THANKS to apartheid, broken job markets and monopolistic mining, South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. The top 10% of households pocketed 58% of the income in 2008, according to researchers at the University of Cape Town. The country’s Gini coefficient, which measures inequality on a scale of 0 to 1, was 0.7.

But South Africa’s inequality may soon be equalled by an unexpected rival: communist China. According to a new survey, the top tenth of Chinese households took home 57% of the income in 2010. The country’s Gini coefficient was 0.61, far higher than previous estimates (which ranged from 0.41 to 0.48).

Click here for the full story.