White-collar workers in Shanghai and other large Chinese cities should expect to receive smaller pay raises this year than their counterparts in second-tier cities like Dalian, according to a recent survey.

51job.com, one of China's leading Web-based headhunters, surveyed 2 million office workers in 16 major Chinese cities via the Internet and face-to-face interviews about their salaries.

Local office workers can expect to earn an average salary of 60,445 yuan (US$7,283) next year, a 5.72 percent increase over this year's average.

That means the average office worker in the city will enjoy an annual pay raise of 3,271 yuan.

However, that increase is only the 12th largest among the 16 major Chinese cities surveyed, the report said.

"Shanghai's seeming underperformance is mainly attributed to the high existing salaries in large cities," said Jennifer Feng, assistant PR manager at 51job.com.

She added that situation is the same among large Chinese cities. Minor Chinese cities with lower wage levels will enjoy higher pay raises this year than highly developed cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shengzhen.

Dalian, a middle-sized city in northeast Liaoning Province, tops the list with an expected average annual salary increase of 7.34 percent.

But white-collar workers in Dalian will still only earn an average annual income of 39,889 yuan in 2005, the report predicted.

Spurred by Shanghai's soaring real estate industry, employees in the city's architecture and design sectors will enjoy the highest pay rises next year. Their annual income is expected to rise by 11.4 percent to reach 56,000 yuan, the survey said.

People in the financial sector will be the highest paid group among all local white-collar workers, earning 73,029 yuan on average next year, according to the report.

(Shanghai Daily November 24, 2004)