BEIJING - Annual reports from China's listed state-owned firms show their top executives were generally paid less last year as reform of China's bloated state sector targets executive income.

A plan to trim salaries paid to executives at firms managed by the central government entered effect at the beginning this year, aiming to close the yawning wealth gap between top management and ordinary employees and tackle the problem of opaque managers' bonuses.

Li Zhong, spokesperson with China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said last month that the details of the salary-cutting plan have been worked out.

Li added that the pay curbs only apply to firm's bosses and that ordinary employees' income won't be affected.

Annual reports from listed state firms have showed cuts in executive salaries of up to 50 percent last year. However, these companies still provide scant details of executives' "corporate-related expenditure", a bracket including perks and benefits for top executives and which thus can be included in their remuneration package.

A recent inspection tour by the disciplinary watchdog of the Communist Party of China found excessive corporate-related expenditure at state-owned behemoths including oil refiner Sinopec, mining and energy company Shenhua Group, telecom operator China Unicom and China Southern Airlines.

Sinopec responded by saying it will start to evaluate senior executives against their performance. China Unicom said it will tilt its payment distribution toward grassroots workers.

SMALLER PAYCHECK

Smaller state-firms, which are controlled by local governments across China, have also reduced compensation for top management.

South China's Guangdong Province has rolled out a plan to cut executive salaries by 20 percent. Of the 14 listed state companies in Guangdong, eight reported year-on-year declines in executive pay. Guangdong Hongda Blasting Co, Ltd. cut its chairman's pay by more than half to 550,500 yuan a year.

In central China's Hunan Province, salaries paid to state firm chiefs is being capped at 600,000 yuan a year. Board directors at listed Tongcheng Group earned less than 250,000 yuan last year, the company's 2014 financial report shows.

Though details over pay curbs for top management at the country's largest state-firms are yet to be announced, some have already made cuts.

Both the chairman and president of China State Construction saw their salaries last year pared down by 20 percent to 865,000 yuan. The paycheck for top management at Huaneng Power International also shrank from nearly 800,000 yuan in 2013 to 652,000 last year.

SALARY ONLY PART OF INCOME

Auditors have pointed out that while firms may be trumpeting cuts to executives' basic pay, they have been much less frank about corporate-related expenditure in their financial statements.

"The salaries we are looking at are only part of a broader compensation package that hasn't been made available to the public," said Xu Guangjian,vice dean of Renmin University's School of Public Administration.

Despite growing pressure on management pay, executives at China's stated-owned banks continue to see their income rise even as profit growth slides to single digits and bad loans surge.

Remuneration for Bank of China's chairman rose 11 percent last year to 1.18 million yuan, while the bank's profit growth slowed from 12.36 percent in 2013 to 8.22 percent in 2014.

China's banking regulator has repeatedly said that executives' pay should be realigned with banks' performance.

"For many executives at state firms, whether the company they run does well or not, they know they will be paid just as much at the end of the day," said Xi Junyang, vice dean of the School of Finance at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.