially in a country that considers itself to be a post-communist country and where one of the pillars of the government is the equality between all people, this can be seen as a strange development. This income gap links also to the fact that the Chinese government has tried to keep the wages for the factory workers in the country as low as possible in order to benefit from the FDI from foreign companies that are looking for high profit margins. The US accuses China of keeping the yuan...