President Xi Jinping's "common prosperity" campaign aims to narrow China's widening wealth gap. Photo: Reuters
The survey, conducted among 1,100 customers with at least 5 million yuan ($727,268) in investable assets at private lender China Merchants Bank , sheds light on the attitudes of high-income Chinese in efforts to narrow the country’s wealth gap, according to the South China Morning Post.
In particular, some of China’s ultra-wealthy have donated tens of billions of dollars following President Xi Jinping’s call for “shared prosperity” in 2021. However, it is unclear how middle-class wealthy entrepreneurs feel about the campaign.
According to a survey conducted by China Merchants Bank and the China Philanthropy Research Institute (CPRI) in 2021-2022, about two-thirds of respondents said they would like to increase their charitable giving or continue to donate in line with their financial situation in the next 10 years.
For nearly 20% of those who had never given to charity, the report said the main reasons for not taking action were “not being able to find a trusted channel” and “not knowing about the policy.”
About 75% said they had not set up a family fund mainly due to lack of information on how to do it.
Survey results show that most donations are given directly to the poor, while other popular methods are through charities or through government agencies.
People walk on a street in Beijing. Photo: Reuters
The growing generosity of China's wealthy is a result of China's rapid economic development, rapid accumulation of personal wealth, as well as the improved legal environment for charitable activities in recent years, said Mr. Wang Zhenyao, Director of CPRI.
“As the common prosperity initiative unfolds and the third distribution plan improves, there will be more frequent and massive donations in China,” Mr. Zhenyao predicted in the report.
He said that during the period of 2011-2021, there were more than 300 rich people who donated more than 100 million yuan in charity within a year, 38 cases of charitable donations of more than 1 billion yuan, and 7 cases of charitable donations of 10 billion yuan.
About 20% of millionaires surveyed said they had donated more than 1 million yuan.
Geographically, about 60% of these donors chose to support poverty-stricken areas, the report said. Poverty alleviation was the area where most donors wanted to contribute, followed by helping the elderly, orphans, the sick and disabled, disaster relief and emergency relief.
Previously, in a speech on August 17, 2021 before the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CCP), President Xi Jinping declared: “Common prosperity is a necessary requirement of socialism and a characteristic of Chinese-style modernization.” He mentioned the phrase “common prosperity” 15 times in the speech, making it a “mantra” that has been repeated many times by Chinese officials and media since then.
According to People's Daily, the goal of common prosperity is to build a more equal China by increasing the proportion of middle-income groups, increasing the income of low-income groups, properly regulating high incomes and prohibiting illegal sources of income.
The Chinese government hopes that common prosperity can address the country’s wealth gap, which has the potential to cause social unrest. A senior CCP official said that common prosperity does not mean “taking from the rich to give to the poor.”
Scholar Sung Wen-Ti at the Australian National University said that Mr. Xi Jinping will continue to encourage economic growth, but at the same time redistribute wealth to narrow the gap between rich and poor in society.
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