Enter a Beijing eyeglasses shop, and you’ll invariably see a special case filled with thick, oversize spectacles. Salespeople refer to them as lingdao (leaders) glasses.They are considered the preferred style of China’s political elite, who currently are gathered in Beijing for the National People’s Congress’s (NPC) annual confab, a largely symbolic exercise in which some 3,000 political deputies wave through legislation with little in the way of real debate. Lingdao eyewear, although not necessarily on the cutting edge of global fashion, can cost remarkable amounts of money. A version with 18-karat-gold frames, for example, runs for $13,000. Run-of-the-mill pairs, say Beijing salespeople, start at $1,000.
Given that the richest 70 NPC deputies are worth nearly $90 billion, according to the Shanghai-based wealth monitor Hurun Report, a cool grand (or 80) for glasses is mere pocket change. But the lingdao-glasses phenomenon illustrates China’s growing wealth gap and the accompanying social tensions that are jolting the country. Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese President who famously wore supersize, black-rimmed glasses, encouraged private entrepreneurs to join the Communist Party and aim for NPC seats back in the 1990s. Since Jiang’s invitation, the wealth of Chinese political figures has skyrocketed. The 70 richest NPC members, for instance, saw an $11.5 billion increase in their net worth from 2010 to 2011, according to Hurun.
Yet this NPC’s theme is rebalancing China’s economy and preparing the country for the first year in nearly a decade in which growth targets are dipping below 8%. Opening the NPC on March 5, Premier Wen Jiabao (he of the owlish, gold-rimmed specs) predicted 7.5% growth for China in 2012 and criticized his own government for failing to distribute economic gains more equally. Read More
