The official, however, raised questions over its credibility as a Bloomberg report in last November quoted Murtaza Syed, deputy chief representative of the International Monetary Fund in China, as saying China’s Gini coefficient had risen more than any other Asian economy in the last two decades.
Meanwhile, China’s Gini index had spiked to a shocking high of 0.61 in 2010, according to a report released by a research center at China’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.
World Bank estimated China’s Gini index at 0.474 in 2008.
The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, which grows with increasing inequality among social members.
The average global Gini coefficient stands at 0.44, mildly above the 0.4 line for an alarming inequality.