China will gradually raise its legal retirement age over the next five years to try to cope with an aging population and a struggling pension system.
Life expectancy in the country has now surpassed that of the United States, reaching 78 years, from just 36 years at the time of the Communist revolution in 1949.
But China’s retirement age remains one of the lowest in the world — 60 for men, 55 for white-collar women and 50 for working women.
The plan to raise the retirement age was part of a series of resolutions passed last week at the Communist Party’s top-level meeting held every five years, known as the Third Plenum.
“In line with the principle of voluntary participation with appropriate flexibility, we will push forward reforms to gradually increase the statutory retirement age in a cautious and orderly manner,” the party’s central committee said in a key policy document outlining the reforms.
The China Pension Development Report released at the end of 2023 did not specify how much or when the retirement age would increase, but said in a paragraph that “65 years old may be the final result after adjustment.”
The plan has been in the works for several years, as China’s pension budget is running low.
The state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in 2019 that the country’s main state pension fund would run out of money by 2035 — and that was before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, which has hit China’s economy hard.
At the same time, the country’s huge population fell for the second consecutive year in 2023. as the birth rate continues to decline.
The state-run Global Times newspaper cited demographers in China as saying the plan to raise the retirement age emphasizes “voluntariness” and “flexibility”, showing the government acknowledges that there is no one-size-fits-all policy when it comes to retirement.
However, the plan has caused some skepticism on the Chinese internet.
“Those who want to retire early are exhausted from their hard work, but those who are doing comfortable, high-income jobs will not choose to retire. What kind of jobs will the younger generation do?” one user wrote on Weibo, an X-like platform.
Some people argue that retiring late simply means a delay in accessing your pension. “There is no guarantee that you will still have a job before the statutory retirement age,” one user wrote.
