Job Discussion Forums

[Aislinge]

I have read a lot about what pay is good pay in China and have had read several different answers on this forum. I just saw a NOVA program on Detroit Public Television entitled �World In Balance: China Revs Up.� Some of the data they quote is as new as 2004. They showed a General Motors Plant in Shanghai and stated that the workers on the line made 1,000 yuan per month. These guys are the equivalent of the United Auto Workers in North America.

They also said that a new lower level domestic Chinese VW was 120,000 yuan new. Not that I will be buying a car in China, but that is a lot of yuan when the salaries offered at the universities range from 4000-6000 yuan.

I am not saying that 1000 yuan per month is good or bad pay but one can use it as a benchmark of sorts as one can do with the price of vehicles.

I have also been talking to some international students here from China and it appears that one will find the local price and then one will be offered the [b]special price[/b] just for foreigners. I am sure that I will be experiencing all of this soon enough.

[kev7161]

1000 yuan for month is not good pay. China and its citizens are moving into the 21st century. A lot of China is no longer a "3rd world country" (but always a developing country). Yes, a thrifty Chinese person can make 1000 rmb go a long way, but why should they have to? When auto factory workers in the US (the few that remain) are earning upwards to $20.00 an hour or more, it's ridiculous that auto manufacturers can build their factories here, pollute the surrounding environment, and pay the Chinese workers peanuts (I know, I know, it's a step up for many of these workers, but it's still ridiculous). Okay, so don't pay the equivalent of $20.00 an hour - - how about $5.00 an hour? For a 40 hour week, that would equal $200. Multiply by 4 weeks and that is $800 a month x 8.22 = 6576rmb!!! Not only are the foreign automakers cutting their labor costs by 75% or more, but the Chinese workers could live like kings on that salary (and you just know there is no such thing as insurance or overtime pay here!). 6500 rmb is just a fraction of ONE CAR sold. If you equate one car sold every month to every employee, that's still a helluva profit margin.

It's similar to teachers (foreign and Chinese alike). If each student is paying 100rmb per hour and you have 15 students in a class, then the school is making 1500rmb each hour (and this is being conservative - I had approx. 30 students per class this year and was earning roughly 65 to 80 per hour, depending on the semester). If they are paying you 100rmb an hour, then they are profiting 1400rmb per hour (before other expenses, naturally). Someone out there is still getting a lot of that money.

Some day the Chinese laborers will see the light and I hope I'm around to see that day.

[tw]

[tw]

Kev, kev, kev. Why do you think so many name brands say "Made in China"? It's the lower labour cost. By your formula, employers would have to pay higher wages and as such, we the consumers would have to pay even more for those cheap made-in-China products we have grown to love in the West. Are you willing to pay two or three times more for your next pair of runners? Even worse, would you like to see more child labour in the world when more companies move their production from China to India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh? But I know what you are trying to say. The problem is, Chinese-made cars, though are sold in the West, are barely a drop in the market's bucket.

[Roger]

GM pays their blue-collar labourers an adequate pay by local standards; what that report failed to mention is that these labourers mostly are migrant workers that are stacked 6 to ten to a dormitory and get free food as well. Thus 1000 is their take-home pay that they share out with their dependants.
I personally know of factories in Guangdong that pay 600 to 800 only; these workers have to put in 2 or more hours overtime a day, and thus make a few hundred extra a month.
Fair or not that's not the question. FOr these workers this is a much better life than sloughing it on their shrinking farmland.

Another point to consider is that China is in approximately the same phase as Britain was in the 18th century after the Industrial Revolution came under way. We are witnessing the reemrgence of a multilayered, class-conscious society after half a century of pseudo-egalitarianism.
This also means there are VAST chasms separating the lifestyles and comfort levels of the haves and the have-nots. The rich have to pay through their noses to acquire status symbols such as cars and homes, and see how they are stampeding now to acquire them!
As a consequence they are squeezing their less-fortunate compatriots out of the race; the rich live like the richest Westerners do, the poor live like the poor in Africa. Workers that have a job are somewhere in the lower middle. They get their basic needs met, and some manage to buy one of those luxury objects called "cellphone". Twenty years before it would be a BIKE! To buy a bike a worker would put in up to ten years and save a few kuai a month. To buy a motorcycle now is also within a worker's possibilities. But beyond that - no!
Cars' prices are coming down tumbling though their price levels are still much higher than in the West. The car manufacturers are raking in huge profits, but competition is hotting up and some are being forced out. Most are JVs anyway. JVs typically import up to 35% of the cars' components, which adds to the cars' prices (as the government slaps an import duty on the parts shipped in; until 2000, an imported car cost you 110% import duty!).
We have therefore ga two-tiered society - those who slave their lives away for the tiny elite that creams everything off. The latter can holiday abroad, the former scrounges and scrapes by, saving enough to visit their relatibves once a year.

