Don’t miss this Bloomberg article by Mike Forsythe on the personal wealth of members of China’s National People’s Congress. Some lovely number crunching here, and the bottom line is rather scary.

In fact, I’m not entirely sure whether this topic belongs in the category of “They Got the Same Shit Over There” since the disparity is quite wide. On the other hand, if we just want to call it a huge gap between the leaders of the country and the average citizen they govern, then we’re good to go.

Here’s the first bit to whet your populist appetite:

The richest 70 members of China’s legislature added more to their wealth last year than the combined net worth of all 535 members of the U.S. Congress, the president and his Cabinet, and the nine Supreme Court justices.

The net worth of the 70 richest delegates in China’s National People’s Congress, which opens its annual session on March 5, rose to 565.8 billion yuan ($89.8 billion) in 2011, a gain of $11.5 billion from 2010, according to figures from the Hurun Report, which tracks the country’s wealthy. That compares to the $7.5 billion net worth of all 660 top officials in the three branches of the U.S. government.

Yikes. Seriously.

© Stan for China Hearsay, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: income gap, same shit there that we got here