China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), the government regulator for state assets, on Wednesday released remuneration information for the heads of more than 80 centrally administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs), in a move aimed at increasing transparency and responding to public concerns, according to Xinhua News Agency.
The disclosure showed that the 2024 payable annual salaries of several top executives at major central SOEs were slightly below 1 million yuan ($143,300), according to the information published on SASAC’s official website.
SASAC has maintained an institutionalized practice of annually publishing remuneration details for executives of centrally administered SOEs in recent years. The practice is part of broader reforms introduced following a 2014 Political Bureau meeting of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, which set out a plan to adjust executive pay packages for central SOEs.
The 2014 plan called for curbing unreasonably high incomes, promoting fair and rational pay alignment across industries, and enhancing social equity, Xinhua reported.
Under the reform framework, the remuneration system for SOE executives was restructured from a simple combination of base salary and performance pay into a three-part system: a basic annual salary, a performance-linked annual salary, and tenure-based incentive income.
The disclosure comes amid growing public interest in the pay of senior managers at China’s major SOEs, which operate in key sectors such as energy, transportation, and finance.
SASAC did not provide further details on individual company performance or the criteria used to calculate performance-linked components. However, the annual transparency exercise is seen as part of ongoing efforts by the Chinese government to strengthen corporate governance and public accountability in state-owned enterprises.
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