Since the implementation of the economic liberalization at the late of the seventies, China have been getting a economic growth around 10% annually. While, at the same time, the private initiatives was allowed, many own-state companies privatized, and the foreign direct investment promoted. One key feature of the Chinese liberalization process is its gradualism, different from the Russian Big Ban process, for example. Thus, China have started with special economic zones, instead of covering all the country. It is important to highlight that this gradualism together with all the policies would be an important factor which caused the inequalities.
Due to the characteristic capitalism process with high level of inequalities in China, there are many questions we want to answer: The begin of capitalism process and economic reform in China necessarily must involved high level of inequalities? Is it possible to revert the inequalities in China, at the same time of keeping similar high level of economic growth rate? What Is the different between the initial inequality conditions, current situation and the perspective of inequalities in China?
In the present research, we aim to analyze how the specific Chinese Capitalism process and the economic reform, including both the characteristic and endowments of the society, and particularly how the specific policies implemented have exacerbated the level of inequality in China. Likewise, evaluate the necessary and correct policies to revert the evolution to a capitalism process more egalitarian.
The first part of the article is the introduction. In the second part we try to explained the components a evolutions of the income inequality, using an approach of analyzing rural and urban groups. In the third parts we will relate the income inequality with this appropriate policy, which determinate or exacerbate the inequality. Finally, in the four part we will give some conclusions and recommendations.
2. Analysis of Inequality
At the end of the Mao era, China had one of the most egalitarian distributions of income in the world, with a very low Gini of 0.33. At the grassroots level, the Gini was also egalitarian, while in the urban areas, it was exceptionally low with a value of 0.16 Blecher (2005). However, since 1978 increase in disparities has been inevitable as China introduced market reforms. Currently China is considered as one of the Asia’s most unequal societies.
Diverse scholars have analyzed the impact of the economic reform on the increasing of the inequality in China, for example Zhang and others (2001) have responded that by calculating the Gini coefficient for China and its three regions, namely the Eastern, Central, and the Western regions from 1952 to 1997. They have found that, in general, income disparity in China clearly increased over the 1952–97 period, especially after the initiation of economic reforms. It is important to highlight that the Gini coefficient for the three regions displayed different patterns of inequalities, with the Western region showing the lowest Gini coefficient in that period.
For Huang and others (2003), the primary finding is the levels of inequality in China’s regional economies clearly showed a slight upward trend after 1991. Where the inequality of the overall GDP is primarily attributed to the between-group effect rather than to the within-group effect. This uneven pattern of development has been a troubling issue for China’s regional economies ever since the country first embarked upon its bold program of reforms and opened itself up to the outside world in the late 1970s Huang and others (2003).
Thus, by Huang and others (2003), more than one-half of the inequality in the national income, in fact, was a direct result of inter-provincial inequality, while three-quarters of the inter-provincial inequality was due to inter-zone inequality. Moreover, the uneven development of enterprises in both townships and villages had seemingly been a major factor in the increased inequality in regional income.
With other approaches Kanbur and Zhang (1999), meanwhile, used a decomposition analysis to determine the relative contributions of rural–urban and inland–coastal inequalities to ascertain regional inequalities in China during the 1980s and 1990s. Their primary finding was that, in terms of levels, the contribution of the former was much higher than that of the latter.
According to the balance of the studies about inequality in China, the most appropriate approach, to follow, seem to be the urban-rural analysis. Thus, we can see more clearly the impact of the economic reform on the evolution of the inequality in China. In fact, the economic reform have had different influence in both areas.
In the following figure we can see that in 2002, according to Blecher (2005), the Gini coefficient would be around 0.4. Value higher to either the rural sector or urban sector, because as we said the disparity between these two groups is considerable high more grave than the disparities inside each sector. It is important to mention that the inequality is higher in rural sector, because in the urban sector there exist subsidies, which had benefiting urbanites Khan and Riskin (2001).
Figure 1
Source: Blecher (2005)
In this part 2 we will analyse the inequelity of China in greater detail, making a disagregation in three aspects. First the inequality in the urban sector, second in the rural area and finally we are analysing the gap between the rural and urban sector.
