Financial Reform, Property Income Growth and the Potential Impacts on Inequality in China
The Seventeenth Communist Party National People's Congress in 2007 declared, for the first time, that the Chinese government would create conditions and opportunities to promote property income growth in order to enhance common prosperity. This new policy on the one hand helps to garner support for the further financial reform in China; but on the other hand, it entails potentially adverse impacts on economic equality in China, given the current configuration of income and wealth distribution, uneven process of financial development and other socio-economic structures. Employing the Institutionalist theory on property and distribution, this paper explores the impacts of institutions and institutional changes in the financial system on income and wealth inequality in China.