Official Chinese wage figures belie
reality By Olivia Chung
HONG KONG - China's recent report of a 12%
average annual boost in employee wages from 2002
to 2006 has sparked fierce Internet debate and
commentary, with many netizens questioning the
accuracy of the figures.
According to the
Chinese media, both the total income and average
wage for employees recorded double-digit growth
between 2002 and 2006. The growth rates are higher
than the same rates of the country's gross
domestic product and per capita GDP
during
those years.
The average annual GDP growth
in 2002-06 was 10.3%, while per capita GDP growth
was 9.2% due to the population increase. The total
wages for employees in China reached 2.34 trillion
yuan in 2006 from 1.32 trillion yuan (US$309
million) in 2002 (minus inflation), according to
the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The
average annual wage of an employee reached 21,001
yuan in 2006, up 70% by real terms from 12,422
yuan in 2002, after deducting price hikes.
While the NBS undoubtedly thought that
Chinese wage earners would cheer the figures, many
saw the official statistics as "misleading" - a
polite word for "distorted". Some netizens posted
views on mainland chat sites to vent their anger
and to point out that the figures distorted the
fact that their pay increases did not catch up
with price hikes - hence their income, in real
terms, has dropped.
"Property prices are
rising, consumer prices and stocks are rising too,
but definitely not wages! In fact, who are these
employees? Whose wages are rising?" said a
netizen.
"Before my pay raise, I could buy
120 kilograms of pork with my monthly salary.
After I got a pay increment half a year ago, now I
can only buy 90kg of pork! So who says [our
incomes] are rising?" said another netizen.
"The employee wages are based on the
calculations by the civil servants? How come the
wages for private enterprise employees are not
included? Most of the employees in enterprises
earn slightly more than 1,000 yuan [a month]; it
would be great if they really earned what the
statistics calculated," said a third.
"Increased wages only happen among senior
white-collar employees, but never for public
citizens. Considering inflation, how can we live
with the salary that we are earning?" said
another.
In case some think the anonymous
Internet postings did not have weight, a recent
survey by the state-owned People's Tribune
magazine is more (and official) proof that people
are dissatisfied with their salaries.
The
phone survey conducted by the magazine polled
about 1,000 people last month, and 96.5% of the
respondents said they were not satisfied with
their salaries.
Social critic Tong Dahuan
called the government figures "false and
misleading" and added that apart from what he
called "three new mountains" - poor
social-security, public-health and education
systems - on people's backs, the sharp recent
increases in pork, grain and egg prices have put
additional pressure on China's working and middle
class.
"The false or misleading figures
provided ... can't bring comfort to people amid
concerns over rising inflation," Tong said. "On
the contrary, the figures actually might distort
any efforts by Chinese authorities to help relieve
people's burdens," he said, adding that figures
provided by global organizations - such the World
Bank - serve as more reliable sources of
information.
For instance, according to a
World Bank report published in March, the main
cause of China's sluggish domestic consumption
rates is the fact that average salary levels have
not increased at the same rate as the fast-growing
economy.
According to Mercer Investment
Consulting, one of the world's largest investment
consulting firms, salaries rose by an average of
7.5% a year in China between 2001 and 2005
compared with 11.5% in India.
Social
commentator Guo Songmin, who writes a highly
regarded weblog on legal issues, said the debate
over salaries expresses dissatisfaction with the
Chinese government's practice of publishing
"meaningless figures" that paint a seemingly rosy
picture that ignores reality, as well as the
concerns and unhappiness of average citizens. He
agreed that there is a large disparity in wages -
with most pay increases given to senior
white-collar managers and staffers in the large
state-owned monopolies such as the tobacco, power,
finance and insurance industries.
"Based
on statistics, China's monopoly sectors ... have
8.33 million employees, which account for only 8%
of all employees .. but the total amount of their
income and their gray income, which is in the form
of housing allowances, subsidies and bonuses,
represents 55% of the total income of all
employees in China," Guo said. "Obviously the
monopolies are like a catch-basin, which drains
most of the state pay increases."
Guo said
there is even a widening income gap between
management level and blue-collar workers within
the monopolies, with the former earning up to 30
times as much as those at the bottom.
"Even in some monopoly industries such as
Beijing Netcom, a China Netcom subsidiary, and
Beijing Telecom, the wholly owned subsidiary of
the country's largest fixed-line
telecommunications operator China Telecom, workers
at the bottom earn between 700 and 800 yuan
[monthly], slightly higher than the minimum wage
of 640 yuan in Beijing as of July last year," he
said.
He said Beijing should clarify
misleading statistics that attempt to cover up
real social problems.
According to an
official state yearbook released last December,
the country's current Gini coefficient - a measure
of inequality in income distribution - stands at
0.496, up 2.6 percentage points from the year
before. A coefficient higher than 0.4 is
considered a warning sign of social unrest.
Wang Xiaoguang, an economist with the
Macroeconomic Research Institute, affiliated with
the National Development and Reform Commission
(NDRC), also agreed that the higher wages don't
mean a higher standard of living for average
Chinese, especially with the steady rise of
property prices and growing inflation.
China's Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose
3.4% in May over the same period last year, the
highest inflation rate in 27 months. It was led by
increases in prices for food prices, including
pork and eggs. Food prices, which make up a third
of the CPI, rose 8.3% year on year in May.
Property prices in 70 of China's large and
medium-sized cities rose 6.4% in May from a year
earlier, faster than the 5.4% growth in April,
according to the NDRC.
Olivia
Chung is a senior Asia Times Online
reporter.
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