A. Inequality in the urban area
According to figure 1, in the urban areas, income inequality was 0.32 in 2002. The main explanation of disparities in the cities lied on the urban per-capita wages, which has been more unequal after the economic reform, although it is important to consider that subsidies had benefiting urbanites in its equality Khan and Riskin (2001).
China’s working class began to develop at the dawn of the last century. Although during the Maoist period, it grew considerably, but they had wages very homogeneous. It is with the onset of the structural reforms, at the end of Mao era that China’s working class has become more differentiated in all aspects, especially in term of wages Blecher (2005).
In the urban areas, the income have been always explained largely by wages. In the past, almost everyone worked in state-owned enterprises, with a compressed wage distribution, and practically without returns to human capital. Differences in the standard of living between households in the same city were further limited by the rationing of many consumer goods on the basis of need. Regional income differences among cities were reportedly modest, and it is basically due to the cost of living, for example the higher cost of living in Shanghai.
After the reforms, wages in the state sector, became dependent on the economic fortunes of the enterprise, which of course rendered them much more differentiated and variable. Private-sector employment, in both domestic, joint-venture and foreign-owned firms, grew apace, especially in the 1990s. Unfortunately, a large informal sector developed, comprised both of rural migrants and unemployed urbanites, making a negative impact in equality.
There have also been an increasing inequality between male and female wages, which was greatest in the most marketized sectors. According to Blecher (2005) it is due to differences in labor market assets such as education and skills. That suggests that much of the source of the gender gap lies outside the labor market itself.
Nowadays, increasing returns to higher education is more important in explaining growing dispersion of wage earnings.
B. Inequality in the rural area
In the rural sector during the Maoist era, the Chinese people enjoyed a low but all of them had a secure standard of living. Public services such as health care was supplied through a combination of collective and state-run paramedical services, grassroots clinics and a hierarchy of hospitals that were virtually free. Schooling was also virtually free. All the families owned houses and belonged to collectives, in case of their earnings proved insufficient to meet the expenses, they received from their collectives food supplies, shelter, waivers for the minor school and health care fees, and burial.
Prior to reform, nearly 80% of China’s population lived in rural areas and 60% was primarily involved in agriculture. Land was collectively farmed, with income supplemented in some periods by income from small private plots. Income from collective farming was allocated at the level of the production team (25 to 30 households) on the basis of both household need and accumulated work points, with the weight between distribution on the basis of need and basis of labor.
Figure 2
Source: World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/country/china
Before the economic reform, the differences within localities among households were very small, and if so, largely associated with differences among households in dependency ratios such as the ratio of the number of individuals that worked to total household size or other indicator. Therefore, there population in the countryside enjoyed a relative equality system.
Due to, as we had mentioned, a host of services (health, education and so on) were collectively provided, getting equalizing results. While, in terms of prices and endowments, income was not sensitive to productivity than would likely be the case after the reforms were started. Naturally, after the reform them become dependent from productivity.
Once rural collectives were gone by the starting of economic reform and application of urbanization, automatically economic insecurity had returned to many farmers. There were ten millions of farmers, who have no land at all to work. These tens of millions with lack of land to support themselves have migrated to cities, where, if they are lucky, they can find work, often in sweatshops, in burgeoning informal and even illegal sectors, or with construction gangs Blecher (2005).
However, it is important o highlight that in the countryside, most of the level and growth of inequality is due to unequal access to non-farm family business income. Certainly the main source if inequality in the rural sector is the generation of non-farm income. While most families are getting greater income from these activities, there are some restriction for a considerable rural population.
However, rural equality also have get a little better in the recent years, because its extremely egalitarian distribution of land, which of course is a product of its land reform. Yet, it is important to reiterate that the inequality still worse than the time previously to the political reform.
C. Urban-rural gap
The most relevant finding of the present research, is the existence of sizeable urban-rural income gap in China, that, according to scholars, was enforced through strict restrictions on migration from the countryside. Factoring in the value of a host of subsidies, Rawski (1982) suggests that on the eve of economic reform, average differences between the city and the countryside were on the order of 5:1. Now it is expected to be higher.
This phenomena about rural-urban gap could be seen easier in the performance between interior and coastal provinces of China. In the inland part there is a greater significant the improvement of inequality dynamics Benjamin (2004). There the inequality increased more rapidly, where rural areas become more unequal, and at the same time, showing a widening urban-rural income differential.
