Chinese company piles $9 million to give staff bonuses, video of cash 'mountain' goes viral

A Chinese company has kicked up a hornet’s nest after videos surfaced of it piling up 61 million yuan (US$9 million) in banknotes on a stage before handing out the cash to employees as year-end bonuses. Videos circulating on social media show that Henan Mine, a crane manufacturer based in the country’s Henan province, piled the cash in a mountain at the company’s annual party before they invited their workers on stage to claim the bonuses. As per a South China Morning Post report, the incident took place on 17 January.

A video of the event shows people in suits and red scarves taking the piles of banknotes away. The amount given to some people was so much that it required multiple people to carry the money.

As per the SCMP, the three best-performing managers got five million yuan (US$737,000) each. Over 30 other workers were awarded at least one million yuan, as per the Jiemian News.

An unnamed manager from Henan Mine’s public relations department told the media outlet, “We held a sales year-end meeting on the night of January 17, giving 61 million yuan in total to 40 sales managers.”

Watch the video here:

As per reports, the employees also took part in a money counting competition where they were offered the number of 100-yuan notes they could count within a fixed time period. The company splashed out 12 million yuan in this competition alone, where the fastest counter was awarded 157,000 yuan.

The videos led to mixed reactions on social media, with many people criticising the company for what they saw as an unnecessary display of wealth. One person on the Chinese website Weibo commented, “I can’t understand. They bothered to get all the cash from the bank and count it to give out, and the recipients then needed to carry it back to the bank to deposit it. I don’t like such a corporate culture”. Another said this scene was beyond their dreams.

As per SCMP, Henan Mines did not have any lay-offs over the past three years despite China’s strict Covid-19 restrictions, which led to the economy slowing down. The average salary of the organisation’s staff has grown by 30 per cent annually.

According to the World Economic Outlook (WEO) report realised by the International Monetary Fund recently, China’s economy is expected to grow 5.2 percent in 2023 after it scaled back its “zero-COVID” lockdown policies. The report added that the Asian giant’s growth levels will decline “to 4.5% in 2024 before settling at below 4% over the medium term amid declining business dynamism and slow progress on structural reforms.”

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