Asia Sentinel, 15 Dec 2009
It is a mark of how far the Chinese Communist Party has strayed from its socialist principles that the Politburo waited until last week before stating the obvious: that Beijing must do more to augment the income of its long-deprived workers and farmers, who form the great majority of the country's 1.3 billion citizens.
The just-concluded Central Economic Conference announced that the government would "boost the degree of the adjustment of the distribution of national income, so as to increase the spending ability of [ordinary] residents, particularly the low-income masses."
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