On Feb. 26, You Jun, vice minister of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the Communist Party of China, said that by the end of 2019, the proportion of people aged 60 and above had reached 18.1 percent, and it is expected that during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021 to 2025), the number of elderly people on the mainland will exceed 300 million, moving from the stage of mild aging to moderate aging.
Moreover, the number of working-age people on the mainland has been declining since 2012, with an average annual decrease of more than 3 million, and the rate of decrease is increasing, and is expected to decrease by 35 million during the 14th Five-Year Plan.
You Jun 26 also mentioned the “delayed retirement age” again, saying that “the current retirement age on the mainland is generally low and does not match the per capita Life expectancy.”
Speaking to Radio Free Asia, Mr. Liu, a mainland media personality who declined to give his full name due to security concerns, said that the aging population is not the main reason for the decline in the labor force, and delaying retirement will not solve the problem. The root cause is still the birth rate going all the way down, with fewer people filling in than retiring. Raising the retirement age can statistically alleviate the labor force problem, but there are many doubts whether 65-year-olds can in fact really become an effective labor force.
Qin Peng, a U.S.-based political and economic analyst, said that after delaying retirement, there will be fewer jobs for young people.
He said that the annual output value of most enterprises is close to fixed, or relatively stable growth, so the number of people needed is close to fixed. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said it would study the possibility of a gradual delay in retirement, meaning that it would try to reduce the impact so that people would feel less obvious.
Qin Peng also highlighted the fact that other countries have delayed retirement ages while various ancillary benefits are being raised.
He pointed out that other countries do not coordinate all the pensions, civil servants, state-owned enterprises and institutions do not pay, but take higher pensions than ordinary retired workers. The mainland has it. Normal countries have very good pension management, constantly increasing in value and not being misappropriated or embezzled by government officials. Other countries do not have such huge government and party organs to support, the mainland has.
Qin Peng also said that the Chinese Communist government only wants to continue to “make money” by delaying the retirement age, but refuses to massively reduce the size of the civil service, to solve the financial burden, so that the inefficient, large scale of state-owned enterprise assets to fill the pension. He believes that making the people pay more is a “trick”.
Xinhua, the official media of the Communist Party of China, reported last year that the 14th Five-Year Plan and the 2035 Visionary Goals proposed to “implement a gradual delay of the statutory retirement age. The news immediately stirred up heated public debate. People have speculated that the reason behind the official move may be related to the shortage of pension funds.
Reuters reported on the 26th that the “Study on the Third Pillar of Pensions in Mainland China” predicts that there will be a pension shortfall of 8 to 10 trillion yuan in the next 5 to 10 years, and this shortfall will further expand over Time.
The report also mentioned that mainland China is actually “aging and having fewer children in parallel,” and that despite the liberalization of the two-child policy in 2016, the birth rate is declining instead of increasing; the issue of population aging will likely be one of the focuses of the Communist Party’s two sessions next week.
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