New report suggests China's contribution to global wage growth

China played a significant role in global wage growth from 2008 to 2017, helping the average wage increase by 22 percent in that period, compared with only 13 percent if the country was excluded, according to a report by the International Labour Organization.

According to the newly released report, which is based on data from 136 countries, the annual average global real wage in 2017 grew by 1.8 percent year-on-year, which is the lowest rate since 2008. In comparison, the figure for the average global real wage excluding China increased by 1.1 percent last year. The annual average global real wage in 2016 was 2.4 percent.

In interviews with China Daily, experts attributed China's non-negligible influence of the global wage growth to the country's steady economy growth and shifting growth drivers.

"China has indeed contributed to the global wage growth," said Su Zhongxing, dean for Human Resources Management at Renmin University of China. "China has a large labor population, and also its wage grew rapidly in recent years. These factors obviously helped the world's wage to rise."

Xu Ding, an ILO economist for wage and labor relations and also one of the authors of the report, said that the changes in China's economic development also contributed to that.

"The economy in China has been growing steadily during the last decade, despite the fact that the main drivers of growth have been shifting among different sectors," said Xu. "All of them are translated in high levels of employment and increase in real wages."

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 45 percent of China's workforce, which amounted to more than 349 million people, were employed in the service industry in 2017, as compared to the 2008 figure of 33 percent.

As stated in the ILO report, China's average wage increased by 8.2 percent annually from 2008 to 2017, which is much higher than the global growth rate.