James Kynge

And places like Canada and Germany and Sweden were hovering around 0.35.

So you can see

that according to the numbers, China is genuinely one of the most unequal societies in the world, in spite of the fact that it is still ruled by a communist party, at least one that claims to be communist in name anyway.

But let me, could I throw it back to you, Alice?

Why has China taken so long to move on this or to consider moving on this very important topic of inheritance?

Yeah, well, I mean, they've certainly got plenty of billionaires that they could tax when obviously those people die.

Those numbers are China has about 539 billionaires, according to Forbes magazine this year.

Their total net worth is estimated at about 2.2 trillion US dollars.

That, by the way, is equivalent to the size of the entire Australian economy.

And this is obviously, it's quite a lot less than the US.

The US has 989 billionaires, according to Forbes magazine.

But China is the country with the second highest number of billionaires.

So there's a lot of fat there.

that the Chinese government could tax if they decide to go down this road.

And I think you are of the opinion that they will.

My sense of this, when I was thinking about why China hasn't done this much earlier, is that I think China wanted to create a kind of dog-eat-dog, go-getter economy where winner takes, maybe not at all, but winner takes a lot.

And those that are left behind, they're left behind.

and they're hungry because they've been left behind.

That's my kind of back of the envelope explanation, but I do find this a rather curious topic, actually, similar to why China hasn't had a property tax.

I've never really been able to understand that.