It is understandable that the plan to raise the retirement age has sparked online debates, because the move involves individuals interests. In China currently, the retirement age for men is 60, while for women, it is 55 for white-collar workers and 50 for blue-collar employees. Per China Economic Weekly(in Chinese), two possibilities are under serious consideration among people who have the power to influence the final decision. People are living longer at the same time as the number of y oung people in the labor force is declining. Raising retirement age necessary and reasonable. China will raise the statutory age for retirement in a gradual, flexible, and differentiated manner. 3. That is 17.8 percent of the population and it may exceed 33 percent by 2053, a prominent think-tank has said. Chinese officials have slowly been warming the public up to the idea. In China currently, the retirement age for men is 60, while for women, it is 55 for white-collar workers and 50 for blue-collar employees. So the government should carefully monitor the labor market, and pay closer attention to the employment problems faced by young people and to older employees' safety. Source: SupChina (11/11/20) Yang told the magazine that he was in favor of the first method because raising womens retirement age was a matter of acute urgency. The global average was 62.7 years for men and 61.3 years for women, according to an analysis of 70 countries by insurer Allianz SE, reported Bloomberg. // According to a survey conducted last year by the Changjiang Daily in Wuhan, more than 80% of the 96,000 responders online opposed delaying the retirement age, mainly because of their physical decline and the difficulty in finding suitable jobs. Second, some people are against raising the retirement age because they feel they may be forced to work for a few "extra years". If you travel abroad, youll find that people over 60 are still working and thats normal.. It is understandable that the plan to raise the retirement age has sparked online debates, because the move involves individuals' interests. Is this what the government wants down the road? a Weibo userwrote(in Chinese). Read more, Your email address will not be published. WebThe retirement age for employees in the public sector and at state-owned enterprises is set at 60 for men, 55 for female office workers and 50 for female blue-collar workers. The wider the debate is, the clearer the issues will become. So the government should carefully monitor the labor market, and pay closer attention to the employment problems faced by young people and to older employees' safety. In Japan, it's 65. During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, the statutory retirement age will be raised in a phased manner, according to recently released documents. Your email address will not be published. We will go straight to crematoriums after reaching the retirement age, leaving no burden to the country. For most men in China the age is 60, much lower than the average of 64.2 in the OECD, a club mostly of rich countries. Last year, Chinas 14th five-year work plan laid out how it intends to address the pension problem, including by raising the retirement age. If they retire or have retired at 60, and are expected to live up to 80, they would have worked for about 40 years and would draw pensions for about 20 years. Required fields are marked *. According to the Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035, China will take small steps to raise the retirement age. As a result, the government has for some years been hinting that workers would need to delay their retirement, despitestrong opposition from the public. China faces what experts call a demographic time-bomb as its elderly population increases while its workforce gets smaller, partly due to a one-child policy in place for about four decades until it was finally scrapped in 2016. Thanks for contacting us. For women, it is 50 for blue-collar workers and 55 for civil servants. This story has been shared 101,746 times. Third, many believe raising the retirement age will reduce employment opportunities for young people, as fewer new posts would be created due to people's retirement. Drafted by Chinas top leaders, the proposal received a unanimous vote of approval in late October, when officials of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party gathered in Beijing for their annual meeting, which is formally known as a plenum. China's current retirement system distinguishes between men and women, and the employees of State-owned enterprises and privately-owned companies have different opinions on delayed retirement. As a result of one-child policy, the labor force is declining, and aging is accelerating. The chilling effects of a shrinking workforce and a rapidly growing number of seniors are predicted to be severe. Anger flares anew as China moves closer to raising retirement age, gathered in Beijing for their annual meeting. In many other countries, leaving the workforce at 65 is the norm; Chinas earlier and gendered retirement ages have been in place since 1951, when the countrys life expectancy was less than 50 years. The fact is, there is no such thing as a nationwide shortfall in the pension funds, because the situation varies from region to region. Theres a lot of resistance to changing retirement age, says Ye Liu, a sociologist and senior lecturer in international development at Kings College London. By keeping the age unusually young in comparison, the typical American leaves the workforce at age 63, China was hoping to bring more young people into the workforce and capitalize on their fresh ideas and healthy bodies. For now government funding is critical. The current statutory retirement age in China is 60 years for male workers, 55 years for female cadres and 50 years for female workers. Learning from other countries' practices, some policies can be adopted to help people accept the delayed retirement plan. Yi said that when China established its retirement system in the 1950s, it was a younger country with a large labor force and very few people old enough to be on social security. So the retirement age should be extended in line with the structural changes of individuals' life-cycle, especially working years. For instance, it should be made clear to employees that the longer they contribute to the pension funds, the higher pension they will draw after retirementand early retirement will result in reduced pension. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government said last year it was considering Its imperative that we apply the same rule to men and women first. Now that high prices are causing young people to be reluctant to have children, China's demographics are becoming increasingly imbalanced, which exacerbates the problems caused by aging, he added. Current growth rates suggest the population of people who are 60 and over will exceed 300 million sometime between 2021 and 2025. But getting people to agree to changes in the retirement age has never been easy regardless of whether it is France, Russia, the U.S. or China. China's current retirement system distinguishes between men and women, and the employees of State-owned enterprises and privately-owned companies have different According In the next 10 years, 123.9 million more people will enter the age category of 55 and above, the largest demographic increase among all age ranges, according to Morgan Stanley. And given their longer life expectancy, they will receive pensions for a longer period of time, putting extra pressure on the pension system. By comparison, the current retirement age in the U.S. is 66, although that depends on the year of birth. In 2018, nearly 250 million of Chinas 1.4 billion people were aged 60 or over. At the same time, You said that China's working-age population has been declining for the past 10 