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March 2025

26Mar

Why China is betting on birth subsidies to solve its population crisis

When Tang Tang, a mother from Tianmen in central China, gave birth to her second child in December, it brought her family untold joy – and a thick wad of cash. Within months of leaving hospital, the local government paid Tang a 6,500-yuan (US$897) reward for having two children as part of a new birth subsidy scheme introduced last year. She will also receive an 800-yuan allowance every month until her new baby turns three. For a family in Tianmen, where...

March 26, 2025
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07Mar

How and Why the Gender Pension Gap in Urban China Decreased between 1988 and 2018

By Björn Gustafsson, Peng Zhan & Hanrui Jia In urban China, gender gaps in employment and earnings have steadily increased since the 1990s. Such gender gaps are important because pension rights and amounts are based on labor force participation and wages. However, as this study demonstrates, despite the rise in gender differences in the urban labor market, the average gender pension gap decreased between 1988 and 2018. In this paper, we describe the evolution of the fragmented pension system in...

March 7, 2025
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February 2025

07Feb

Challenges and concerns surrounding China’s retirement age reform

By China Labour Bulletin China is currently grappling with a pressing demographic challenge, marked by record-low birth rates and low retirement ages, leading to a continuous decline in the working-age population. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the working-age population dropped to 61.3% in 2023, down from 62% the previous year. The shrinking workforce and ageing population are increasingly straining China’s pension system. Current projections indicate that, without intervention, the social security system’s resources will be depleted by 2035. In response to...

February 7, 2025
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05Feb

China. Pensions Index expected to tackle aging challenges

In a significant move aimed at addressing the pressing global issue of aging, a top university in Shanghai has launched an innovative tool for sustainable and inclusive pension systems, which is expected to help China and other countries deal with the challenges. The China Pensions Index, which was created by East China Normal University, or ECNU, offers a comprehensive framework to assess and enhance pension systems, giving valuable insights to nations grappling with demographic shifts, a leading aging finance expert...

February 5, 2025
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January 2025

31Jan

The Looming Crisis: China’s Pension System Faces a Generational Challenge

By Jessica Huang China, a nation of immense scale and ambition, is in the grip of an urgent demographic crisis. Declining birth rates and rising life expectancy are rapidly aging the population. Within the next two decades, the number of retirement-age individuals is expected to surpass the entire population of the United States, with an estimated 402 million people over 60 by 2040—28% of China’s total population. This demographic shift is straining the workforce, social services, healthcare infrastructure, and economic productivity, marking...

January 31, 2025
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24Jan

China: Expansion of voluntary personal pension system

Employer Action Code: Act In 2022, China’s central government piloted new tax incentives in 36 cities and regions to encourage employees to make voluntary contributions to individual retirement accounts to complement social security pension benefits and help address the challenges of a rapidly aging population. After a successful pilot, the system is now fully implemented nationwide as of December 15, 2024. Key details The following changes to the individual accounts under the pilot program have been made: Money may be withdrawn in...

January 24, 2025
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23Jan

China moves to boost languishing markets by ordering funds to invest more in shares

The Chinese government is trying to encourage people to spend more by ensuring that share prices will rise, ordering pensions and mutual funds to invest more in domestic stocks to help jolt its languid markets out of the doldrums. Officials told reporters in Beijing on Thursday that beginning this year mutual funds should increase holdings of onshore stocks, called A-shares, by at least 10% a year over the next three years. Commercial insurance funds will have to put 30% of their...

January 23, 2025
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22Jan

China Plunges Deeper Into Unprecedented Population Crisis

China's population contracted for the third year in a row in 2024 despite an uptick in births. Newsweek reached out to the Chinese Foreign Ministry by email with a request for comment. Why It Matters Xi Jinping's Chinese Communist Party government has been rolling out measure after measure in hopes of encouraging young Chinese to have more children. Births have overall been on the decline despite the end of the decades-long one-child policy in 2016, leaving policymakers anxious over the impact this will...

January 22, 2025
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14Jan

China. Private pension plan to boost capital markets

The implementation of a private pension program nationwide will serve as an important driver for the increased maturity of Chinese capital markets, but there is still room for it to attract more users with a willingness to open accounts and invest, said experts. According to a notice jointly released by five central government departments, including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration, the private pension program began to be fully...

January 14, 2025
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09Jan

Why millions of young Chinese are refusing to make pension payments

China’s pension system is in danger of running out of cash within a decade due to severe underfunding. Now it faces a new threat: Tens of millions of mostly young workers are refusing to pay into it. On today’s Big Take Asia Podcast, host K. Oanh Ha talks to Bloomberg’s Qianwei Zhang about why workers are boycotting the system and what’s at stake for the struggling economy and the Communist Party. Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation: Gao Pengcheng...

January 9, 2025
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