A member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee has proposed at the annual session that public servants' salaries be raised, sparking a heated public debate. Many people believe civil servants' salaries are relatively high while some think they are low compared with other professions. The debate has, in fact, prompted some local officials to post online the relatively low amounts they earn to clear people's misunderstandings.

We cannot determine whether civil servants' income is high or low if we don't use the proper benchmark to measure it. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the per capita disposable income of the above average income group in 2013 was 32,415 yuan ($5,280)-or 2,701 yuan a month-and that of the high-income group was 56,389 yuan-or 4,699 yuan a month.

The salary of He Xiangjiu, the CPPCC member who submitted the proposal, is about 4,000 yuan after tax a month. If we take that to be representative of senior public servants' monthly income, they would be part of the above average income group. But if we use daily expenses to determine public servants' income level, an average monthly income of 4,000 yuan is not that high.

Although the consumer price index increased only 2.6 percent last year, people still feel their daily expenses have soared. Perhaps this can be attributed to the increase in prices of essentials like food, water and electricity charges, and housing rentals.

Take the CPPCC member's monthly salary as an example again. He lives in Cangzhou, Hebei province, where the average housing price is about 5,000 yuan per square meter, which means he (or any other person earning 4,000 yuan a month) has to pay all his income for 100 months to purchase an 80-sq-m apartment in the city. Therefore, a monthly salary of 4,000 yuan is not that high even in a city like Cangzhou, let alone a metropolis.

Another dispute over public servants' income is whether or not their salaries have increased in recent years. Some people say it has increased while others argue against it.

Generally speaking, civil servants' income is divided into two parts: one part consists of salary, including basic pay that comes with their posts, and the other comprises allowances and subsidies. According to rough estimates, the first part accounts for two-thirds or three-fifths of their total income, with the rest coming from the second.

The allowance and subsidy a civil servant gets should increase correspondingly with his/her salary. But some local governments cannot afford to do so because of their tight budgets, or some local leaders may not allow it if they feel the incomes of local civil servants are already high. So it is difficult to identify the change in the real income of public servants.

Apart from salaries and allowances, the government could also offer civil servants good social benefits such as preferential treatment in buying a house and even "gray income", which, contrary to what the public thinks, is not illegal.

In the 1980s and 1990s, in particular, "gray income" was regarded as an important part of public servants' income, which could have given them a bad name. But with the implementation of the "sunshine wages" policy and the "eight-point code to cut red tape and maintain close ties with the people", benefits such as "gray income" have either been drastically cut or altogether banished.

Civil servants' income has become a serious issue. Local-level public servants who earn between 2,000 yuan and 3,000 yuan a month complain that their income is low compared with their workload and responsibilities. To resolve the issue, the government has to calculate and explain to the public exactly how much different levels of civil servants earn. This will not only clear public misunderstandings, but also help the government to decide whether or not it should raise the salaries of public servants.

The author is a professor at the Center for Social Policy Studies, affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

(China Daily 03/15/2014 page5)