HR consultants foresee smaller raises due to GDP factor

Salaries of employees in China are expected to grow at about 6 percent this year, compared with about 9.4 percent back in 2012, when the economy's focus shifted from rapid growth to high-quality development, experts said.

"We have studied the fluctuation trend of salaries worldwide for decades, and found it is highly linked to a country's GDP, whose influence may take one or two years to show," said Huang Xian, senior director of Korn Ferry Hay Group, a human resources consulting firm.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed China's GDP grew 6.9 percent last year. The corresponding figure was 9.5 percent in 2011.