Chinese company offers young men inflatable sex dolls as annual staff bonus instead of cash

Some bosses have also given out train tickets, 2.5 kg of pork, flip-flops and karaoke coupons as an alternative to money, the state-run newspaper Guangming Daily reported.

Younger staff in their 20s at Lianlian, a Guangzhou-based internet company that develops a mobile app offering virtual romance to users, had received the blow-up sex dolls, with flip-flops, popular Chinese spicy sauces and dehumidifiers were given out as bonuses, the report said.

Wang Yuzhu, Lianlian’s chief executive, said the blow-up dolls had been prepared especially for single men working at the company, who had been shown how to use them at the company’s annual conference on Sunday.

Gifts such as flip-flops had been presented because they were convenient when working in Guangzhou, where the weather was often hot and humid.

An annual bonus survey of white-collar workers in Guangzhou showed that 11 per cent of the respondents received real items instead of cash bonuses in 2015, and overall were less satisfied with these bonuses than the bonuses they had received in 2014, the Guangzhou Daily reported.