SHANGHAI – The outgoing Chinese leadership is seeking real progress in plans for narrowing the yawning wealth gap that has resulted in social tensions, as income distribution reform is being seen as a priority in its schedule.

China’s outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao said on Thursday that one of the main tasks under the current administration is to propose plans for income distribution reform, as the Chinese ruling party began its twice-a-decade national congress. This year's meeting will usher in a leadership transition.

The reform, organized by China’s top planner – the National Development and Reform Commission since 2004--is reported to be embodied in regulations by the end of the year, including a payment system to ensure full-timers’ pay raise, the equalization of basic public services and narrowing of the urban-rural income gap.

An opening report delivered by party boss President Hu Jintao, on Thursday, also signaled the next leadership’s policy priority on improvement of peoples’ livelihoods and social structuring.

“[The party and government will] try everything possible to bulge people's wallet,” the report says, “making sure that people’s income growth will keep pace with the country’s economic development, and that the labor reward growth will keep pace with the labor productivity.”

The report also emphasizes efficiency and equity in the primary distribution and the redistribution of national income – the former guarantees more pay for more work and the latter guarantees a part of social wealth to support the poor.

For years, the rich have gotten richer in China. According to a report by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the income of senior company executives was up to 4,553 times more than that of a migrant worker in 2011. The income growth rate of executives has also vastly exceeded that of common staff, the report shows.

China’s Gini coefficient, an internationally recognized ratio to measure income distribution scored from zero (perfect equality) to one (maximum inequality), rose to 0.48 in 2007 from 0.3 three decades ago, while the danger line where social turbulence can easily occur is 0.4.

The data, published in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on Wednesday, was given by Li Shi, a professor at Beijing Normal University who has become known as "Mr. China Income Distribution." The authorities haven’t released the Gini coefficient of urban areas since 2000, though the reason is not clear.

For the Chinese government who sees stability as a top priority, social tensions triggered by unfair income distribution and a yawning wealth gap would be the last thing it wants to see, as ordinary Chinese are often bitterly cynical toward the rich and corrupt officials.

Experts believe that in order to achieve real social fairness, primary distribution of national income should come first.

Zheng Yongnian, a long-time China observer and the director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, told Morning Whistle on Friday that the reform in economic structure to boost the development of small and private businesses should come before that in social policy such as social security, education, medicine and public housing.

But Zheng doesn’t think the economic structural reform will be harder than the equalization of basic public services because it may harm vested interests.

“The thing is, you should let other interests grow in addition to the vested interest,” said Zheng. “Back in the 1990s when state-owned enterprises were hard to reform, the government allowed and supported other enterprises entering the market to put pressure on the vested interest. The same situation now...the government can let individuals step into banking to bud new interests.”

“And it’s not right to crack down the vested interest or rob the rich to help the poor,” he said.

Su Hainan, a researcher at the Labor and Wage Institute of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, who has participated in policy discussions about the income distribution, also said the private capital should be allowed to break the monopoly and enter areas which can be open to the public, according to the Legal Evening News.