By Lan Xinzhen

At the 10th meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs on August 17， President Xi Jinping， also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China （CPC） Central Committee， called for the promotion of common prosperity after China has built a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

Common prosperity is part of the Partys people-centered national governance concept. In the 1980s， then leader Deng Xiaoping proposed to encourage certain regions and individuals to get rich first and then realize common prosperity by the rich giving the poor a helping hand. Nowadays， the catch is how to realize common prosperity， a topic that has been elevated to a more important position since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012. An array of policies since then has been adopted to improve peoples livelihoods and eliminate poverty， laying a solid foundation for shared affluence.

The goal of reaching common prosperity cant be obtained overnight； it must be a dynamic process that keeps evolving. It requires huge social wealth and high-quality economic growth as the backstop. Common prosperity is not tantamount to the equal distribution of social wealth， but it does intend for the rational redistribution of an ever-rising total social wealth that meets the populations needs.

Although the Central Government has worked out some policies to optimize income distribution and ease distribution inequality， unfortunately the income gap broadens along with the booming economy.

The absolute disparity of per-capita disposable incomes for urban and rural residents remains large.

Regional income disparity keeps widening. The reform and openingup policy first benefited the coastal regions in the eastern areas. Although the Central Government has ramped up supportive policies for the central and western regions and per-capita income there has seen obvious improvement in the past decade， a big breach lingers between east and west. For example， per-capita income in Guizhou Province in the southwest increased by 10.7 percent year on year in 2019， higher than the rate of the 8.2 percent of Shanghai in the east. However， in 2019， per-capita income in Shanghai hit 69，000 yuan（$10，600）， while that for Guizhou stood around 20，000 yuan （$3，070）.

China manages to maintain economic and social stability largely because of its high economic growth and low unemployment rate. The widening income gap is accompanied by a rising income for lowincome earners and a shrinking poor population. However， given that a slowdown in economic growth has already become inevitable， the aforementioned income disparity will pose a bigger challenge to the quest for common prosperity.