Experts said that population aging may lead China to count more deaths than births in 2022, 12 years earlier than the UN predicted. They suggested boosting commercial insurance to support the elderly given the current inadequate old age welfare system.

Chinese people aged over 65 have surpassed 14% of the total population in 2021, which is an important indicator and means the country has formally become an aged society, said Zheng Bingwen, director of the Center for International Social Security Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Zheng pointed out at Tsinghua PBCSF Global Finance Forum on Sunday that in 2000 China stepped into an aging society when its ratio of aged-population reached 7% and it only took the Chinese society 22 years to transfer from “aging” to “aged” status, a much shorter time period compared with some developed countries such as France, US and Japan who spent 115 years, 69 years and 26 years on the transition respectively.

As China is predicted to become super-aged in 2035 when more than 20% of its people will be above 65, Zheng warned the increasing burden for Chinese young people of supporting the elderly.

“China’s dependency ratio was 17.9% in 2020, which meant that about six young people were needed to support one old man. But the ratio may surpass 43% in 2050, meaning every old man will have only 1.3 supporters,” Zheng explained.

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