Labour costs may be low, but they are slowly beginning to climb (Guangdong for instance has been experiencing a blue-collar labour shortage since 2004). And here is the most daunting challenge for the government: those workers have virtually no future since they no longer have iron-rice-bowl jobs; thus they can be laid off (and they do get laid off) at any time, and then they inevitably fall on hard times.
The government will have to strengthen the social benefits of the lower classes, especially their medicare, old-age pensions (with only one child to one couple there aren't going to be enough providers of funds to old people by the time these workers can no longer work in factories!).

From this perspective, our teacher salaries are quasi-middle class!

[YankeeDoodleDandy]

I teach 16 hours a week plus 3 office hours and a mandatory English Corner for 4500 RMB per month. I also help students with their speeches for the CCTV speech competition as well as serve as a judge or question master three or four evenings per semester. In addition to this I have also spent several hours visiting classrooms for non-English majors and giving a talk on learning a second language and studying to pass a variety of exams,such as the CET-4 and CET-6.Passing these exams to me is not a true measure of fluency. I make 4500 RMB per month. In Hefei the salaries range from secretaries who can earn as little as 400 to 600 per month for a 42 hour work week and 6 days. 1000 per month at the Industrial Commercial Cank of China as a teller. She is a university graduate with a degree in finance. 600 per month for working at the Holiday Inn in their bakery shop, 5 days a week and a 40 hour week. This person is also a university graduate. A part-time job at McDonald's can net you 4 to 5 RMB per hour.Passing out fliers in front of a store you can earn 30 per day. I have taught some Oral classes at fifferent training schools and the rates seem to be between 10 and 20 RMB per 50 minute class, with each class lasting 3 hours. For this I was paid between 62 and 100 RMB per hour. There were always between 15 to 24 students per class. Last some I did some one on one tutoring to university students and I was paid 100 per hour. I don't know what rates the school charged the students.

[kev7161]

[tw]

[Roger]

We are witnessing a transformation, and transformations produce dislocations.
I said a 1000-kuai salary is comparatively desirable package for a Chinese country hick. Even bank tellers have to make to on such pay; in fact lots of white-collar workers have to, including teachers.

Think Think of how their BUREAUCRATS get affected by these changes.
When I went to court for my divorce my lawyer was paid his dues by his company; I reckon he makes RMB 10'000 (that's low for lawyers these days).
I knew accountants back in 1997 that made as much.
But I digress...

The JUDGE in my case made RMB 3000...
Just think about this huge discrepancy!
Think of the hundreds of thousands of cops that live on such salaries, think of the taxmen, the Immigration officiers, the registrars, hospital staffsbus drivers...


But here we are, making that much in one third the time they put in week.
Don't you think our presence - and our income levels - are part of this iniquity?

[KES]

Roger wrote: "The JUDGE in my case made RMB 3000...
Just think about this huge discrepancy!
Think of the hundreds of thousands of cops that live on such salaries, think of the taxmen, the Immigration officiers, the registrars, hospital staffsbus drivers... "

Its is amazing. Even more amazing how they can buy those shiny new black cars, drop tens or hundreds of thousands at gambling tables, own foreign property and send their children abroad to study and even subsidize KTV. All on 3000 or less.

Clearly we have something to learn from them about money management.

[william wallace]

Nothing to say.

[tw]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

Kev, I agree with you that it seems like GM is ramming it to the common worker in China, making them work for peanuts and profiteering at their expense.

But flip the coin for a sec: When shopping in China, you see a "real" CD that's 18 RMB and a "not-so-real" CD of the same quality for 5 RMB. Which do you buy if the end result is the same? As consumers, we are looking for the biggest bang for our buck, and companies are no different.

Not saying it's good or bad, but that's logical. If I opened a restaurant and I advertized for 10 positions at 800 RMB a month, and during the interview sessions some of them said they would work for less to secure the job, that would be an added incentive for me to hire him.

[Roger]

[burnsie]

Yes, you can't blame GM for their pay policies because this s the going rate in China.

As the Whinger pointed out if you had a choice between a product made in your country or a product which is 30% cheaper and close to the same quality as the other product most people go towards the cheaper product.

Anyway if you are worried about the wages in China boycott all products made in China and buy others!

When all the bad press about Nike and their shoes made in Indonesia did you see people go in droves, no.

Many western countries (especially America) are used to the cheap prices for products, their addicted to the cheap prices. So it's not all the blame back to China because they are paying low wages.