Houston Community News >> Chinese Retirement Worries
10/3/2007-- According to a
survey conducted by China Youth Daily's Social
Survey Center and Sina.com's News Center during the week of September 17, nearly
90 percent of Chinese are worried about how they will finance their retirement.
More than 59 percent of the 3,871 respondents are feeling financial pressure
from supporting their parents and only 20 percent think they can partially rely
on the government for support.
The number of people over 60 has now reached 140 million in
China, constituting 11 percent of the total
population. Census data showed there were 10 million elderly living in poverty
last year, with 8 million of those living in rural areas.
According to Tang Jun, secretariat of Policy Studies at the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences, social service institutions for elderly people have an average
vacancy of 24.4 percent, despite the fact that China lags far behind developed
countries, as well as many developing countries, in the development of elderly
care institutions.
"The monthly cost of 2,000 to 3000 yuan is not affordable for the average
Chinese," said Xu Zongwei, deputy director of the Policy and Rule Division of
the Department of Construction Administration.
It's the citizens' right to have old-age pension; it's the responsibility of a
government to provide it," Tang Jun wrote in an article. He believes retired
people have already paid their premium. He feels that if the government simply
responds to social problems passively without actively taking action to improve
the social welfare system, providing for the elderly will become a very costly
problem in the future.
Contributed by Epoch Times