If you want to understand conversations about Chinese workplace rights, you need to know one formula.

N+1.

It's the standard severance calculation under Chinese labour law.

• N is the number of years you've worked at a company.

• Each year worked converts directly into one month's salary in your severance pay

• The "+1" is an additional month's pay on top of that.

So if you've worked somewhere for five years and get laid off legally, N+1 means you should get five months' salary, plus one more. So six months total.

So when rumours emerged that iFlytek was offering 0.6N...

That would mean workers would get just 0.6 of a month's salary per year worked, with no "+1".

So if you worked five years at the company... You would only be entitled to three months' pay, which is half the legal standard.