It seem contradictory, although the cities may be in their infancy or under development, China has yet to develop the array of acceptable social policies with the breadth and level of other transition economies. However, in rural areas the primary safety net has been practically the egalitarian land allocation mechanism, basically guaranteeing land to all rural households.
We can find a big gap between rural and urban sectors, if it is used any indicator of income or welfare. In the following figure we are using the percentage of population with access to water. There we can see the big differences between these two sectors.
Figure 3
Source: World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/country/china
3. Capitalism process with inequality
Theoretically is established that the market forces is able to produce rapid economic growth, but at the same time higher inequality. In case of China, scholars affirm that the specific governmental policies involved in its economic reform, have exacerbated this theoretical relation, resulting toward higher level of inequalities.
The leader of China, who implemented the economic reform, Deng Xiaoping was fond of saying, some much “get rich first”, putting the emphases on the role of market mechanisms. This strategy, undoubtedly, broke the previous policy concerning about egalitarianism, and apparently was designed to make only a small portion of the Chinese population rich first.
In the next three points, there are several economic policies that explain how the level of income inequality in China to increase: It should increase within both the urban and rural sectors, and possibly across urban and rural sectors as well. Below we make a balance of all these measures based on scholar´s analysis, mainly on Dollar (2007)´s analysis.
A. Open policy and focus in special economic zones
One of the most relevant characteristic about Chinese economy is its current trade surplus, the same that would be exacerbating disparities within the country. It is because, the famous dynamic export sector is no longer an important source of job creation; it is too capital intensive and has too rapid productivity growth, concentrated in the urban areas.
The liberalization in the labor market would have led to greater wage inequality. The most successful enterprises could pass profits to workers through bonuses and higher base wages, and also the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, led to significant layoffs, unemployment, and at least short-term inequality of access to new jobs.
In the urban areas, these transition-oriented changes, was considerably affected by the development of a vibrant private sector, with wage and employment determination entirely outside any kind of control of prices, instead following criteria of returns to human capital and skill, which would transmit to higher inequality of earnings and income.
Since the readily accessible geographic location of the coastal areas promised a much higher rate of return on investments, compared with other parts of China, the central government established special economic zones, and opened cities and regions along the coasts with the aim of attracting enormous flows of foreign direct investment.
In terms of development, such rapid growth along the coasts has, by default, continued to widen the gap between the coastal and interior areas of China, and has thus brought about additional social, economic, and political repercussions. In the following table we can appreciate the special economic zones.
Table 1: Special economic zones
The impulse of the capitalism coastal area could represent the most determinant long-term structural policy that have led to large disparity in China. But there is a big imbalance concerning the surplus gotten by China, through international trade. We can analyze this problem throughout the trade imbalance between China and the U.S., which is exacerbating disparity in both countries.
Economic theory suggests that the U.S. or any economy gain overall from the interaction with China, but that there winners and losers. At the beginning of the Chinese opening up, U.S. economy have grown. The benefits to the U.S. come in various forms, including opportunities to buy low-cost imports of Chinese things, as well as opportunities to sell more American products and for Americans who own multinational companies also benefit from the opening up.
Figure 4
Source: World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/country/china
It is clear that the integration is putting damage on American workers with low skills. Also, it is clear that integration with China has been a prime cause of rising inequality for the U.S. While, at the same time, there are great new opportunities for high-skilled professionals, there are diminishing opportunities for manufacturing factory American workers.
This imbalance has both a demand side source and a supply side source. On the demand side, there is a serious structural deficit fiscal stimulus to the economy. And there is also a supply-side problem. Productivity growth has been very rapid in China, and this requires a real appreciation of the exchange rate to prevent an unhealthy trade surplus.
However, Chinese authorities are reluctant to do a big appreciation, due to Japanese experience when it allowed a very large appreciation in the mid-1980s, leading to an asset bubble, its subsequent collapse, and ten years of lost growth. The current Chinese policy is only of allowing a very modest appreciation.
Currently, trade surplus means that China is exporting capital and invested the profits mostly in low-return American bonds. Naturally, China’s trade account is so stimulative of the economy. But, it is important to consider, that while the government is making some effort to make social spending, it is hampered by the hot state of the overall economy, which already is rising 10% annually in average.
