China Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN CHINA. 1. THERE IS NO NATIONAL CHINESE SOCIAL-INSURANCE RATE TABLE, AND SERVING ONE IS THE FUNDAMENTAL ERROR. The Social Insurance Law sets the architecture — which branches exist, who pays, that work-injury is employer-only, that rates must be risk-differentiated — but the PERCENTAGES and the CONTRIBUTION BASES are fixed at city (or in some branches provincial) level. SHANGHAI IS SERVED HERE AS THE NAMED REFERENCE CITY. Its numbers are correct for Shanghai and must not be applied to Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou or anywhere else without substitution. For contrast, Beijing's employer medical rate and its contribution-base band are both different from Shanghai's, and Beijing's unemployment-insurance split is not 0.5/0.5. 2. FOUR DIFFERENT RENEWAL DATES, NONE OF THEM 1 JANUARY. (a) The contribution-base band changes on 1 JULY, from the prior year's city average wage. (b) The Shanghai medical rate is a temporary reduction renewed annually with effect from 1 MARCH — the current instrument runs to 28 February 2027. (c) The unemployment and work-injury rates are fixed by an instrument running 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2029. (d) The housing-fund base and band change on 1 JULY on a separate municipal instrument. An engine that refreshes Chinese parameters once a year on any single date will be stale on something for most of the year. 3. THE CONTRIBUTION BASE IS PUBLISHED MONTHS AFTER IT TAKES EFFECT, AND THIS WINDOW IS OPEN RIGHT NOW. Shanghai's band for the year from 1 July 2025 was announced on 18 SEPTEMBER 2025, retroactive to 1 July, with employers given until the end of October to settle the difference penalty-free. AS AT THIS RECORD'S DATE (11 August 2026) THE BAND FOR THE YEAR FROM 1 JULY 2026 HAD NOT YET BEEN PUBLISHED. The figures served — floor 7,460 and ceiling 37,302 yuan — are the last published band, whose own stated period ended on 30 June 2026. They are therefore the best available number, not a confirmed current one, and a fresh band with retroactive effect should be expected in September 2026. This is a structural feature of Chinese payroll, not a defect in this record. 4. THE BASE IS LAST YEAR'S AVERAGE WAGE, NOT CURRENT PAY, AND IT IS BANDED AT BOTH ENDS. 缴费基数 is the employee's average monthly wage income for the preceding calendar year, then clamped to between 60% and 300% of the city average wage. A mid-year raise does not change contributions until the next annual base declaration. A low earner is contributed for as if they earned the floor. Engines that multiply this month's gross by the rate are wrong for most employees in most months. 5. TWO DIFFERENT FLOORS ON THE SAME PAYSLIP. The social-insurance floor in Shanghai is 7,460 yuan a month; the housing-fund floor is 2,690 yuan. The ceilings happen to coincide at 37,302 yuan, which makes the divergent floors easy to miss. They are set by different authorities under different instruments and there is no reason for them to move together. 6. MATERNITY INSURANCE IS NOT MISSING — IT WAS MERGED. Since the 2019 national merger, 生育保险 is administered inside 职工基本医疗保险 and is funded out of the employer's basic medical rate. There is no separate maternity line and no employee maternity contribution anywhere in China. An engine that adds a 0.8% maternity line on top of the medical rate is double-counting. 7. SHANGHAI'S EMPLOYER MEDICAL RATE IS TWO CHARGES, AND THE SECOND IS SHANGHAI-ONLY. 8.5% basic medical (carrying maternity) plus 0.5% 地方附加医疗保险, a local supplementary medical levy with no national equivalent. Total 9%. The 0.5% does not exist in other cities. 8. THE PENSION SPLIT IS 2:1 AGAINST THE EMPLOYER AND IS THE SINGLE LARGEST COST. Employer 16%, employee 8%. The 16% is a national CEILING that provinces above it were permitted to fall to under 国办发〔2019〕13号 — not a rate mandated everywhere — so provinces that were already below 16% may still differ. The 8% employee rate is uniform nationally. 9. WORK-INJURY IS EMPLOYER-ONLY BY EXPRESS STATUTE AND ITS PUBLISHED RATE IS ONLY A STARTING POINT. 社会保险法 art. 33 states that employees do not pay work-injury premiums. Shanghai's eight benchmark rates run 0.2% to 1.9%, but each employer's actual rate floats around its category benchmark under a 浮动费率 mechanism keyed to its own claims and safety record. 10. THE HOUSING FUND IS MANDATORY BUT ITS RATE IS AN EMPLOYER CHOICE WITHIN A BAND, AND THE TWO SIDES MUST MATCH. Shanghai 5%–7% each side, whole numbers only, employer rate equals employee rate. The national band under the State Council Regulations is wider, 5%–12%, and many cities permit the full range — so Shanghai's 7% cap is a local tightening, not the national rule. Shanghai additionally offers an elective 补充住房公积金 at 1%–5% each side on top. The fund is administered by a municipal management committee, not by the social-insurance authority, and sits outside the Social Insurance Law entirely. 