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An elderly man pushes a woman wearing a face mask in a wheelchair adorned with the Chinese national flag in Beijing. The Chinese government plans to raise the retirement age, a move that has upset workers. Photo: AFP

‘It’s hard for women over 50 to find jobs’: retirement age revision plans in China spark anger

  • With state pension fund set to run out of money by 2035 as the population rapidly ages, authorities plan to ‘postpone the retirement age in a gradual manner’
  • China’s retirement age has not changed for more than four decades, and is lower than that in many other Asian countries and Western nations

Xiao Xue, a stay-at-home mother in Shanghai, is excited she will be celebrating her 50th birthday next year because she will be eligible to receive pensions.

For people like Xiao, who are unemployed, the retirement age is 50.

“I have been paying for the social security scheme all these years as a freelancer,” she told the Post. “I feel I am lucky because I can retire at 50, but for people younger than me, they probably have to retire at an older age and they hate that.”

China’s retirement policy was set 50 years ago, with men allowed to file for retirement benefits when they turn 60. Women in blue-collar jobs can retire when they are 50, while the retirement age for female office workers is 55.

An elderly Chinese man pulls his old wooden wagon full of recyclable trash through Beijing. Photo: AFP

However, the Chinese government released a directive this month that suggests it is seriously considering asking citizens to delay their retirement.

The directive quickly went viral online and has been met with widespread opposition from the Chinese public, with people worried they will have to wait longer to receive their pensions.

Single mother in China exposes a legal Catch-22

China wants to raise retirement ages because, as things stand, the state pension fund will probably run out of money by 2035 as the population rapidly ages. The country is expected to become an “aged society” by 2022.

The recent document from the Central Committee of the Communist Party, released in early November, does not get into specifics about the changes, but it confirms that a retirement-age policy proposal will be put into action soon.

The only policy detail in the document is a sentence saying the authorities will “implement postponing the retirement age in a gradual manner”. Still, this has touched a nerve in China. Tens of thousands of angry comments have been left on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

An elderly worker looks towards chimney stacks in a field outside a power plant in Xingtai, Hebei province. Photo: AFP

“What’s the benefits of this policy for ordinary people? Who are those experts behind the policy proposal? Have they consulted with grass-roots citizens?” wrote one Weibo user.

“It’s hard for women over 50 to find jobs. Where does their income come from, then?” asked another user.

China’s retirement age is younger than that in many other Asian countries and Western nations. The retirement age in Japan, one of the world’s oldest countries, is 65, but former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s government said last year it was considering raising the retirement age to 70 or 75.

In South Korea, where the population is also rapidly ageing, workers effectively retire at around 68 years old for men and 67 for women.

It means people’s working years have been shrunk and the period during which they receive pensions has been extended. It’s difficult for the pension budget to be balanced
Guo Lei, an associate professor of public administration from the School of Economics and Management at Tongji University in Shanghai

In the United States, full Social Security benefits kick in at 66 years and two months for people born in 1955. It will gradually rise to 67 for those born in 1960 or later.

At the beginning of this year, the French government scrapped a pension reform plan to raise the age at which workers could retire with full benefits from 62 to 64 after the proposal triggered a massive protest.

Peng Xizhe, director of Fudan University’s Centre for Population and Development Policy Studies, said the Chinese government was aware of the obstacles to deferring the retirement age. He said that was why it would carry out the reform “gradually and cautiously”.

“In my understanding, the authorities will only decide and release the timeline and blueprint for the retirement age change in the 15th Five-year Plan period, which is between 2021 and 2025,” Peng told the Post. “The reforms will be actually implemented after 2025.”

Elderly Chinese perform their morning exercise routines at Dandong in China’s Liaoning province. Photo: AFP

He said it was likely that men and women would retire at the same age in the future.

But Guo Lei disagrees. Guo, an associate professor of public administration from the School of Economics and Management at Tongji University in Shanghai, thinks the retirement age will be raised in the next five years.

“The final draft of the change has not been released to the public, but I think some basic principles are guaranteed to happen. For example, [retirement pensions] will be deferred by several months year by year. Besides that, men’s and women’s retirement ages will be aligned step by step,” Guo told the Post.

The academic said it was reasonable for China to let its citizens retire later because people’s life expectancy and their time spent in the education system are longer than decades ago.

An elderly Chinese man rides his micro-bike along a street in Beijing. Photo: AFP

“It means people’s working years have been shrunk and the period during which they receive pensions has been extended,” Guo said. “It’s difficult for the pension budget to be balanced, so it’s necessary to make a change for the sake of this system’s sustainability.”

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