Clothing hangs on laundry lines while a woman walks past residential buildings in Wuhan, China, on June 14, 2017.
Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images
BEIJING – A Chinese court has ruled in a divorce case that a woman should pay about 50,000 Chinese yuan ($ 7,700) from her husband as compensation for five years of domestic work.
The ruling sparked an online debate this week on whether it was a fair price.
That’s about $ 128 a month, or a little over $ 1,500 a year. In terms of Chinese currency, the payout is about 10,000 yuan per year.
China said the poorest earned an average of 9,808 yuan per person per year in 2019. This is an increase of 3,416 yuan in 2015.
In this case, which was recorded in the southwestern Fangshan district of Beijing, the woman’s domestic work counted as intangible property value, Judge Feng Miao told state media, according to the report.
It was not immediately clear when the court ruling was made. But it was the first decision that referred to new provisions in China’s civil legislation that came into force in January.