Discuss the Markets Impact on Ethnicity in china Essay

Discuss the Markets Impact on Ethnicity in china - Essay Example inorities seem to enjoy a pretty harmonious relationship with each other and also with Hans, which is more economically prosperous than the other minorities. But sometimes these social and economic inequalities have led to tensions and violence; China is a booming economy with tensions that have resulted from unequal growth opportunities. Riots in Northwestern Xinjiang, dissatisfaction in Uyghurs etc. show that these minorities are feeling left behind, even though the Chinese economy is prospering because increasingly, the economic opportunities are being taken up by the Han locals or other migrants. This paper attempts to bring out the impact of the markets on the ethnicity in China. During the period of 1970s, China was suffering from the problems of stagnation in the economy, disguised unemployment and low productivity in both rural as well as the urban sector. To overcome these problems, the Chinese government had embarked some programs of economic reforms, as a result of which, the last two decades has seen a remarkable change. The real per capita GDP has seen a more than 5 fold increase, with an annual growth of about 9% (Wu & Song, 2010, p. 2), whereas millions and millions of people have been lifted out of absolute poverty. However, these benefits have not been distributed evenly as a result of which inequality has risen rapidly in the last few years. Gini coefficient, a very popular measure of income inequality, shows that in 1978, China’s gini coefficient measure was 0.317 whereas in 2005 it was 0.449 (Wu 2010, p. 2). It is further seen that the eastern provinces that are nearer to the sea have developed more than the interior western provinces. Again, these reforms have resulted in increased gender wage gap as well as increased urban-rural income gap. (Fazio & Huges, 2004) Minority groups were initially classified on the basis of common territories, language, culture, economy etc. However, many a times, the members of these minority groups did not