grey The Mystery of Chinas Grey Income (灰色收入探秘)What is the real income of a Chinese household? There seems never a clear answer. The National Bureau of Statistics does release the estimate of Chinese household’s income on a national level. However, the figure looks unrealistically low. For example, according to the official figure in 2008, the mean income of China’s top 10% household is only at a mere 40,000 RMB per annuam (equivalent to slightly less than USD 6,000 per year). A largely quoted reason for the ambiguity of Chinese household’s income is that a lot of households have grey income which is very difficult to identify and therefore recorded by the government. To address such issue, Professor Wang Xiaolu of China Reform Foundation conducted a study to explore the grey income of China’s households. According to Professor Wang’s study, there is an average premium of 90% grey income to China’s households on a national basis. In other words, on average China’s households earn almost double what the official statistics suggests (and therefore pay half the tax). In a more detailed analysis, Prof Wang reveals that the grey income premium is the most among top 10% household incomers, amounting to an astonishing 220%. In other words, for most of China’s top 10% household, a large bulk of their income is other than salary or reported earning.

中国家庭的收入到底有多少？这是一个很难讲的清除的问题。即使政府每年都有官方数据，但是几乎没有人相信官方数据的可靠性。主要原因是大部分家庭都有这样或者那样的灰色收入。为了探清这个问题，王晓路教授遍访全国收集了第一手资料来求解这个问题的答案。根据王教授的研究，中国家庭平均的灰色收入占到家庭总收入的接近一半。而这样的灰色收入在高收入家庭中尤其明显。对于中国最富有的10%的家庭来说，其灰色收入竟然占到了总收入的2/3强。

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