years, by more than 3 million workers a year since 2012, and its expected to decrease 35 million in the next five years. var oTime = new Date(); To answer the question, let us start from the laws. The Regulations on the Management of the Employment of Foreigners in China provides that in China, the minimum employment age for a foreigner is 18, but there is no explicit provision to specify whether they shall be bound by requirements of the Chinese statutory retirement age. Dongliang Zheng, director of the Institute of Labor Science at MOHRSS, predicted last year that China's working-age population would decline sharply after 2020, from a peak of more than 900 million in 2011 to about 700 million in 2050. When broached in the past, that idea has proven unpopular with the young, who fear it will delay their own work opportunities, as well as the old, who are looking forward to collecting benefits. The gap in social security funds is growing, which is very troublesome.. Chinas one-child policy has contributed to the aging problem. Chinas national pension fund is running out of money as people live longer at the same time as the number of young people in the labor force is declining. Many countries with pension insurance surplus are drawing up plans for raising the retirement age, which shows that delayed retirement is not necessarily related to balanced distribution of pension funds, which is a problem that requires long-term solutions. For women, it is 50 for blue-collar workers and 55 for civil servants. Chinas mandatory retirement age has remained unchanged at 60 for men and 55 for women or 50 for blue-collar women for the past 40 years. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abes government said last year it was considering raising it to 70 or even 75. China Daily | "The Communist Party's family planning policy has been in place for so many years, and although it has now been abolished, young people are now reluctant to have more children because of increasing living expenses, such as housing, health care and education. You also said that by the end of 2019, more than 18% of Chinas population, or 254 million people, were aged 60 or older. If they retire or have retired at 60, and are expected to live up to 80, they would have worked for about 40 years and would draw pensions for about 20 years. The debate on delayed retirement shows reform of social policies has transformed from the inclusive to the structural model, which will face more challenges and need more political wisdom and practical strategies to resolve. For example, most people born in the 1960s started working after graduating from high school. The first misunderstanding is that the government is mulling raising the retirement age to make up the so-called shortfall in pension funds. During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, the statutory retirement age will be raised in a phased manner, according to recently released documents. . to contribute up to around $1,800 annually, current contributions to pay older generations. Also, people should be given some retirement options to choose from. How about not allowing people to retire until they are 80? At present, the retirement age in China is 60 for men. The reform also faces challenges such as promoting employment and entrepreneurship of older workers through more targeted means, and offering more social security subsidies to those who have difficulty finding jobs and helping them get reemployed, said Jin. You Jun, vice minister of MOHRSS, said China's current retirement age is generally low, does not match life expectancy and runs counter to demographic changes. document.write(oTime.getFullYear()); Women in managerial positions have a retirement age of 55, while blue-collar female workers can retire at 50. For female civil servants the age is 55; for Postponing retirement is an inevitable trend, the state-run Securities Times wrote in a commentary on Friday. Therefore, delayed retirement can be better understood in terms of life-cycle and working years. China's current retirement system distinguishes between men and women, and the employees of State-owned enterprises and privately-owned companies have different opinions on delayed retirement. Although the policy ended in 2015, the nations birth rate has been declining overall since. In South Korea, where 25 percent of the population may be 65 or older by 2030, workers retire at around 68 for men and 67 for women. These differences will stay in place to ensure policy continuity, said Jin. Jin said retirement age reform requires overall planning and coordination as it involves many supporting policies and measures. Raising retirement age necessary and reasonable. Nowadays, people start working at a much later age. BEIJING A decision by the Communist Party of China to raise the retirement age under a long-term economic and development plan has sparked anger on social media in fast-greying China. Skip recommended stories carousel and go to main content. Interested in writing for a global audience, she attended the NYU Graduate School of Journalism for its Global & Joint Program Studies, which allowed her to pursue a journalism career along with her interest in international relations. The new retirement policy needs to be fair to all groups. Chinese family planning officials once said that about 400 million fewer people had been born in the past several decades, according to Chinas official Peoples Daily. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). On the other hand, raising the retirement age is a powerful policy in the short to medium term. Thedocument (in Chinese), published by Xinhua on November 3, outlines a wide range of long-term objectives that China aspires to achieve in the next 15 years. China plans to raise retirement ages gradually over a number of years instead of in a drastic one-time change, a government researcher said last week, without providing The wider the debate is, the clearer the issues will become. Since then, major demographic changes have taken place. All rights reserved. Chinas pension systems are drastically underfunded for the growing number of people set to retire in coming years, and the costs of sustaining that net will become prohibitive if people can continue to retire as early as they do now. The current statutory retirement age in China is 60 years for male workers, 55 years for female cadres and 50 years for female workers. That means delaying retirement could incidentally hurt another of Chinas goals: getting younger women to have more children. Actually, China proposed to study the pros and cons of extending the retirement age during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period, and delayed retirement has been on many countries' agenda for a long time. Jiayun Feng was born in Shanghai, where she spent her first 20 years and earned a bachelors degree in journalism at Fudan University. Fu-Xian Yi, senior scientist of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has been critical of Chinas one child policy according to CNBC, said, The whole economic and social pattern is planned for the one-child policy, which is difficult to change. We are old before getting rich, Yi said. For example, most people born in the 1960s started working after graduating from high school. That likely means starting by experimenting regionally. A better pension system isnt the only thing China will need if it wants to up its retirement age. YES, China likely will have to increase the retirement age. Not if, but when, as it is too low now. Most countries do that when faced with this problem. Life expectancy has risen to 76 from 36 in 1949. Authoritative China may be luckier here for Zhongnanhai dont need to waste time in mindless debates, useless arguments and populist voting. People want to retire earlier. 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