The Chinese government’s recently announced 14th Five-Year Plan and Vision 2035 clearly states that it will gradually delay the statutory retirement age in accordance with four major principles. In recent months, the Chinese people have been quite concerned about the government’s policy of delaying retirement. Our reporter Jia Ao interviewed several mainland residents on Monday to get their views on the matter.
Don’t believe the government will push for reform in a gradual manner
The outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan and the 2035 Vision announced by the Chinese government on Friday clearly states that the authorities will gradually delay the statutory retirement age in accordance with the principles of “small step adjustment, flexible implementation, classification and balance”, sparking strong concern from all sectors of society. This has aroused strong concern from all walks of Life.
Xinhua News Agency recently quoted Jin Weigang, president of the China Academy of Labor and Social Security Sciences, an agency directly under the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, as saying that the reform would not be implemented in “one step”, but in smaller increments, such as delaying a few months each year. Therefore, people who are close to retirement in the early stage of the reform will not suddenly have to retire a few years later, while for young people, the extension of the retirement age will be greater, but they will have a long adaptation period.
Ren Ming, a 55-year-old freelancer who now lives in Shenzhen, told the station that he does not believe the government will push the reform forward gradually.
“‘Boiling a frog in warm water’ is a consistent strategy of the Chinese Communist Party, and it has always been so, and it turns out that Family planning is also in this form. Once policy implementation starts, it may be slow at first, but then it will accelerate quickly.”
Ren Ming, who used to work in the commercial insurance industry, said he noticed the flaws in China’s pension system many years ago and described the delayed retirement as simply “tearing down the east wall to patch up the west wall” because it could lead to more social conflicts, such as touching the vested interests that many people can look forward to.
Who will be blessed? And who will lose out?
On Weibo, the topic of “delaying retirement reform principles” has received 200 million readers and tens of thousands of discussions, and “vested interests” are the object of many people’s attention. Some netizens questioned whether the experts studying delayed retirement are nearing retirement age. The netizen said that Chinese officials generally do not want to retire early because they can easily get a high salary just by sitting on the job. Workers who do manual work want to retire early, but if retirement is delayed, the older population may be forced to go out to work to pay for their pensions.
Other netizens say that the reform will ultimately cut the “leeks” of the post-seventies and post-eighties, because by the Time they retire, the relevant policies will have been fully implemented, but these people face serious employment problems because of age discrimination in many industries.
The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security official Jin Weigang also revealed recently that delayed retirement will not be a “one-size-fits-all”, not that everyone must reach the delayed retirement age before retiring, but will increase the space for individuals to choose early retirement on their own. He also pointed out that the current legal retirement age for men and women in China is different, and the reformed policy will still distinguish between different groups and smoothly connect with the current policy.
Xie Minghua, who now teaches at a private school in China and is a former history teacher at a public high school in Heilongjiang, believes the policy will likely have the greatest impact on grassroots employees.
“Most people want to retire early and then think about other things. Nowadays, workers are really more strenuous and stressed, so one more year of work equals one more year of dedication to the authorities, which is actually nothing too necessary.”
Xie Minghua, 53, said that even though he resigned from the public school more than a decade ago, he has still been paying social security to this former unit for many years. He revealed that his wife is a doctor, and both of them believe that many people are likely to “not get their social security back” during their lifetime, so “the earlier they retire, the less they lose.
China’s proposed delay in retirement age has raised concerns (Photo by Radio Free Asia)
Scholars: It will aggravate the difficulty of employment
In 2012, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Development and Reform Commission and other departments jointly developed the outline of the 12th Five-Year Plan for Social Security, which proposed to “study the flexible The outline of the 12th Five-Year Plan for Social Security, jointly formulated by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Development and Reform Commission and other departments, proposed to “study the policy of flexibly delaying the pension age. Thus, the Chinese government has been mulling delaying the retirement age for some time.
Xinhua also recently reported that life expectancy in China has increased from about 40 years at the beginning of the country to 77.3 years in 2019, but the legal retirement age of 60 for men, 55 for female cadres and 50 for female workers has not been adjusted for nearly 70 years. The report also quoted unnamed experts as saying that the number of people born in 1963 during the “baby boom” will soon turn 60, which will lead to a rapid decrease in the number of contributors and an increase in the number of recipients of pension insurance in China, so this reform is imperative during the 14th Five-Year Plan. This reform is imperative during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.
According to U.S.-based Chinese demographer Yi Fuxian, China’s aging trend means that delaying retirement is clearly inevitable, but it will exacerbate the already intense employment conflict.
“If it is not postponed, China’s finances simply cannot bear it in the future. But if it is postponed, it faces an employment problem. Affected by family planning policies, China’s young consumer population is not large enough, and there is a surplus of more than 100 million people in the domestic workforce.”
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