t the Deng regime anticipated this growing inequality. From the beginning of the reform program in 1979, egalitarianism was denounced by Deng. He believed that wealth was a deserving reward for the productive efforts of the rich, while poverty is an apt punishment for the poor. So when one looks at statements from the Deng regime they only boast of the vast number of entrepreneurs who became millionaires in the reform period. They hardly speak of any attempts to compensate for the loss of Maoist public welfare and social security systems because they hardly made any. Countless peasants have been left largely dependent on private help. There exists no reliable data on the incomes of the upper class so they have been largely ignored in studies made on income distribution. This is not right. If a serious attempt is to be made to comprehend the meaning of inequality in the Deng era these groups cannot be ignored because they derive the highest benefits from China's socialist market economy. The poor may not necessarily be getting poorer, but the rich are getting richer and the gulf between them is clearly widening. From the perspective of an outsider looking in, I don't think it would be too outlandish for me to assume that there is some powerful resentment building up among the people who were schooled under Mao's egalitarian principles where they were used to seemingly small differences in living standards as opposed to China as we know it in the present day....
