Foreign workers might soon had to put in a little more effort.
China’s ruling Communist Party approved a resolution that may allow for a gradual increase in the government’s legal retirement age over the next five years in late July 2024.
The last retirement age has not been determined, but an earlier formal report suggests that it is likely to reach the age of 65.
This would enable the nation to compete with other big economies. At present, China has among the lowest pension age in the world at 60 for people and 55 for people in white-collar work– or 50 if the people are in blue-collar work.
For a number of years, group leaders have been considering changing China’s pension plan. However, the current ostensible necessity is a result of growing concern about the impact a shrinking and aging people will have on the nation’s shrinking pension pot.
According to a projection from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences a few years ago, cash set aside to cover pension costs in China are expected to be completely exhausted by 2035.
The retirement years will undoubtedly require a few more years of savings.
However, it wo n’t be a permanent solution and does n’t address China’s pressing demographic issues.
I have spent more than 40 years studying China’s people, and I think one of the most pressing problems the country has faced in recent years is the statistical issue.
With a reproduction level of 1.1 children per woman, which is significantly below the 2. 1 birth per woman required to maintain a local people, and more deaths per year than births, China’s potential is one of declining population and a significant increase in the number of old.
Compounding the problem, China has long been hostile to the idea of supplementing its indigenous population through immigration, only 0.1 % of its population is foreign-born – that’s the smallest portion of any big country in the world.
Practitioners know about contraction
For most of its duration, Communist China has seen people progress.
In 1950, many weeks after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the country’s population numbered 539 million. It finally rose every year for roughly 70 years, reaching 1.43 billion in 2021.
But at that place it peaked. In the following decades, China has had more deaths than birth and has lost people.
However, United Nations population estimates, recommend that if current trends continue China’s people will drop below 1 billion in 2070, below 800 million in 2086 and over to 633 million by 2100.
That would mean a decline in more than half its people today in the next 75 years. Untold financial issues would result from a people decline that extreme.
Older and smaller
But it is n’t simply about the drop in total number. The change in how the population is made up is likely to be more concerning.
According to UN images, in 2023 just under 20 % of China’s populace was in the recent retirement category of 60 and above. However, by 2100, this is projected to reach an incredible high of over 52 %.
The data also show that, at present, around 12 % of China’s population are young workers, aged 20 to 29, while 46 % are older people aged 30 to 59.
But by 2100, this work force is projected to fall dramatically to just over 7 % for younger employees and around 29 % for 30- to 59-year-olds.
Similarly, the number of children and young adults in China, those aged 19 and under, will drop from 21 % in 2023 to 11 % in 2100.
In summary, the population estimates for China do not suggest that the nation’s future will be good. Less people will be needed to provide for a growing number of dependents, mostly old.
However, China’s intention to raise the retirement age will only marginally help to lessen these changes ‘ problems. China’s people decline will not be slowed down by increasing the retirement age, and it will only have a small impact on the ratio of working adults to post-working-age individuals.
The need for relocation
There is, however, something that can alleviate this trend: emigration.
Many of the world’s leading nations with extremely lower fertility rates rely on worldwide migration to produce younger employees, and these young immigrants also have more children than the local population.
Compare, for instance, China’s low rate of 0.1 % foreign-born with almost 14 % foreign-born in the US and 18 % in Germany. Even the East Asian nations of Japan and South Korea have higher foreign-born percentages than China, at 2 % and 3.7 %, respectively.
The Taiwanese government has made a number of attempts to put policies in place to improve the delivery rate into place, but they have failed. In fact, practitioners tend to agree that like “pronatalist” laws tend not to be successful.
However, China, a nation with few immigration-related experiences and a scheinbar deep-rooted belief in racial purity, will struggle to implement and implement an effective immigration policy.
The larger Chinese people may be opposed to multiculturalism. The most affected by an increase in immigrants would be young Chinese employees. Some Chinese may lose their jobs and need to relocate if any policy that encourages mass immigration were to begin. This would be the case especially for young employees.
However, immigrants generally seek work in occupations that the local population does not want, sometimes referred to as” three Ds work” or as dirty, hazardous, and demeaning occupations. In the US and most of Europe, respectively, this has happened.
And the long-term effects will be more agonizing for China. By the start of the second centuries, China may be half as big as it is now and one of the world’s oldest nations, if not the oldest nation.
These trends are now putting pressure on Beijing, so pension reforms are necessary. But without the flow of a young refugee labor, China’s problems will be far worse.
Dudley L Poston Jr. is a professor of sociology at Texas A&, M University.
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