widening inequity between the rich and the poor include social and political instability, discrimination in access to areas such as public health, education, pensions and unequal opportunities for the Chinese people. It is important to note that the inequality in income in China can also be seen as a rural-urban income gap especially with the widely criticized social development policy, the Hukou (household registration) System in place. Market income – mainly wages – has been the driving factor in shaping urban income inequality since the economic reforms in China while the widening rural-urban income gap is due to low salaries for employees and migrants in many companies coupled with rapidly growing profits for the management of State-owned enterprises, real estate developers and some private companies. The urban per capita net income stood at 17,175 yuan ($2,525) in 2009, in contrast to 5,153 yuan in the countryside, with the urban-to-rural income ratio being 3.33:1, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics. The Hukou System has been long seen as an institutionalized source of inequality and disparity among the population and source of population control seen a deterrence factor for rural citizens to seek a higher standard of living in the cities as rural citizens will be denied access to urban housing and education for their children. It is also seen as a legacy of the dualistic economy, serving as a highly effective measure of limiting urban migration. Coastal-hinterland imbalance Digital divide Employment Employment distribution has been an important issue for the Chinese Government ever since it began initiating reforms. The previous state-led system of employment has been restructured to accommodate the market economy. Its negative effects include the massive layoffs and the cracks to the household registration system, which sent many rural Chinese to seek employment in the cities. These factors gave rise to the competitive labor force and unemployment. Employment levels differ from region to region, with stronger concentrations of unemployment in the interior. The unemployment trend is attributed in part to the efforts of the Chinese Government to make its SOEs (State Owned Enterprises), which had a redundancy rate at an estimated 25-30% in 1999, more efficient. On the other hand, as of late 2011, the heavily industrialized coastal areas and cities are in fact experiencing an employment shortage due to the runaway growth of the economy. Guangdong province alone needs at least 1 million workers to