China has prioritized income growth and a restructuring of its wage-distribution system as central pillars of a new strategy designed to shield the domestic labor market from the disruptive effects of artificial intelligence over the next five years.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released a detailed blueprint on Thursday outlining the roadmap. The document commits to expanding collective wage bargaining in the private sector, ensuring steady pay increases, and shifting compensation structures to favor frontline workers.
For state-owned enterprises, the plan calls for curbing “excessively high earnings” while boosting performance-based incentives for critical talent and aligning pay more directly with technical expertise. To safeguard lower-income earners, Beijing pledged to refine the mechanism for adjusting minimum wage thresholds and initiate legislative research on a formal minimum wage law.
According to the blueprint, authorities will “adopt a comprehensive approach to manage how shifting external environments and AI advancements affect the workforce, prioritising job-expanding initiatives.”
The directive arrives as a persistent wealth gap—particularly between rural and urban populations—remains a structural challenge for the world’s second-largest economy, with economists warning that rapid AI adoption could exacerbate the divide.
Beijing has also vowed to “combine investment in physical assets with investment in people,” a slogan introduced in the 15th five-year plan, aiming to unlock the consumption potential of lower-income households amid sluggish domestic demand.
