China has seen remarkable progress in its economic growth since reform and opening up began. Still, as impressive as this transformation has been, growth has come at a considerable cost to income distribution between the rich and poor. As a result income distribution has remained at the centre of public policy research.

Since the end of the 1990s and after 2003 in particular, the Chinese government had implemented a series of policies aiming to promote a more balanced, coordinated, inclusive and sustainable economic brand of development. However, with efforts to improve income distribution unable to fully keep pace with progress in rapid economic development, the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF), with the support of UNDP, launched a research project entitled ‘An Impact Assessment on Income Distribution-Related Policies in China’. Based on available data, this project has investigated trends in China’s income distribution and seeks to examine the impacts that changes in income distribution have had on related policies over the last decade.