China: our calculator now applies the 2026 contribution floors and ceilings of ten cities

What changed

This note records a correction to our calculator. In China, each employee social contribution is charged on a monthly base held between a floor and a ceiling, published every year. Until 13 October 2026 our calculator applied to all four lines, pension, medical insurance, unemployment and housing fund, a single ceiling per city, described in our data as 300% of the city’s average wage, and no floor.

That model did not follow the rules. Since the plan to reduce social insurance rates issued by the General Office of the State Council in April 2019, each province sets the floor and ceiling of individual contribution bases from the province’s average wage of urban employees, private and non-private units combined. Medical insurance can keep a base of its own at city level: for 2026 Shenzhen publishes a range of CNY 6,727 to 33,633 a month, distinct from the pension range set for all of Guangdong at CNY 5,521 to 27,603. The housing fund has its own ceiling, set locally: CNY 40,600 a month in Suzhou and CNY 42,400 in Nanjing since 1 July 2026, three times the city’s 2025 average monthly wage of employees. Below the floor, the contribution is charged on the floor, as the Jiangsu notice, for one, provides.

The calculator now carries, for each of the ten cities, one base for pension and unemployment, one base for medical insurance and a ceiling of its own for the housing fund. Against the 2026 notices, the former single ceiling was too high in eight cities, by 4.6% in Chengdu to 43% in Hangzhou, and slightly too low in Shanghai and Beijing. In those eight cities the housing fund ceiling is higher than the pension ceiling and, except in Tianjin, higher than the former single ceiling. At high salaries, pension, medical and unemployment contributions therefore fall while the housing fund contribution rises except in Tianjin, and net pay goes up or down depending on the city. Well below the floors the effect is reversed: at CNY 36,000 a year, net pay falls in all ten cities. A few detailed rates were also revised, including the employee unemployment share in Shenzhen.

Effective date

The 2026 bases apply from 1 January to 31 December 2026 in Jiangsu (Suzhou, Nanjing), as does Shenzhen’s medical base; since 1 July 2026 in Shanghai, in Beijing and, for the pension of enterprise employees, across Guangdong (Shenzhen, Guangzhou); since 1 September 2026 in Tianjin. Hangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan apply the bases of their 2026 insurance year. Our calculator has applied the 2026 bases since 13 October 2026.

Some of the figures were not read on the issuer’s own page and remain to be confirmed there. The bases of Hangzhou and Chengdu, and Guangzhou’s housing fund ceiling, were read in a search engine’s index, the issuer’s page not having answered in our attempts of 13 and 17 October 2026. Wuhan’s bases, Guangzhou’s medical base and the housing fund ceilings of Hangzhou and Tianjin were read only in a reproduction of the official notice, the notice itself not having been read; for Wuhan, the official notice we read covers only pension, unemployment and work injury insurance from January to June 2026, with a ceiling of CNY 22,512, and the ceiling applied, CNY 22,761, is the one the reproduction gives for the 2026 insurance year. Chengdu’s housing fund ceiling is that of a draft put to consultation, and Wuhan’s is the 2025 ceiling, as we did not find the 2026 one. The medical bases of Hangzhou and Wuhan are taken as equal to their pension bases, as we did not read a notice specific to medical insurance. The housing fund ceilings of Shanghai and Shenzhen are computed from the published rule, three times the average wage, not read as published amounts. In Shenzhen and Guangzhou, unemployment is computed on the pension base, as no base of its own was found. Finally, the employee unemployment shares of Hangzhou, Chengdu, Suzhou, Nanjing, Tianjin and Wuhan are carried over from the previous year.

Worked example

Figures produced by our net salary calculator, Chinese tax resident, salary paid evenly over twelve months, the calculator’s default housing fund rate (the employer chooses this rate within a published range), before and after the correction of 13 October 2026.

At the calculator’s default salary of CNY 300,000 a year, only Wuhan (+CNY 2,213.92) and Chengdu (+CNY 799.33) move noticeably, their new pension ceiling being below CNY 25,000 a month; elsewhere the difference is nil or below CNY 250. Well below the floors, at CNY 36,000 a year, the fall ranges from 6.5% in Wuhan to 19.3% in Shanghai and Beijing. In Shanghai, contributions move from CNY 6,300.00 to CNY 12,027.96 and net pay from CNY 29,700.00 to CNY 23,972.04. The income tax schedule is unchanged; in the computation, tax moves in the opposite direction to contributions, which the calculator deducts from its base.