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Article informationauthor, Kelly Ngrole, BBC News
1 hour ago
China plans to gradually raise the legal retirement age over the next five years to tackle an ageing population and a collapsing pension system.
Life expectancy in the country has risen from just 36 years at the time of the Communist revolution in 1949 to 78 years today, higher than that of the United States.
However, China’s retirement age remains among the lowest in the world at 60 for men, 55 for white-collar women and 50 for working-class women.
The plan to raise the retirement age is part of a series of resolutions adopted last week at the Third Plenary Session, the Communist Party’s top-level five-yearly meeting.
“We will proceed with the reform of gradually raising the statutory retirement age in a cautious and orderly manner, in line with the principle of voluntary participation with appropriate flexibility,” the party’s Central Committee said in a key policy document highlighting the reform.
It has not been specified by when and by how much the retirement age will be raised, but the China Pension Development Report published at the end of 2023 stated that “after adjustment, the final result may be 65 years old.”
The plan has been under consideration for several years as China’s pension budget shrinks.
The state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in 2019 that China’s main national pension fund would run out of cash by 2035, a prediction before the coronavirus pandemic hit China’s economy hard.
The state-run Global Times newspaper quoted a Chinese demographer as saying the plans to raise the retirement age emphasize “spontaneity” and “flexibility”, indicating authorities acknowledge that there is no one-size-fits-all policy when it comes to retirement age.
But the plan has sparked skepticism on the Chinese internet.
“People who want to retire early are exhausted from hard work, but those with comfortable, high-paying jobs don’t choose to retire. What kind of jobs will the younger generation end up taking?” wrote one user on Weibo, an X-like platform.
Others say delaying retirement will simply delay receiving your pension: “There’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get a job before you reach legal retirement age,” wrote one user.