Rate of wage hikes slows as does GDP

Workers in more developed areas such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong received double digit wages increases last year although the growth rate of their pay declined slightly, according to chinanews.com Tuesday.

The news portal gathered information from 23 provincial and municipal-level statistics bureaus, which had released average salary information in 2011. It found that workers in Fujian Province had the biggest pay increases at 19.4 percent. Their wages also had the fastest growth rate, which was 5.5 percentages points higher than in 2010.

Meanwhile workers in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region managed only an average 1.54 percent wage increase, as the growth rate in their pay declined by 11 percentage points. Last year, the average wages in the region increased by 12.5 percent.

Workers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong Province were among those in 15 cities and provinces where average salaries grew at a slower pace last year than they did in 2010, according to chinanews.com.

The average salary of workers in Beijing grew by 11.2 percent in 2011, and by 13 percent in 2010, registering a decline in the year-on-year growth rate of wages of 1.8 percentage.

The average salary in Shanghai grew by 11.4 percent in 2011, which was 2 percentages points lower than in 2010. In Guangdong, average salaries grew by 6.3 percent, which was 4.7 percentages points lower than in 2010.

The growth rate of wages in some less developed areas last year was better than in many more developed urban areas.

"People in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong already have much higher salaries than people in less developed areas so the income gap is not shrinking," Xu Guoxiang, director of Research Center for Applied Statistics at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times.

Chinese urban workers' average annual salary grew by 8.5 percent, reaching 42,452 yuan ($6668.7) last year, for a grow rate that was 1.5 percentage points lower than in 2010.