Govt announces first public salary change since 2003

Chinese authorities confirmed on Monday that salaries will be adjusted for civil servants and employees of public institutions, triggering public debate as to whether the plan will help curb corruption.

The State Council has distributed three salary adjustment plans to the related departments covering civil servants, employees at public institutions, and retired public sector employees, Hu Xiaoyi, vice-minister of the Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security, said during a press conference on Monday.

Hu did not elaborate on the plans or reveal whether the salary of public sector employees will be increased.

Earlier media reports said that authorities plan to raise the salaries of civil servants at the "grass-roots" level to "State" level. Basic salaries for State level officials will increase from 7,020 yuan ($1,128) per month to 11,385 yuan, while salaries for grass-roots civil servants will increase from 630 yuan to 1,320 yuan, according to a document obtained by the Hong Kong-based newspaper Wen Wei Po.

It added that the plan was implemented in October 2014, and that civil servant salaries will be adjusted every one or two years in the future.

Previously, Chinese civil servants' salary had not been adjusted since 2003.

"Civil servants cannot maintain a decent life with their current salary. Many grass-roots civil servants earn around 1,000 yuan per month," Hu Xingdou, a professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology, told the Global Times Monday.

He said that with the recent sweeping anti-graft campaign, many civil servants' off-the-book income has decreased dramatically.

China announced pension reform in early January that required civil servants to pay 8 percent of their monthly salary into a pension fund.

Even if the salary increase was confirmed, an increase of several hundred yuan to the salary of grass-roots civil servants would not greatly change their lives, Hu added.

The average annual salary of a civil servant was 46,207 yuan in 2012, far below employees in the finance sector or some State-owned enterprises, according to a survey conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in April 2014.

"Civil servants' low salaries lead to corruption, but raising their salary does not necessarily mean corruption will disappear," Hu said, adding that curbing corruption requires a complete anti-graft legal system, as well as more transparency in government finances, officials' incomes, and supervision by the public.