11. COLLECTION MOVED TO THE TAX AUTHORITY, AND ENFORCEMENT TIGHTENED. Social-insurance premiums are collected by the State Taxation Administration's local bureaux rather than by the social-insurance agencies. The practical consequence is that under-declaring the contribution base — historically widespread — is now cross-checked against payroll tax data, so the legally correct base and the base an employer has historically used may differ materially. 12. EMPLOYEE CONTRIBUTIONS ARE PRE-TAX. Employee-side pension, medical, unemployment and housing-fund contributions are deducted before individual income tax (the 三险一金 deduction), so IIT is computed on pay after social insurance. Employee work-injury contributions do not arise. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: THIS IS THE DEFINING FEATURE OF THE CHINESE SYSTEM, NOT A FOOTNOTE. Every percentage and every base limit in this record is a SHANGHAI value, fixed by Shanghai instruments. Rates, base bands, the existence of local supplementary levies, the work-injury benchmark percentages and the housing-fund band all vary between cities. Model the CITY as a mandatory rate dimension for China. Serving a single national Chinese rate set is not an approximation — it is wrong for every city including this one. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON, DELIBERATELY. A NATIONAL CHINESE RATE SET — refused outright. There is none to serve. Shanghai is priced; other cities must be researched separately. 工伤保险 EMPLOYER RATE AS A SINGLE FIGURE — rate_employer stays null. The complete Shanghai eight-tier benchmark table (0.2% to 1.9%) IS served in the branch notes, so the refusal is confined to the single-number question. The employer's actual floated rate cannot be derived from public data. 住房公积金 RATES — all three rate fields null. The employer selects a rate within the 5%–7% Shanghai band and the employee rate must equal it. There is no single correct number; it is a per-employer input. The band, the base limits and the supplementary tier are all served. BEIJING, SHENZHEN AND OTHER CITIES — not priced. They are named in the notes as differing, but no figures are given for them, because I did not open their instruments. THE 2026/27 SHANGHAI CONTRIBUTION-BASE BAND — not served, because it had not been published as at this record's date. The last published band is served with its stated period and an express statement that it has expired. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE / WATCH LIST. (1) The Shanghai contribution-base band for 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027 is DUE AND OVERDUE — expect publication around September 2026 with retroactive effect to 1 July 2026, and expect a retroactive settlement window running to the end of October. This is the highest-priority re-verification item in this record. (2) The Shanghai medical rate reduction expires on 28 February 2027 and must be renewed by a fresh 沪医保规 notice; check in late February each year. (3) 沪人社规〔2024〕25号 fixes unemployment and work-injury rates to 31 December 2029, so those two are stable for several years — unusually for China. (4) The housing-fund base and band are re-notified each year with effect from 1 July. (5) The national staged reduction of the unemployment-insurance rate to 1% has been extended repeatedly in short tranches at national level; Shanghai has insulated itself from that cycle to 2029, but other provinces have not. SOURCING CAVEATS. Everything served is read from a primary instrument or the administering authority's own notice. Residual limits, stated plainly: the unemployment and work-injury rates and the eight-tier work-injury tariff are quoted from 沪人社规〔2024〕25号 as published on the Shanghai municipal government portal, with the operative Chinese text reproduced above. The medical rates are from 沪医保规〔2026〕2号 as published by the Shanghai Medical Insurance Bureau, whose currency and validity period I confirmed directly; I read the Bureau's statement of the notice's content rather than the PDF of the notice itself. The contribution-base band and the 12,434 yuan city average wage are from the Shanghai Human Resources and Social Security Bureau's own announcement of 18 September 2025. The 16%/8% pension rates are the national framework figures under 国办发〔2019〕13号 as applied in Shanghai; I confirmed the national permission text but did not open a Shanghai-specific pension rate instrument, so the Shanghai employer rate of 16% is inferred from Shanghai having taken the permitted reduction and is corroborated by consistent municipal publication — this is the weakest link in the record and is flagged as such. The housing-fund band and base limits are from the Shanghai Housing Provident Fund Management Committee's 2025 notice as published on the fund's own site. Employee and employer shares are stated separately: the employee figure is what leaves the payslip, the employer figure is cost of employment and is not a deduction.

Get it programmatically

curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/cn/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/cn/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/cn/social-contributions

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