On January 18, 2013 (December 7, 2012 in the lunar calendar), China announced the national Gini coefficient for the first time. The official national Gini coefficient, which has attracted much attention and controversy for many years, has finally been unveiled. On the morning of January 18, 2013, at the press conference on the performance of the national economy in 2012, Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, announced the Gini coefficient from 2003 to 2012 in one go when answering a reporter's question. Among them, the Gini coefficient of national resident income in China in 2012 was 0.474. In the past 10 years, the Gini coefficient reached a peak of 0.4910 in 2008, and then began to gradually decline. In the past 10 years, the Gini coefficient was all higher than 0.4. The so-called Gini coefficient is a commonly used indicator to measure the income gap of residents. The value is between 0 and 1. The larger the Gini coefficient, the larger the income gap of residents. According to international general standards, a Gini coefficient above 0.4 indicates a large income gap, that is, 0.4 is an internationally recognized warning line. "Gini coefficients between 0.47 and 0.49 are not low. Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, admitted at a press conference yesterday. Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, admitted frankly yesterday that China's Gini coefficient is "not low." It is worth noting that since the Gini coefficient released yesterday was calculated based on new standards, new calibrations, and old data, the National Bureau of Statistics stated that it will not rule out new data obtained in accordance with the new standards in 2013, and appropriate revision of these historical data. "However, I can't say whether or not the revision will be revised or how much, because the revenue data for 2013 will not be available until this time next year." Ma Jiantang said. Production details are not clear yet. Public information shows that in 2000, the National Bureau of Statistics released the only national Gini coefficient to date-0.412. However, since this data is estimated based on data from income and expenditure grouping of urban and rural household surveys, there is a view that yesterday was the first time that the National Bureau of Statistics announced the Gini coefficient. The National Bureau of Statistics previously publicly admitted that it only announced the Gini coefficient for the net income of rural residents, which was 0.3897 in 2011. In fact, at the 2012 "Two Sessions", doubts about why the National Bureau of Statistics did not publish the national Gini coefficient reached a climax. At that time, Ma Jiantang also explained this: there was no nationwide unified urban and rural household survey system. "To calculate the Gini coefficient, we need to know what the income of residents across the country is and what the income of the divided parts is. In the past, household surveys that separated urban and rural areas only had the per capita net income of rural residents in urban and rural areas and the per capita disposable income of urban residents. There was no disposable income of residents across the country, and there was no comparable income of urban and rural residents with the same indicators." Ma Jiantang mentioned this again yesterday. However, starting from December 1 last year, the national unified urban-rural comparable household survey system has been implemented, and 400,000 residents have been accounted for in accordance with the national unified urban-rural comparable statistical standards and indicator system. As a result, the Gini coefficient was officially released. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, according to the new national unified statistical standard classification standards for comparable urban and rural areas, historical basic household data, especially income data, divided into urban and rural areas, were sorted and calculated, and then obtained from 2003 to 2011. National resident Gini coefficient. The Gini coefficient of national residents 'income in China was 0.479 in 2003, 0.473 in 2004, 0.485 in 2005, 0.487 in 2006, 0.484 in 2007, and 0.491 in 2008. Then it gradually fell back, with 0.490 in 2009, 0.481 in 2010, 0.477 in 2011, and 0.474 in 2012. However, the National Bureau of Statistics did not explain core indicators such as "national disposable income" and "comparable income of urban and rural residents with the same indicators" yesterday. According to the statistical indicators of the National Bureau of Statistics, the so-called disposable income of urban households refers to the actual income remaining by the surveyed urban households after paying personal income tax, property tax and other recurring transfer expenditures. The so-called net income of rural households refers to the total income of rural permanent households that is left after deducting expenditures on production and non-production operating expenses, payment of taxes and payment of contracted collective tasks, and can be directly used for productive and non-productive construction investment, living consumption and savings. However, the statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics may also include property income. According to public information, Ma Jiantang once mentioned in a group discussion at the fifth session of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in March 2012 that mobile phones were used to measure income levels in the past, but now mobile phones have become very common. "It's best now to use residential data to adjust and correct income data." As soon as the data from the National Bureau of Statistics, which was significantly lower than the private Gini coefficient, was released, it raised questions again on the spot. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the national Gini coefficient in 2011 was 0.477, which was much lower than the 0.61 released by the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics China Family Finance Research and Research Center on December 9 last year. In response, Ma Jiantang responded yesterday,"Whether official statistics or private surveys, they should be an integral part of the statistical system. Standardized private surveys are an important and useful supplement to official statistics. Whether it is official statistics or private surveys, we need to establish a scientific statistical system, a standardized sampling method, an appropriate and appropriate sample number, and a rigorous release attitude. As for which Gini coefficient in China is higher, which is lower, and which is in line with the actual situation in China, I do not want to make specific comments. You can give examples from several countries and compare and take a look." Ma Jiantang said that in 2009, Argentina was 0.46, Brazil was 0.55, and Russia was 0.40. Mexico's Gini coefficient in 2008 was 0.48, India's Gini coefficient in 2005 was 0.33, and China's Gini coefficient calculated by the World Bank was 0.474 in 2008. Ma Jiantang later pointed out that "there are two basic facts in studying income differences in China that I want to emphasize here." First, what kind of production method and land possession status do farmers in China? Basically, it is an agricultural production method based on the contract system with relatively average land occupation. It all has its own contracted land, but not much. On this basis, the income of rural residents will definitely be related to the land system. That is, there is little difference in land ownership among farmers in China. The other is that the majority of urban employed people in China is 370 million. Many of them work in government agencies, state-owned enterprises and institutions. The income gap among government agencies and institutions cannot be said to be very large. Regarding the dispute between the official and private Gini coefficient, scholars interviewed by Morning Post reporters yesterday had different views. When talking about why there is a significant gap between the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics and the data surveyed by private organizations, Wang Xiaolu, deputy director and researcher of the National Economic Research Institute of the China Reform Foundation, said in an interview with the Morning Post reporter: "What is different from some private surveys and statistics is that official statistics are omitted to a considerable extent: First, the sample is omitted. Part of the income of high-income residents may not be truthfully reflected in the survey data. This part mainly involves the gray income of high-income residents. If this part of gray income can be taken into account, the actual income gap between residents will be wider than the official survey data. According to the "Gray Income and National Income Distribution" report released by Wang Xiaolu in 2010, in 2008, the "hidden income" of China residents was 9.3 trillion yuan, of which "gray income" was 5.4 trillion yuan.