A Chinese company sparked outrage by stacking up 61 million yuan (around US$9 million) in banknotes on a stage before handing it to employees as year-end bonuses. Media sources have claimed that on January 17, a crane manufacturer in the Henan province uploaded footage of the same on social media that went viral. The video showed heaps of cash stacked two metres high at the company’s annual party.
According to a news portal, which cited an unnamed manager from the company’s public relations department, the three best-performing sales managers from the firm, Henan Mine, received the top award of five million yuan (US$737,000) each which is equivalent to approx Rs 6 crore. In contrast, more than 30 others were given at least one million yuan.
“On the evening of January 17, we had a sales year-end meeting and awarded a total of 61 million yuan to 40 sales managers," the source added. Additionally, he said that there was a competition where employees competed to see how many 100-yuan bills they could count in a set amount of time. The corporation spent a staggering 12 million yuan on this competition alone, awarding 157,000 yuan to the fastest note counter.
The money was packaged into 100,000 yuan bricks, according to various videos that have been extensively shared online. From the stage, a group of men in black suits and red scarves can be seen lugging armloads of cash.
The highest awards had to be carried by multiple individuals because they were so hefty. The cash reward binge has drawn much attention on social media, where some online observers have expressed jealousy and others have called it a PR scam.
One person wrote on Weibo, “I don’t even dare to fantasise about such a scene." While another said, “I don’t comprehend. The beneficiaries must carry the money back to the bank to deposit it after they took the trouble to fetch and count all the cash from the bank." Another person stated, “I don’t like such a business culture."
Henan Mine, established in 2002, employs more than 5,100 people, and reported sales revenues of 9.16 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) in 2022, an increase of 23% from the year before, according to its official website. This is despite the dismal official statistics for the Chinese economy over the past year.
Further, there have been no layoffs at the company over the past three years. It claimed that the average employee wage at the company has increased by 30% annually.
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