Chen Xuewen, a household investigator of the Zhongshan Investigation Team of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), visited Mr Li's family as usual on the afternoon of October 9 to check his recent bookkeeping records.

As a "bookkeeping sample household", Mr Li needs to record all the expenses of his family every day into the NBS' "e-bookkeeping" app. Together with other households, these statistics make up the samples of residents' per capita disposable income and consumer spending to be analyzed.

Chen Xuewen has worked as a household investigator for 10 years and has contacts with over 1,000 families. Extrapolating from the account books, she has witnessed the changes and improvements in Zhongshan people's lives.

Data shows that the per capita disposable income of Zhongshan residents has increased from 27,424 yuan in 2012 to 57,901 yuan in 2021, up 111.1%, with an average annual growth of 8.7%.

Specifically, the per capita disposable income of urban residents was 60,323 yuan in 2021, an increase of 110.1% over 2012 with an average annual growth of 8.6%. That of rural residents was 41,750 yuan, an increase of 130.6% over 2012, with an average annual growth of 9.7%.

Meanwhile, Zhongshan's employment continues to expand. Since 2012, an average of 56,000 new urban jobs have been created annually, and the total number of employees in Zhongshan now exceeds 2.4 million.

Zhongshan has embraced continuous improvements in social security and overall bailout ability, promising a happy, quality life for its people.