BEIJING - Urban and rural income surveys will be standardized amid plans to publish an internationally accepted measure of how wealth is distributed, a leading statistician said.

"The nationwide survey, which will provide basic data for China's Gini coefficient calculation, will cover about 140,000 urban and rural households, and the gathering and use of data will conform to international standards," Xie Hongguang, deputy chief of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said.

The integrated urban-rural income data is scheduled to be published in 2013 to pave the way for the publication of a national Gini coefficient that can measure income inequality, Xie said.