To follow up on my earlier post regarding how much Chinese people earn, the People’s Daily recently published an article with salary data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics. The major points:
- ¥71,874, Shanghai’s average annal salary, is the highest in the country.
- ¥65,683, Beijing’s average annual salary, is the second highest.
- ¥37,147 was the average annual salary in China.
Most interesting was a breakdown in salaries based upon profession:
In regards to various industries, the top three industries with the highest annual average salary per capita are the financial services industry, which has an average of 80,772 yuan or 2.2 times the national average level, followed by the information transmission, computer services and software industry, with an average salary of 66,598 yuan or 1.8 times the national average level, and the scientific research, technical service and geological prospecting industry, with an average salary of 57,316 yuan or 1.5 times the national average level.
The article makes no mention of whether or not the third figure is inclusive or exclusive of earnings by peasants. A more useful number for comparison would be the average wage earned by professionals. However, these numbers can/do help to disprove some of the more “optimistic” claims made in job ads; clearly a salary of ¥5,000/month is not “twice as much as the locals make”.
