How Income Varies Inside and Outside the System

A monthly salary of seven or eight thousand yuan, with an annual income of only 100,000. That blows people in the system away—they don't get why all twelve months add up to just 100,000 yuan. Teachers take home only a few hundred bucks a month, yet their yearly income still reaches tens of thousands, nearly 100,000.

In the system, hearing "a monthly salary of seven or eight thousand" automatically conjures up at least 200,000 yuan a year, if not 300,000.

That's the gap between those inside and outside the system.

They don't grasp how the private sector works. What they tell you is exactly what you get—no extras whatsoever; in fact, they find ways to pay you less. Inside the system, "income" means base salary plus post allowance, variable bonuses, employer subsidies, sub-district fiscal allowances, all sorts of benefits—and more besides.