Pension reform has taken centre stage in Singapore and Hong Kong over the past two years, and more recently, in Taiwan. Just two weeks ago, chaotic scenes outside Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan, forced a planned review of to be postponed to next month. But pension reform in these three Asian Tigers have been done for different reasons; in Singapore and Hong Kong, reforms have been motivated by a lack of pension adequacy, in Taiwan, pension adequacy is not an issue, but the pension fund is going bankrupt.

“The reform is like halting a horse on the edge of a cliff, and it is critically urgent to save the pension fund from the brink of bankruptcy,” Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said in response to the recent protests. According to Minister Without Portfolio Lin Wan-I, in an interview with the Chinese-language broadsheet Liberty Times, the debt from the pension system has reached NT$18 trillion (US$596 billion). He added: “The Public Service Pension Fund has been in the red since 2011. By 2020, the fund’s assets will be completely used up and the fund will be bankrupt.”

In Hong Kong, stickers which read, “Leung Chun-ying must keep his promise”, were pasted outside the Chief Executive’s office last June after protesters marched to his office. However, in announcing its reforms this year, the Hong Kong government ignored the protesters’ demands even though universal pension was a pillar in Leung’s last election promise.

The Singapore government was forced to consider reform of its pension system after blogger Roy Ngerng exposed the country’s pension adequacy issues – he was later sued by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. In response, Ngerng said that “(his) articles have been calling for greater accountability and transparency” and went on to organize “Return Our CPF” protests with similar demands. A Blackbox survey later showed that more than half of Singaporean respondents agreed with Ngerng that the CPF is unfair. The CPF, or Central Provident Fund, is Singapore’s national pension fund.

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