The great solution, would be further appreciation of the currency, which would tend to cool off the export sector, would open up space to expand social spending for reducing inequalities. But, one of the things China fears about appreciation is that it will choke off job creation, because, the export sector has been a good source of job creation in the past.
However, in recent years it has not been a source of net job creation. China’s manufacturing sector has become more capital intensive and in recent years has created few new jobs. According to official statistics, recently the industrial sector in China created less jobs per year, compared to the created in the service sector.
Therefore, there should be a combination of exchange rate appreciation with greater public spending on services could create more jobs than currently occurs. This policy could be designed to be equalizing compared to the current situation. Reducing China’s trade surplus would mean that China could put more of its resources into meeting its own domestic needs.
The current export boom benefits basically urban property owners and existing urban workers, while making it difficult for the government to increase public spending on rural development and social services. This set of two policies, exchange rate appreciation and more social spending would help to reduce China’s disparities.
B. Land reform and Hukou system
At the beginning of the economic reform China counted with a positive measure in favor of capitalism and equality, it is the land reform, which allowed one base for the development with egalitarian process. However, this one was no enough, because we can see in the evolution of income inequality increasing in disparities. It is because, the other measures countered completely this positive effect.
Another measure is when the Household Responsibility System permitted farmers to retain a greater share of the returns to their own labor and entrepreneurial talent in managing farms. Liberalization with respect to farm sidelines and the establishment of family run businesses provided another avenue to potentially earn more than neighbors.
There was also the establishment of Township and Village Enterprises, and therefore the development of off-farm opportunities more generally, would likely have also provided households a way to earn a living off the farm, potentially generating greater differences in income across villages. These opportunities also have significantly changed the structure of income for households.
In the countryside, households also faced increasing integration with the broader Chinese economy, as well as international markets. For farmers, this generated changing terms of trade between agricultural and non-agricultural goods prices. Due to during the period of reform, agricultural prices declined significantly, there was another factor of leading to a rise of inequality.
Similar to the cities, in the rural sector also the industrialization and the economic development would have provided rising returns to human capital and skill, leading to higher income inequality. However, to the extent this development was uneven across provinces, it might lead to widening income gaps across regions, too. Thus, we have more evidence of inter-groups negative effects on the overall inequality.
Probably, the main finding about the hampering to the convergence between rural and urban income, is the kind of “Hukou System” which had been applied in China during all greater time of the economic reform. In fact the rural-urban gap is a featured of China that deserve to be analyzed. The previous point mentioned are not able to explained that.
Thus, through most of the period analyzed there remained considerable restrictions on migration. While these restrictions ended recently, the constraints on mobility would have reduced the convergence of rural-urban incomes. There had been a kind of distortion about the structure between rural and urban population as well as the persistence of income disparities.
Lastly, the evolution of the rural-urban gap depends on the economic growth rates, or development, of industrial and service sectors. It is known that such development was concentrated in cities, reasonable due to the pre-existing and continuing advantages of infrastructure like schools and roads and so on. Therefore, it is expected that average incomes of urban residents to grow faster than those of rural residents. And because the mobility remains imperfect, the urban-rural income gap easily rise.
Chinese population have been either urban or rural people, while land in China is zoned as either rural or urban. However, in urban areas people can easily sell their land and buildings, or mortgage them to borrow. whilst, although in rural areas, peasants have long-term tenure of the land, but they cannot mortgage or sell the use rights in the same way.
There is a big distortion about the moving land from rural to urban use. Currently, China has as comparative advantage more in manufacturing and services than in agriculture. Therefore, peasants cannot earn a decent living as farmers, and it is reasonable to think that the labor force would be more useful in urban employment. But, the alienate of the land out of agriculture for urban use, have been very inefficient.
In China, that conversion is handled administratively. Farmers are compensated based on the agricultural value of the land, but the reason to convert land is for commercial exploit of the land or urban use, which of course is higher than its value for agriculture. Hence, the conversion does not generate a high income for the peasants, and the peasants still get relatively poor recompense, some studies found that the majority of displaced peasants were worse off after land conversion.
In China it is diffused many cases where peasants complain and make demonstration, due to the conversions have not been done in a transparent way, and even there are accusations of corruption of local officials. The government has published statistics on violent protests involving more and more, and that number grew steadily.
