Taiwan Shrinks Wealth Gap as Xi’s China Communists Struggle
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More than six decades after Mao Zedong’s Communists chased Chiang Kai Shek’s Kuomintang off the mainland pledging an egalitarian society, it’s the KMT on Taiwan that has crafted a more balanced wealth distribution.
As Chinese President Xi Jinping completes his nation’s leadership succession this week, Taiwan may offer a model for his campaign to bridge a wealth gap that threatens to undermine Communist Party legitimacy. Taiwan’s Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, was 0.342 in 2011 compared with China’s 0.477 and the 0.4 level used as a predictor for social unrest.