Raising retirement age in China ‘unwise’, says expert at government think tank
Researcher says further relaxing the one-child policy to boost the size of workforce the best way to cope with the higher welfare and pension costs of millions more retiring
An expert on China’s social security system has described the government’s plans to raise the retirement age to cope with the nation’s ageing population as unwise, according to a newspaper report.
Tang Jun, a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warned the government could not be too careful when introducing the policy of raising the retirement age and forcefully pushing through the plans would lead to “worrying consequences”, the Huashang Daily newspaper reported.
The Human Resources and Social Security Minister Yin Weimin announced yesterday that China would roll out a detailed plan by 2017 to raise the retirement age. He said it was inevitable that people would have to work longer as the number of people retiring increased, putting a huge strain on the country’s pension system.
Tang told the newspaper the best plan was to encourage people to have more children to help with welfare costs and to boost the size of the workforce and the second best method was to accept immigrants to also increase the size of the country’s labour force.
“The worst plan is to postpone retirement,” he was quoted as saying.
Tang suggested employers and employees be allowed to negotiate the retirement age themselves, a system that Shanghai adopted in 2010 but which has so far only received a lukewarm response from the public.
