China’s once-thriving economy, which encouraged aspiration, is now sluggish. The country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has become wary of personal wealth and the challenges of widening inequality.
Loyalty to the Communist Party and country, people are told, now trumps the personal ambition that had transformed Chinese society in the last few decades.
Crackdowns on billionaires and businesses, from real estate to technology to finance, have been accompanied by socialist-style messaging on enduring hardship and striving for China’s prosperity. Even celebrities have been told to show off less online.
On Thursday, the former vice-governor of the People’s Bank of China, Fan Yifei, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, according to state media.
Fan was found guilty of accepting bribes worth more than 386 million yuan ($54.6m).
The industry is under pressure. While few companies have publicly admitted it, pay cuts in banking and investment firms are a hot topic on Chinese social media.
Posts about falling salaries have generated millions of views in recent months. And hashtags like “changing career from finance” and “quitting finance” have gained more than two million views on the popular social media platform Xiaohongshu.
Some finance workers have been seeing their income shrink since the start of the pandemic.
In August 2022, China’s finance ministry published new rules requiring firms to “optimise the internal income distribution and scientifically design the salary system”.
The following year, the country’s top corruption watchdog criticised the ideas of “finance elites” and the “only money matters” approach, making finance a clearer target for the country’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign.
The changes came in a sweeping but discreet way, according to Alex*, a manager at a state-controlled bank in China’s capital, Beijing.
“You would not see the order put into written words – even if there is [an official] document it’s certainly not for people on our level to see. But everyone knows there is a cap on it [salaries] now. We just don’t know how much the cap is.”
Alex says employers are also struggling to deal with the pace of the crackdown: “In many banks, the orders could change unexpectedly fast.”
“They would issue the annual guidance in February, and by June or July, they would realise that the payment of salaries has exceeded the requirement. They then would come up with ways to set up performance goals to deduct people’s pay.”
Alex says his workload has shrunk significantly as the number of companies launching shares on the stock market has fallen. Foreign investment has decreased in China, and domestic businesses have also turned cautious – because of the crackdowns and weak consumption.
In the past his work often involved new projects that would bring money into his firm. Now his days are mostly filled with chores like organising the data from his previous projects.
“The morale of the team has been very low, the discussion behind the bosses backs are mostly negative. People are talking what to do in three to five years.”
It’s hard to estimate if people are leaving the industry in large numbers, although there have been some layoffs. Jobs are also scarce in China now, so even a lower-paying finance job is still worth keeping.
But the frustration is evident. A user on Xiaohongshu compared switching jobs to changing seats – except, he wrote, “if you stand up you might find your seat is gone.”
One netizen says that it’s not just the authorities that have fallen out of love with finance workers; it’s Chinese society in general.
