The folks over at the Economist have set up a nifty tool that compares the GDPs of China’s provinces to the GDPs of other countries.  You can check out both the GDP and the GDP-per-capita, and the results can be rather jarring.  For all the talk of China’s economic boom, the benefits seem to be spread rather thinly. 

While Hong Kong and Macau have the GDP-per-capita of Singapore and Qatar respectively, rural provinces are more akin to Namibia, Angola, Guatemala, and impoverished countries.  Will this income inequality lead to civil unrest?  China may claim that the trade imbalance isn’t hurting our economy, but what will happen when inflation hits the poorest parts of their country?