China’s Plan to Raise Retirement Age Draws Public’s Ire

China’s recent decision to raise the official retirement age will save billions of yuan each year, but is drawing strong opposition from the public.

China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS) made an announcement on June 5 that it will raise the retirement age for collecting pension payments. According to the MHRSS, this could decrease the country’s 1.7 trillion yuan (US$267.6 billion) social security fund deficit by about 20 billion yuan (US$3.1 billion) every year, the National Business Daily said in a June 12 report.

The MHRSS announcement was greeted with strong opposition and discontent by Chinese netizens.

A survey conducted by state-run People’s Daily online indicated that as of June 12, more than 93.7 percent of people oppose the policy.

A Beijing scholar named Ye Kuangzheng posted on his Weibo microblog that a study published by a bank in China predicts that by the year 2033 deficits in retirement pensions will reach 68.2 trillion yuan (US$10.7 trillion), which will account for 38.7 percent of that year’s GDP.

“State-owned assets are currently valued at more than 30 trillion yuan, yet the people don’t benefit from their profits. The annual ‘three official consumption expenses’ [public funds misappropriated by corrupt officials for travels, etc.] amount to billions of yuan. There would be no insolvency problem if the money for the ‘consumption expenses’ could be allocated to the pension fund. There would be no need to implement a ‘delay to retire’ policy either, which has provoked much backlash from the public,” Ye said.

Beijing lawyer Yu Guofu said on his microblog: “The previous generation of laborers were willing to work for extremely low wages because [they believed] that in exchange they were promised retirement pensions … but instead of using [that profit] for the retirement fund, [the government] has written it all off, and uses the contributions of the next generation of laborers to solve the issue.”

Read the original Chinese article.

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