The average income for people working in the State sector rose by 16 per cent
year on year to reach 5,000 yuan (US$630) for the first quarter of the year.
Meanwhile, the average income for the sector including employees working in
governments, public-funded institutions and all companies (both private and
State-owned) rose by 15 per cent year on year to reach 4,700 yuan (US$590) for
the first three months of the year.
That was a five-year record, the National Bureau of Statistics said on its
website on Friday.
There were more than 109 million people working in governments, public-funded
institutions and State-owned/private companies last year.
For collective enterprises which are often set up with both private and
public cash the average income for the three-month period rose by 15 per cent to
2,800 yuan (US$350).
Income growth averaged about 13 per cent in other sectors. There was no
information about migrant workers' incomes in the report.
"It is noticeable that as China's economy booms, incomes for this group of
urbanites are growing fast," said Zhuang Jian, a senior economist with the
Beijing office of the Asian Development Bank.
He added that income hikes could help foster domestic spending and reduce the
economy's heavy reliance on exports and fixed-asset investment.
But other experts warned that ordinary people, especially migrant workers,
were still being poorly paid.
In the manufacturing sector, pay growth lagged behind GDP growth by about 5
per cent per year between 1998 and 2003, said Su Hainan, director of the Labour
Salary Institute under the Ministry of Labour and Social Security. In some
coastal areas, factories do not even have enough workers because of the low pay
for migrant workers, he added.
Figures from the statistics bureau also showed that rural residents' average
net income rose by 11 per cent to 1,100 yuan (US$140) for the first three months
of the year.
Experts said the urban-rural income gap would keep growing.
According to the United Nations, Shanghai residents enjoy a standard of
living on par with people in Portugal. Yet living standards in some of the most
remote parts of China are closer to those in some poor African countries.
Incomes of laid-off workers have also dropped, but Xu Fengxian, a researcher
at the Institute of Economics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said
urbanites' disposable income was "enjoying the best period for years. The
booming economy is fostering the rise of residents' incomes."
According to a survey released by the National Bureau of Statistics on
Thursday of 56,000 urban families, per capita disposable income rose by 12 per
cent in the first quarter, reaching 3,300 yuan (US$410).
Inflation-adjusted, that was a rise of 10.8 per cent, up 2.2 percentage
points over the same period last year.
But Hao Jinmin, an employee at the Beijing-based National Library of China,
said although people earn more, the cost of many things, from vegetables to
houses, is rising.
(China Daily 04/29/2006 page1)
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