(Bloomberg) -- The wildly different lifestyles of two Covid-19 patients published by China’s contact tracing officials has sparked a debate about the wealth gap President Xi Jinping’s common prosperity campaign aims to narrow.
One patient is a migrant worker who juggled some 30 jobs over two weeks in Beijing, according to an itinerary of his movements published Wednesday, after he tested positive for the virus. The other is a professional woman who began her year shopping at Christian Dior SE and dining out on Peking duck, according to records made public -- standard practice for contract tracing in the world’s No. 2 economy.
Users on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform began comparing their schedules, with a hashtag detailing the migrant worker’s routine garnering nearly 20 million views early Thursday. Some called on the government to address hardships endured by society’s poorest citizens, while others said inequality was too deeply ingrained in Chinese society to be eradicated.
“I hope that leaders can pay attention to the fact that life at the bottom is still very, very hard,” one user called Riverside Beard wrote.
What ‘Common Prosperity’ Means and Why Xi Wants It
Xi’s common prosperity campaign has put addressing income equality at the heart of China’s economic goals, leading to regulators targeting some of the nation’s most successful private enterprises. China’s richest 20% still earn more than 10 times the poorest 20%, a wider gap than in the U.S. or European countries such as Germany and France, and more than 600 million people -- about half of China’s population -- live on an annual income of 12,000 yuan ($1,858) or less.
That sort of income gulf represents a potential political risk to the ruling Communist Party, something Xi will want to address as he prepares to secure a precedent-defying third term in power later this year.
Earlier this week, officials in Tianjin said they’d worked with online stores to secure daily supplies of necessities for residents, the Tianjin Evening News reported, after videos circulated of migrant workers complaining they couldn’t access food during the port city’s recent Covid outbreak.
The migrant worker in Beijing said he’d come to the capital to find his son who disappeared in August 2020, in an interview Thursday with state-backed publication China Newsweek. He added that he lived in a 10 square meter (108 square foot) apartment that costs 700 yuan a month and mostly works in construction, sometimes being paid 1 yuan for delivering a 50kg sack of cement.
“I have spent tens of thousands of dollars looking for my son,” he said. “I can endure hardship. Even if I lose my life, I must get my child back.”
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
Advertisement