ИСТИНА

The average numbers are important, but one should not overlook the structural characteristics of data. International comparisons of Chinese wages were quite simple in the past when the level of labor pay was extremely low. In recent years the situation has changed as the wage gap between workers in China and other parts of the world has decreased. As a consequence, the importance of quality of the official statistics became more pronounced in cross-country comparisons. Under the new circumstances, even a small margin of error and any data inaccuracies can significantly influence the results of international comparisons and thus conclusions for economic policy. All in all, researchers and analysts should shift their focus from average wages on a country level to wages in specific industries and for particular occupations. This type of analysis, of course, requires more detailed and more accurate data. Thus extra efforts from the part of the Chinese official statisticians will be needed in the future to improve statistics on wages.