China has recorded its widest wealth gap since economic reforms began in 1978 threatening the social stability of the country, say experts.

The average annual income in China’s cities stood at 17,175 yuan (£1,685) last year, more than three times the average income of 5,153 yuan in the countryside, National Bureau of Statistics says. This is the widest disparity for more than three decades, the China daily reported.

The increasing split between prosperous cities and the vast interior is a ‘serious threat to social stability’ of the country, according to officials in Beijing who concede that the spate of recent public protests reflected growing social inequality in the country.

‘There has been an increasing number of mass disturbances occurring in recent years related to the yawning gap between the rich and the poor’, Yan Ye, a professor at the North China Institute of Science and Technology, is quoted as saying in a local media desptach.

Elaborating, the professor points out that while more than half of China’s population lives in rural areas they share less than 12 per cent of the country’s wealth. ‘There is no province that meets international minimum wage standards, but that many managers in state-owned companies have enormous incomes’, he remarked.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is also perturbed by the development. Because, he said at the weekend that it was ‘unfair if a society’s wealth is only in the hands of a few people. In that case, the society is doomed to instability’.

The Chinese Daily quoted researchers as cautioning that the wealth gap would keep growing.

‘I am afraid the income gap will continue to expand as the country focuses its efforts on urban sprawl, rather than rural development’, said Song Hongyuan, the director of the Research Centre for the Rural Economy in the Ministry of Agriculture.