About 85.4 percent of 1,604 Chinese employees in 29 provinces and autonomous regions claim their salary raises did not reach 12 percent, the country's average increase rate, and 7.1 percent even saw a drop, according to a survey by China Youth Daily.

Both the total amount and the average level of Chinese workers' salaries had seen double-digit annual increases for four consecutive years from 2002 to 2006, revealed a recent salary reform forum held by the China Association for Labor Studies. The past four years have witnessed the fastest growth of Chinese workers' salaries since the country began to reform and open up in 1978.

Not taking consumer price factors into account, the average annual salary of employees in China reached 21,001 yuan (US$2,761) last year from 12,422 yuan in 2002, a 12 percent year-on-year increase or 2.8 percentage points higher than the growth rate of per capita gross domestic product (GDP).

However, 64.7 percent of the employees think their salary increase did not match the GDP growth, the survey shows. Since the majority 85.4 percent of the employees say their salaries increased less than 12 percent, the average growth must have been mainly driven by a small number of people.

According to the survey, 50.6 percent of the interviewees believe the average increase rate could be mostly attributed to salary growth of the monopoly industries, and 41.3 percent say it was lifted by senior enterprise managers' salaries. Only 8.1 percent think it was common employees' salary raises that led to the high average growth.

In 2005, salaries in the power, gas and water supply industries increased 15 percent, those in the aviation and finance industries rose by 24.1 and 19.4 percent respectively, according to the statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics. In contrast, salaries in agriculture and construction industries were up 9.3 and 7.7 percent respectively. Chinese worker's salaries accounted for 41.4 percent of the country's GDP last year, down from 53 percent nine years ago and much lower than the United States' 57 percent, said a report issued by the World Bank.