For example, government capture theory, government relaxation towards monopolized industries and price-fixing, have all become influential concepts that have crept into many national agendas. These past few years, industry organization theory specific to intellectual property rights, auctions, bank cards, IT, and internet economies has made rapid progress. With this in mind, we must admit that very rarely do economists encounter a problem that receives so much attention but simultaneously so little consensus, and despite tireless research, has had such a negligible effect on policy, as the issue of income distribution's relationship to growth has. 

With so much research going into the field, why has public policy been largely unaffected? As I see it, there is one striking difference between the two fields; governments leverage industry organization research because they want to find fair and effective ways to develop industries and market structures-- things that can be readily provided by economists. But income distribution is much different. In one aspect, this is because the causality between income distribution and growth is so complicated, because income and wealth are not as easy to measure as profit and prices, and even more importantly, because the measuring of income distribution equality, to a large degree, is subjective, and indeed a question of "feeling". And the evaluation of public opinion oftentimes plays an even more important role. Put more extremely, perhaps income distribution policy is always more influenced by public opinion than by mainstream academia. This is actually not that strange, as public opinion affecting policy is ubiquitous in modern society. Foreign policy, especially regarding war, is greatly swayed by the tides of public opinion. 

These past few years, through shifts in public opinion, it is common to hear on the internet and in open venues that China's growth has not lifted all boats, but instead, led to the further exacerbation of income inequality. This is a significant trend and a valuable evaluation. Four or five years ago, I believed that the majority of people were still approving and praising China's economic growth and the resulting reduction of poverty and unemployment. How big have the changes been these past few years? Actually, encouragement of labor-intensive, small and mid-sized businesses has been constantly increasing for ten years, including the small-scale service industry which has grown exceptionally fast (the 2005 Economic Survey can attest to this).  

Thus, it's hard to believe that China's growth hasn't produced a tide that lifts all boats. China's regional disparities, rural problems, and the lack of government-provided public products have been salient all along, but if during the past several years these problems had not seen some improvement, it's hard to imagine that China could have maintained social stability.