Civil Servants in China Report Widespread Pay Cuts

Some civil servants on China's state payroll are seeing a salary cut. Zheng works as a civil servant in Southern China's Guangdong province. To protect his identity, we have distorted his voice. “Some state agencies are cutting more, some are cutting less. In Huizhou city, the cut is about 19 percent. Aren’t local departments short of money right now? I was chatting with a friend the other day who’s also a civil worker, and he said pay cuts are happening everywhere,” Zheng, a civil servant in Guangdong, China, said. Lin is also a civil worker in Guangdong. He told NTD that he lost over $5,000 in just two months. “Local authorities used to rely on selling land to bring in revenue. But now China’s real estate market is not doing well. Land sales are not going well. So now local authorities are on a tight budget. Also some foreign companies have left, so tax revenue has shrunk. Lots of factories are closed as well, the economy is just getting worse,” Lin, a civil servant in Shenzhen, China, said.