Kang Dian, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of New China Life Insurance Co. Ltd., ranked No. 1 on a list of highest-paid CEOs of listed Chinese central state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in 2013, according to the latest ranking released by Economic Weekly.

The list was compiled based on the 2013 annual reports of listed central SOEs. A total of 167 CEOs released their annual salaries, accounting for 64.48 percent of the total number of companies. Of these 167 CEOs, 84 received an official salary of zero yuan.

The average salary for the other 83 CEOs was 846,300 yuan (US$137,608). CEOs in the insurance, banking, securities and real estate industries top the list, and eight of the ten CEOs in this top 10 list are employed in these four industries.

Some CEOs took high salaries while their companies suffered big losses. Yang Jian, director of the Financial Information Center of Renmin University of China, said that due to defects in the system, some senior officers earned high salaries while their companies kept losing.

   Li Changjin

Company: China Railway Group Ltd.

Annual salary: 1.37 million yuan (US$222,762)

Profit of company: 9.4 billion yuan (US$1.53 billion)