Science
22:44, 01-May-2018
International Workers' Day: Chinese experts get paid more and a festival
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It's International Workers' Day, a festival designed for all those who work. It's so important in China that President Xi Jinping extended greetings to workers nationwide.
The sci-tech people also count as workers in China. And these experts are getting more money and better social status.
The "sci-tech workers" in the country has well exceeded 100 million, according to estimates from the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST).
Although the number is only a single-digit percentage of China's population, it is larger than the population in any of the 94 percent of the countries in the world.
That's too much for China to ignore.
The country has been trying to improve the livelihood of sci-tech people for decades. Some recent efforts were considerably strong.
For example, a rise in income.
There is a law in China on how to turn scientific research into actual products. The law was revised in 2015 to allow innovators to make more money from their work.
The minimum share they can take has been raised from 20 percent to 50 percent if their work makes it to the product line.
In 2016, China issued even more favorable policies for sci-tech people: an increase in basic salary, higher performance payments, halved tax and even more rewards when research makes real-life changes.
The researchers and technicians also got a brand new festival to honor them in 2016: the Sci-tech Workers' Day.
The date is May 30, meaning this year's celebration is within the month.