As estatísticas chinesas

For the eleventh year in a row, Chinese officials say they cannot publish the nation's Gini coefficient—a common measure of income inequality used worldwide.

The main reason, National Bureau of Statistics Director Ma Jiantang said January 17, is that data on high-income groups is incomplete. Some experts criticized the announcement, saying the government is looking for reasons to de-emphasize China's significant wealth gap.

"The idea that our government can't use inaccurate information is an excuse for refusing to release the Gini coefficient," wrote China Europe International Business School Professor of Economics and Finance Xu Xiaonian on the microblogging platform Sina Weibo. "The government could release Gini Index based on the current data and revise it later."

The last time Chinese officials published a Gini coefficient was in 2000, when they announced that China's 2000 figure was 0.412. A 2011 NBS report said 2011's "Gini coefficient is a little bit higher than that in 2010," but did not elucidate either year's figures.

Nota explicatória - o índice de Gini é uma medida de desigualdade que teria o valor "0" numa sociedade em que toda a gente ganhasse o mesmo (se estivermos a medir a desigualdade de rendimento), e de "1" numa sociedade em que uma fracção infinitensimal da população ficasse com 100% do rendimento total; a título comparativo, o indice de Gíni em Portugal é de 0,385, na Finlândia de 0,268 e nos EUA de 0,45 (portanto, da última vez que foi medida, a desigualdade na China estaria entre a portuguesa e a norte-americana).