Recruiting in China

Executives in the finance and real estate industries have the highest pay among 1,894 listed companies that announced their annual financial reports in 2016, said China Economic Weekly.

On average, executive pay packets hit 7.09 million yuan ($1.02 million) in 2016, up eight percent year-on-year, higher than the rate of China's GDP and per capita disposable incomes, which were 6.7 percent and 6.3 percent respectively. Yet disparities are clear among sectors and companies.

Among the 18 sectors categorized by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, financial executives ranked the highest with annual pay of 27.36 million yuan, followed by real estate executives at 11.18 million.

The average pay for executives in educational companies was the lowest, just over 2.8 million yuan and about one tenth that of their counterparts in the financial sector.

The quickest growth in executive pay on average came from the hotel and catering sectors, at 47.58 percent. But top managers at companies in the fields of scientific research and technology services saw their pay decrease by 4.2 percent.

Executives at leading Chinese insurer Ping An snatched the highest pay at 108 million yuan, about 158 times higher than executives working for Puyang Huicheng Electronic Material.

Twenty-four companies reported their executive pay as being lower than one million yuan, and 1,033 companies put the figure between one million and five million. Ten companies announced that their executives were paid more than 50 million yuan.

Seven executives received pay above the 10 million yuan threshold. Lin Yong, an executive assistant at Haitong Securities, scored the highest pay packet at 15.49 million yuan. Ping An's Chief Investment Officer Chen Dexian and Yin Ke, the former executive director at CITIC Securities, received pay packets of 12.86 million and 12.08 million respectively.

Wang Jie, the general manager of a Beijing-based investment company, said the higher pay for executives in the financial and real estate industries shows the imbalance in development in China.