For some scholars the way in which agricultural land is converted to urban land is contributing unnecessarily to increasing inequality. It is important to consider as positive aspect the fact that in China virtually all peasants have land. Contrary to the current situations, the land should used as a good instrument to get appropriate gains inside the market system.
The right way would be, using the land either as collateral for borrowing, or could be sold to provide some capital before migrants moved to the city, then it would have been helping those who were in the poorer part of the income distribution. Unfortunately, the administrative way, rather than market-based, conversion of land is reducing the value of the main asset held by the poor.
Figure 5
Source: World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/country/china
It is known that during the pre-reform, China had a system that completely restricted people’s mobility, and that system has only been slowly reformed until now. Where each person has a registration (hukou) in either a rural area or an urban area, and cannot change the hukou without the permission of the receiving jurisdiction.
Actually, Chinese cities basically give registration to skilled people, who have offers of employment, however have generally been reluctant to provide registration to migrants from the countryside. Nonetheless, these migrants are needed for economic development, and large numbers have in fact migrated.
There are hundreds of millions rural residents who spend many months working in urban areas, many of them fall into the category of “floating population”. Although these people have for all practical purposes moved to a city, they do not have official registration. However, beyond the floating population, there are a small group of people who have left rural areas and obtained urban hukous.
Although there is a significant rural-urban migration in China, it seems likely that the hukou system has resulted in less migration than otherwise would have occurred. There are several pieces of evidence to support this view. Mainly, the gap in per capita income between rural and urban areas widened during the reform period, which is a very high gap by international standards.
Another evidence, is the fact that manufacturing wages have risen sharply in recent years, at double-digit rates, so that China now has considerably higher wages than much of the rest of developing Asia countries such as India, Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh and so on. It is hard to imagine that manufacturing wages would have risen so rapidly if there had not been such controls on labor migration.
Recent studies focusing on migrants have shown that it is difficult for them to bring their entire families to live in the cities, put their children in school, and obtain healthcare. Although it is not directly related with Hukou system, the growth of the urban population must have been slowed down by these restrictions.
In the figure 5 we can see that urbanization have gone on. Thus, the urban share of China’s population has risen from 20% to 40% during the course of economic reform. Due to that the hukou system has slowed and distorted urbanization. The system has likely contributed to inequality by limiting the opportunities of the relatively poor rural population to move to better-paying employment.
In conclusion, according to scholars, the kind of Hukou System designed in China would be the main explanation of the lack of convergence between rural and urban income. Because, there had been restrictions for mobility the urban-rural gap in China would be higher than other countries where there would not be these kind of restrictions.
C. Public services
Nowadays, public services are consider as ones of the most powerful instrument to face social problems such as inequalities. The appropriate way is through the enable of human capital, which allowed people free mobility with an adequate and enough skills.
The main problem for China is the high degree of decentralization. Thus, the central government would not have the enough resources to invest in public services, while the richest regions are able to invest greater resource, at the same time that the poorest regions are not able to afford the required necessities to reduce inequalities.
It has been noted that one important effect of market reform in China was to dramatically increase the return to education. This basically would be a positive advantage and good opportunities for skilled people. At the same time, it creates a powerful incentive for families to increase the education of their children.
However, in China there needs to be strong public services for education and health, thus as reasonably fair access to the system. Otherwise, inequality become self-perpetuating, because only high-income people can educate their children, then that group would remain as a privileged, high-income group permanently.
Unfortunately, China is at some risk of falling into this trap, although China is much more decentralized than most countries in the world, but the structure of government and some unusual expenditure assignments give rise to spending pattern. Functions such as social security or justice are largely decentralized in China.
This decentralization make fiscal disparities among subnational governments are larger in China than most countries. These disparities have emerged alongside a growing disparity in economic strength among the provinces. Thus, the ratio of per capita GDP of the richest to poorest province grew considerably. As consequence, in China, the richest province has more than times the per capita social public spending than the poorest province.
As a result of the differences in public spending it is translated into differences in social outcomes. For example, the differences across provinces about infant survival rate, had emerged to a very sharp difference, closely related to the province’s income level. The same situation could be found fo other indicator such as the high-school enrollment rate, which was nearing 100% in the wealthier provinces while still very low in poor provinces.
