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BEIJING: The Chinese Communist Party’s decision to raise the retirement age under a long-term economic and development plan has sparked outrage on social media in China, which is turning gray.
In 2018, nearly 250 million of China’s 1.4 billion people were 60 years or older. That’s 17.8 percent of the population, and it may exceed 33 percent by 2053, a leading think tank has said.
The authorities “will implement the postponement of the retirement age gradually,” the official Xinhua news agency said in a report this month, citing the government’s goals for 2035.
No details were given, but the report has caused a stir.
“Delaying retirement means we have to postpone our pension,” wrote a Weibo platform user on Friday (November 20).
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For more than four decades, China’s retirement age has remained unchanged at 60 for men and 55 for women civil servants and white-collar workers.
Authorities have yet to raise the retirement age, although a suggestion to do so in 2013 sparked strong public opposition.
“Delaying retirement, which has no rationality or necessity, is due to ideological considerations that only when the interests and health of the people are sacrificed can there be economic development,” said another user of social networks.
China faces what experts call a “demographic time bomb” as its elderly population increases while its workforce shrinks, in part due to a one-child policy in place for about four decades until it was finally removed in 2016.
“Postponing retirement is an inevitable trend,” the state-run Securities Times wrote in a comment on Friday.
“If you travel abroad, you will find that people over 60 are still working, and that is normal.”
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The retirement age in China is lower than in many other countries. In Japan, it’s 65. The government of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last year that it was considering increasing it to 70 or even 75.
In South Korea, where 25 percent of the population may be 65 or older in 2030, workers retire at about 68 years for men and 67 for women.
China’s aging population will also put enormous pressure on its pension system. An official investigation report showed that China’s total pension fund could be “insolvent” as early as 2035.
