Despite the news that all Chinese employees have seen their
salaries increase in double digits on average annually in the past
few years, most of them don't feel they've had a rise in salary at
all.
The People's Daily said in a report on Tuesday that
Chinese workers' average wages increased to 21,001 yuan in 2006
from 12,422 yuan in 2002. The salary increase had an annual growth
rate of 12 percent, which was the fastest-growing period of time
since China's reform and open-up 30 years ago.
This report was followed by more than 6,000 comments on a
Chinese portal website a few hours after it was published. Most of
the netizens were skeptical about the credibility of the figures,
saying they were "true lies"; others complained the numbers don't
tell the real situation.
Their comments were similar to a survey conducted last month by
a magazine run by People's Daily, in which 96.5 percent of
respondents felt "discontent with their current incomes".
A report in China Economic Times last week may explain the
disparity in opinions. It said 8.33 million staff working in
electricity, telecommunication, petroleum, finance, insurance and
other major State-controlled industries, or eight percent of all
the employed in China, earned 55 percent of the total salaries paid
in 2005. The rest, 92 percent of employees must be those who
disagree that their salary rose, Xinhua news agency columnist Guo
Songmin said.
Guo says there is an increasing income gap between management
and their employees in corporations and factories, even in the
above monopoly companies. Media have reported telephone technicians
with Beijing Telecom were paid 700 or 800 yuan per month,
approaching the bottom salary in 2006 in Beijing which was 640 yuan
per month, while their managers made 15 times that amount, or even
30-fold.
Guo said it was an open secret that quite a few private-owned
enterprises pay the lowest salary according to local regulations as
the highest pay in their factories.
He added that the alleged salary hike, which hasn't benefited
most ordinary people, doesn't help build a fair and harmonious
society.
"That news only makes the wealth gap in society more distinct,
which is still growing quickly," a web user claimed in a
posting.
Another complained that even though salaries were increasing,
they did not catch up to the even higher cost of living in Chinese
big cities. The consumer price index in the country hit a two-year
high of 3.4 percent in May, with food prices including pork
skyrocketing, and buoyant property prices in large cities have
become further out of areach in terms of affordability for the
average Chinese.
(China Daily July 5, 2007)