Gallup recently completed our fourth comprehensive
nationwide survey of the People's Republic of China -- nearly 3,600
hour-long, in-person, in-home interviews conducted across both
urban and rural areas of the country. Findings from the latest
survey will be presented in coming weeks exclusively to Gallup Poll
On Demand subscribers.
This ambitious project dates back to 1994, when Gallup conducted
the first-ever nationwide survey of China's citizens using strict,
probability-based sampling procedures. Similarly exhaustive
hour-long surveys were conducted in 1997 and 1999.
Gallup has now interviewed more than 15,000 Chinese adults
across every province and autonomous administrative unit in the
country -- from rural areas of inner Mongolia to urban Guangzhou;
from Heilongjiang on the border with Russian Siberia to tropical
Hainan Island in the Gulf of Tonkin; in Tibet (Xizang) and in
predominantly Muslim Xinjiang on the border with
Afghanistan.
A Decade of Rapidly Rising Living Standards,
Particularly in Urban Areas
As the current survey's findings document, the change in the
living standards of China's people over the last decade is nothing
short of astonishing -- surely the most dramatic transformation
ever witnessed by more than a fifth of mankind over such a brief
period.
Nationwide, average reported household incomes are now nearly 2
1/2 times what respondents reported in 1994. The bulk of this
dramatic income growth occurred among China's urban residents, who
are now, on average, three times as affluent as their rural
counterparts. But even rural incomes -- which have stagnated in
recent years -- are nearly double what they were a little over a
decade ago.
This dramatic rise in affluence has been accompanied by a
remarkable degree of change in the everyday lives of China's 1.3
billion people. In Gallup's initial 1994 nationwide survey, only a
minority (40%) of Chinese households had a color television set,
just one in four owned a refrigerator, 1 in 10 had a landline
telephone, and only 3% owned a mobile phone. Video compact disc
players? They had only recently been invented.
Our latest survey indicates that color televisions and landline
phones have become the norm rather than the exception in Chinese
homes -- 82% of households have the former, 63% the latter. Nearly
half (48%) of China's roughly 400 million households now own at
least one mobile phone. Even more remarkable is that at least half
(52%) of all Chinese households now own a VCD player -- double the
percentage that owned a refrigerator in 1994.
Satisfaction
If China's people are far more affluent, are they also more
satisfied with the quality of their lives? On this point, the data
are far more ambiguous.
Gallup asked respondents, "Overall, how satisfied or
dissatisfied are you with the way things are going in your life
today -- very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied,
or very dissatisfied?" As in earlier surveys, Chinese are
significantly more likely to express satisfaction (63%) than
dissatisfaction (37%) with their current quality of life, with the
largest percentage expressing moderate, rather than strong,
satisfaction (51% say "somewhat satisfied" and 12% say "very
satisfied")*. Only a tiny minority of Chinese -- never more than 8%
in any of our four surveys -- describe themselves as "very
dissatisfied."
However, despite impressive growth in average household income,
the ratio of Chinese expressing satisfaction to those expressing
dissatisfaction has actually eroded somewhat over time**.
It is interesting to note that there is no significant
difference between the self-reported satisfaction of China's urban
and rural residents, notwithstanding the enormous (and growing) gap
in affluence between China's cities and its countryside. The
proportion of rural residents describing themselves as "satisfied"
is statistically equal to the percentage among their city-dwelling
counterparts -- a pattern that has persisted across all four waves
of Gallup's survey.
So is it true that greater affluence does not translate into
greater happiness?
Well, not entirely. The data also show that, regardless of where
they live, China's wealthiest residents are indeed happier than the
country's poorest residents. Among the one in eight households
fortunate enough to have total annual incomes of 30,000 RMB ($3,620
U.S.) or more, 80% describe themselves as either very (16%) or
somewhat (64%) satisfied with the way things are going in their
lives. In contrast, among those with total annual household incomes
below 3,000 RMB ($362 U.S.), only about half (49%) say they are
either very (11%) or somewhat (38%) satisfied. About 1 in 10
Chinese households fall into this very low income
category.
All That Glitters Is Not Gold?
How can it be that China's city dwellers -- so much better off
financially than their rural counterparts -- appear to be no more
satisfied with their lives? Is this simply a matter of higher
expectations, or might there be other factors at work?
One explanation for this apparent paradox may lie in the
responses to a follow-up question in which respondents were asked
to rate their level of satisfaction with their own community "as a
place to live."
While China's cities continue to grow rapidly because of massive
internal migration, those Chinese who have remained in the
countryside are now dramatically more likely than their urban
counterparts to say they are satisfied with their own communities
"as a place to live." Furthermore, although this pattern existed to
a modest degree in responses to our 1994 survey, it has become more
pronounced in each subsequent wave.
Why might this be? Despite the far greater economic
opportunities they provide, China's cities certainly are not immune
to many of the ills that have plagued rapidly expanding urban
sectors worldwide -- such as a shortage of available and affordable
housing, pollution, and even rising crime rates. Even so, tens of
millions of Chinese continue to "vote with their feet" each year,
leaving the agricultural hinterlands in search of a brighter future
elsewhere.
Next week: Specific areas of satisfaction, and degree of
optimism toward the future
*By way of comparison, when a similar question was asked in
late 2004 in the United States, 84% of Americans described
themselves as satisfied with how things are going in their lives
(58% very satisfied, 26% somewhat satisfied), while just 14% said
they were dissatisfied (5% very dissatisfied, 9% somewhat
dissatisfied).
**When Gallup first asked this question in China in 1994,
the following five-response-choice scale was used: "very satisfied,
somewhat satisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, somewhat
dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied?" However, because such a high
proportion (38%) of the 1994 respondents opted for the 'soft
option' mid-point ("neither satisfied nor dissatisfied"), in each
subsequent wave of this survey we have substituted the following
four-choice scale: "very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat
dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied?"
