Senior executives of China's State-owned enterprises (SOE) face pay cuts that will hopefully reduce their salaries from 12 times to eight times the average salary of common workers.

The plan for SOE executives' salary reform has been distributed to State-owned enterprises recently. Each company will formulate detailed regulations based on general requirements and its actual conditions, market insiders told China Business News, a Shanghai-based newspaper.

According to the plan, the basic salary of senior executives will be two times the average salary of staff workers last year. Their performance-related pay should not exceed two times their basic salaries, and incentive pay should not exceed 30 percent of their annual salaries during their term in office.

Apart from salaries, China will also impose strict control over SOE executives' benefits, such as housing provident fund, and will come up with specific criteria, said Su Hainan, deputy director of the China Association for Labor Studies.