In order to deal with its aging population and buckling pension system, China will eventually increase its statutory retirement years in the next five times.
At the time of the Communist Revolution in 1949, life expectancy in the nation was only 36 years old, but the figure has now surpassed that of the United States, reaching 78.
But China’s pension years remains one of the lowest in the world- at 60 for people, 55 for people in white-collar work and 50 for working-class people.
The Third Plenum, a five-yearly top-level Socialist party conference held last month, approved the plan to raise the retirement age.
In a crucial policy document outlining the reforms, the party’s core committee stated that “in accordance with the principle of deliberate participation with suitable flexibility, we may enhance reform to gradually raise the statutory retirement age in a wise and peaceful manner.”
A China Pension Development Report published at the end of 2023 stated that “65 decades older may be the final result after adjusting” but it did not specify how much and by when the retirement age may be raised.
The strategy has been on the tickets for a few years, as China’s income budget dwindles.
The state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in 2019 that the country’s major state pension fund may run out of money by 2035- and that was an measure before the Covid-19 crisis, which hit China’s economy difficult.
At the same time, the country’s huge population has fallen for a second consecutive year in 2023 as the birth rate continues to decline.
The state-run Global Times paper quoted practitioners in China saying that the plan to raise the age of pensions features “voluntariness” and “flexibility”, which shows that the authorities acknowledge there is no one-size-fits-all policy when it comes to pensions.
But, the program has sparked some skepticism on Chinese social media.
” Those who want to leave early are exhausted from their laborious work, but those who are in comfy, lucrative positions do never.” What types of jobs are available to the younger generation? one person wrote on Weibo, an X-like program.
Some claimed that a retirement ‘ accessibility may be delayed if they were to retire later. There is no assurance that you will be able to work before the required retirement age, a person wrote.