Poor areas have very little tax collection and hence cannot fund decent basic education and health care. For reasons of both national efficiency and equity, it would make sense for the State to ensure that everyone in China has good basic education and health care, so that when people move they come with a solid foundation of human capital.
Due to China’s highly decentralized fiscal system, in poorest local government there are not having adequate resources to fund basic social services. It is known that in China poor households either forego treatment or face devastating financial consequences. According to some studies, many poor households identified a large health care expenditure as the reason that they were in poverty.
The situation in education is similar. For a family living just at the dollar-a-day poverty line, would not have enough resources for sending children to school. Not surprisingly, then, enrollment rates are relatively low in poor areas and for poor families.
4. Conclusions and recommendation
The first conclusion is that the inequality in China is due mainly to inter-groups effects. Although we can find inequalities inside rural sector and urban sector, it is surprising that there is a big different between the incomes of these two groups. As consequence the national inequality is bigger than any of this group individually.
The second conclusion is about the necessity of exchange rate appreciation combined with more social spending, as the most recommend macro policy able to help address China’s disparities. It is due to that currently the Chinese economy is rising nearly 10% annually. Then it is necessary to cool off the economy first, through appreciation, and only after that it is possible to improve considerable social spending. It is recommend this expenditures, especially in favor of rural sector and focusing in a set of social egalitarian policies able to improve skills and human capital such as education and health system. It is expected also that the appreciation would make, internally, Chinese people as a whole wealthier as well as encourage internal consumption.
The third conclusion is to improve the implementation of capitalism in the rural areas, where the population could be able to use their land as asses to get enough money of lending in order to get a base of capital or human capital to be prepare for any mobility. Moreover, there should be eliminated, gradually, all kind of restrictions of mobility between rural and urban sector. In this manner, all kind of rural-urban gad also would disappear automatically.
The four and final conclusion in about the necessity of ability of the central government to get desire results in the supplying of public services such education and health system. Nowadays, these public services, not only are acknowledge as the best ways to improve human capital, but also as the best instrument to face inequalities. Thus, the most urgently lack of access to these services, specially for poorest regions would be reduced.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Dwayne, Loren Brandt, John Giles and Sangui Wang (2004), “Income Inequality During China’s Economic Transition”, Prepared for the forthcoming volume, China’s Economic Transition: Origins, Mechanisms, and Consequences, edited by Loren Brandt and Thomas Rawski.
Blecher, Marc and Orbelin College (2005), “Inequality and Capitalism in China”, Paper prepared for the American Political Science Association Task Force Conference on Inequality and Difference in the Third World, June 2005.
Cornea, ed., (2003), “Inequality, Growth and Poverty in an Era of Liberalization and
Dollar, David (2007), “Poverty, inequality and social disparities during China’s economic reform”, World Bank Country Director, China, April 2007.
Dollar, David R., Wei, Shang-Jin (2006), “Das Wasted Kapital”, IMF Working Paper.
Eastman, R. and M. Lipton (2004), “Rural and Urban Income Inequality and Poverty: Does Convergence between Sectors Offset Divergence within Them?” in G. A.
Globalization”, Oxford U. Press, 112-141.
http://www.paris-jourdan.ens.fr/ydepot/semin/texte0506/MUR2005WOR.pdf
Huang, Jr-Tsung, Chun-Chien Kuo and An-Pang Kao (2003), “The inequality of Regional Economic Development in China between 1991 and 2001”, Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3, September, pp. 273–285.
Khan, Azizur Rahman, and Carl Riskin (2001), “Inequality and Poverty in China in the Age of Globalization”, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Lardy, Nicholas R. (2002), “The Economic Future of China”, Available at http://www.asiasociety.org/speeches/lardy.html.
Life Expectancy, and Income: a Multi-Dimensional Approach”,
Morrisson, Christian, Murtin, Fabrice (2005), “The World Distribution of Human Capital,
Ravallion, Martin, and Shaohua Chen (2005), “China’s (Uneven) Progress Against Poverty”, Journal of Development Economics.
Rawski, Thomas G. (1994), “Chinese Industrial Reform: Accomplishments, Prospects, and Implications”, The American Economic Review 84(2), 271-275.
No comments:
Post a Comment