Recently, the Palace Museum in Beijing transformed one of the palaces in the Forbidden City, which was rebuilt in 2000 after a fire burned it down in 1923, into a private club for the wealthy. According to rumors, membership fees reached 1 million yuan. Palace Museum officials have denied the outrageous price, but it has not stopped people from expressing indignation at yet another example of a privileged class taking from the public.

The Forbidden City, as an ancient heritage, belongs to all people. The Palace Museum, as an institution funded by the state – and therefore by taxpayers – should serve all people, rather than a certain privileged group. If the rumors are true that the Palace Museum is using a public facility to earn money, it is going against both the law and ethics.

The new privileged class accounts for 0.4 percent of the population but owns nearly 70 percent of the country's wealth. According to Zheng Yongnian, a scholar in Singapore, the so called middle class and the corresponding olive-shaped society have not formed in China, causing numerous social problems, such as a widening gap between the poor and the rich, more pressures on the lower classes and the increasing class conflicts.

The Palace Museum incident is not the first time that the new privileged class has eroded public interests. Those in the class take hold of the best public sources that should be equally available to everyone. For instance, children from privileged families have far better access to the best public education, from kindergarten to university. The elite also enjoy much better health care services from public hospitals. There are even reports about farms that grow food specifically for them to ensure they have healthy food, and their large houses and golf courses all take up valuable space while most people have no room to live because of soaring housing prices.

This encroachment of public interests by the privileged class has caused many problems. But what is the most dangerous is their influence on policy-making and enforcement of policies. They maximize their own interests at the cost of the interests of other members in society, which will worsen class conflicts and cause further social instability. The government must make more efficient measures to promote social equality and narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.

Gong Wen is a visiting scholar at the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.