China Briefing | Why China’s rich should do more to help the poor

Early last month, rumours were swirling that Xiao Gang, China’s top securities regulator, was under intense pressure to resign following the disastrous introduction and hasty rescinding of the circuit breaker mechanism which spooked the stock markets on the mainland and beyond.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a curious and seemingly irrelevant statement that Xiao had personally taken charge of a task force on poverty alleviation and supervised a programme to help firms in poor regions seek stock market listings and debt financings and help poor peasants become shareholders.

While the announcement was the peculiar method preferred by mainland officials to dispel rumours of personnel changes, it was understandably met with great ridicule, not least because millions of investors who had lost a bundle in the stock market rout felt gravely insulted.

READ MORE: China’s final push to eradicate poverty will be difficult but not impossible if handled in a clean, transparent manner

But the message about Xiao’s new task was not just an improvised excuse to clear rumours about his job security.

In fact, it was a message of his pledging of support to President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) top concern, poverty alleviation.

Indeed, over the past few months, Xi has been talking about fighting poverty much more than other more immediate issues such as the economic slowdown or stock market meltdown.

In his last inspection tour before the Lunar New Year, he visited Jinggangshan, one of the country’s poorest areas where he called upon several poor households and vowed to help them out of poverty soon.