NBS Commissioner: "Wage Increase Joke Made Me Blush"

Ma Jiantang, commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics. China Foto Press

    Figures released by the NBS said that average annual wages of staff and worker on the job in urban areas reached RMB 14,638 in the first half of 2009, a 12.9 percent year-on-year increase. The news soon drew a hail of criticism from the public, with many asserting the figures are not in accordance with reality. According to the standard statistical system, income figures were calculated based on the wages of staff and workers in the state-owned, collectively-owned and joint-venture companies, excluding employees of private enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households. Ma Jiantang, commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said he blushed when he heard netizens were chanting "higher wages, higher wages."

    "The scope of the wage data that fed the current statistical system is limited. Today there are more and more non-public enterprises, private enterprises and small operations emerging. Although we don't have a timetable, we are working to make the statistics more representative," explains Ma Jiantang. "Another reason for the controversy over the average wage is that it is a simple average, which cannot reflect the income disparity," he added.