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China’s Communist Party
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Chinese now more likely to blame being poor on inequality, unfair system, study shows

  • US researchers behind multi-year study say changing perceptions in China signal growing discontent with economic opportunities

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Pedestrians are pictured in the Wangfujing shopping district in Beijing on Monday. A long-term study has revealed changing attitudes about the reasons for being poor in China, and a signal of growing discontent. Photo: Bloomberg
Phoebe Zhangin Shenzhen
Chinese people have become more inclined to blame being poor on unequal opportunities and an unfair economic system rather than their own lack of ability, according to research spanning almost 20 years.

The study, published on Tuesday by Big Data China – a collaboration between the Washington-based think tank Centre for Strategic and International Studies and Stanford University’s Centre on China’s Economy and Institutions – is based on multiple surveys over two decades.

In 2004, Martin Whyte, then a sociology professor at Harvard, began conducting in-person national surveys to measure public opinion on inequality in China. In 2009 and 2014, similar questionnaires were distributed again, and in 2023, online surveys were conducted through Alipay, a popular finance app developed by e-commerce giant Alibaba, which also owns the South China Morning Post.
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The survey samples ranged in size from 2,500 to 13,022 individuals in different income brackets across the six occasions the surveys were conducted. The researchers carried out three rounds in 2023.

From 2004 to 2014, respondents identified “lack of ability, low education and lack of effort”, as the three top factors in order of importance to explain why people in China were poor.

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But, by 2023, there was a significant shift in how people responded to the same question. According to those surveys, “unequal opportunities, low education and an unfair economic system” were regarded as the primary reasons for being poor.

When the participants were asked in 2004 and 2014 to explain why people in China were rich, the top three factors chosen were “ability and talent, hard work and good education”.

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