Chinese Lives

A very widely-discussed post in TianYa, the most popular discuss board in China.

http://www.tianya.cn/new/publicforum/Content.asp?
strItem=news&idArticle=88617

“Chinese industry workers are facing unprecedented financial pressures, with living expenses and housing cost rocket up. One freelance economic writer named Xue Yong, claims that government should raise pay levels for them.

His article was cited by a forum member under the topic of how much Chinese industry workers should be paid. First of all, he brought it on table that compared with workers in the west, Chinese factory workers earned too mean salary. Based on figures of GDP, he suggested that a monthly income about 3246RMB(405$) plus affordable family medical insurance should be offered to them.

He also pointed out that the official figures on workers’ pay situation was not precise. For instance, Chinese workers officially earn 1726RMB every month. In fact, the real pay figure varied according to factory profits and different economic regions. Though workers in big cities and special regions were paid higher than the in-land smaller factory workers, both felt great pressure from housing, education and medical bills. Xue’s article expressed great sympathy to workers, and wish they could live a better life if their pay get promoted nationally.”

Some responders doubt whether 3246 is out of scientific calculation because apparantly it is based on taking the whole GDP as workers’ contribution. If 500 million industry workers were paid that much, it would cost half the GDP.

Some comments claim that income as an economic phenomenon, should be decided by the market rather than government. Also, they imply the job is paid concerning training cost and product values; therefore workers’ pay is less competitive compared with other more knowledge demanding jobs.

In this topic, you can find speakers are calm when dealing with this sensitive issue. They agree that 50 million farmers and 10 million farmer-workers more urgently need attention and help from government. Most of farmers and farmer-workers live on themselves, and receive far less welfare benefit from society, while they feed the whole nation.

In all, most speakers agree that government should take more responsibility in citizen’s welfare by providing a lawful insurance and retirement benefit system. When a real market order is set up, workers’ pay will be regulated by the market and the problem solved.