The average city dweller received an income last year that was 3.33 times larger than that of his compatriot in the countryside, the China Youth Daily said, citing Agriculture Minister Sun Zhengcai. In 2006, the figure was 3.28.

"Especially this year, a growing number of factors make for an uncertain income outlook for farmers," Sun was quoted as saying. "It will be rather difficult to achieve speedy growth in farm incomes."

The income gap affects up to 800 million Chinese considered as living in the countryside.

Given the huge numbers, alleviating the plight of the farmers is an urgent task for the Chinese government, argued Hu Xingdou, an economist with the Beijing Institute of Technology.

"China has to narrow the disparity between rural and urban areas, not just because it wants to be nice to the farmers but more importantly because it has no other choice in terms of social development," he said.

"Otherwise, the disparity ... will have a huge impact on social stability in the future. An unfair society will see rising crime rates."

The current generation of leaders, in power since late 2002, have made it a top priority to increase equality in society, with a focus on the divide between the urban and the rural population, in part to avoid social unrest.

"We will develop more channels to increase rural incomes," Premier Wen Jiabao said in his key annual address to parliament in March, as he promised increased spending on the agriculture sector.

This comes on top of other efforts earlier this decade, such as the abolition of the agricultural tax, which had existed in one form or another for 2,600 years.

But despite the official steps, the income gap between urban and rural areas has been growing steadily over the past years, official data shows.

In 2000, the average urban income was 2.79 times larger than the average rural income, up from a post-reform low of 1.71 in 1984.

The growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in Chinese society is to a large extent the result of the iron laws of economics, observers argued.

"The main reason is that efficiency in China's agricultural sector is still relatively low, considerably lower than in the industrial sector," said Ren Yuan, a social scientist with Shanghai's Fudan University.

"Besides, the surplus population is still very large in the countryside, and that of course drags per capita income down," he said.

But the existing regulations do little to improve the situation, by putting hurdles in the way of farmers going to the cities in search for jobs, for instance, according to analysts.

In addition, the lack of organised labour in the countryside means farmers have no collective bargaining power that could help them get better prices for their products, they argued.

"The rural dwellers have no rights of migration or economic rights. If this situation is not changed, their income cannot be increased and the disparity will continue to widen," said Hu, the Beijing-based scholar.

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