Remuneration Photo: VCG

China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the State Council, the country's state assets regulator, on Wednesday disclosed remuneration information for the heads of more than 80 centrally administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs), in a move aimed at strengthening transparency in key areas of centrally administered SOEs and responding to public concern, the Xinhua News Agency reported. 

The disclosure showed that the 2024 payable annual salaries of several top executives at major central SOEs were slightly less than 1 million yuan (about $143,307), according to a list of information released on the commission's official website.

In recent years, SASAC has maintained an institutionalized practice of annually releasing remuneration information for heads of centrally administered SOEs. China passed a reform plan for the payment packages of executives of central SOEs at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in August 2014.

The plan called for adjusting unreasonably high incomes, improving the rational alignment of remuneration across industries, and promoting social fairness, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Under the reform framework, the remuneration structure for SOE executives was reshaped from a simple combination of base salary and performance pay into a three-part system consisting of a basic annual salary, a performance-linked annual salary, and tenure-based incentive income.

The plan indicates that executives' basic annual salaries are typically set at around twice the company's average wage for on-the-job employees in the previous year. Performance-linked pay is capped at no more than twice the basic salary and tenure-based incentives limited to 30 percent of total income, according to China News Service.

In September 2025, Li Zhen, vice director of the SASAC, said that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, authorities had pushed forward reforms in labor, personnel and income distribution in a solid and sustained manner, with tenure-based and contract-based management for senior executives strictly implemented.

He noted that more than 60 percent of variable pay for central SOE managers is now linked to performance, underscoring the growing role of market-oriented incentives in executive remuneration.

Global Times