Call for fairer income distribution (4)

Taking Beijing as an example, the disposable annual income per capita for the first half of 2012 was 18,154 yuan. Assuming an average standard apartment in Beijing is 90 square meters and the average price is 22,000 yuan per square meters, a nuclear family would have to cut all their spending and save up for about 20 years to buy it.

Many young people are desperate about being among the lowest echelons of society and self-deprecatingly call themselves diaosi, an online buzzword first coined by single, young men who feel they have dead-end lives.

Usually people in the diaosi category are not good looking and lack influential families and useful social networks to win promotion or bigger wealth.

"This generation is facing tougher competition than we had 20 years ago because the number of college graduates has surged but the labor market did not expand proportionally," said attorney Shi. "What society needs might be a reshuffle in the economic structures."

The widening income gap has been highlighted as a key challenge for China's new leaders. The CPC leaders made it clear during the 18th Party Congress that income distribution reform is needed to strike a balance between efficiency and fairness in both primary and secondary distribution.

"We should improve the way in which income is distributed, protect lawful income, increase the income of low-income groups, adjust excessively high income and prohibit illicit income," said President Hu.

NBS statistics expert Liang Da suggested that five aspects are of vital importance in building a fairer income distribution system, including narrowing the urban-rural gap and tamping down industrial monopolies, accelerating the urbanization rate, offering wider job opportunities, improving the social safety net and increasing public spending in rural areas.

An income distribution system reform plan is expected to be launched by the end of this year, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security spokesman Yin Chengji said at a news conference last month.

Pan Jiayuan contributed to this story.

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