August 2022

Inequality of Opportunity and Health Performance of Private Health Insurance — Empirical Evidence from China

By Rui Li, Minxue Jia & Su Yang Background: The role of private health insurance in protecting the population's health is an essential global concern. However, the for-profit nature of private health insurance has led to inequality of opportunity for coverage, which has implications for the health performance of insurance.Method: This article uses the 2018 China Urban Statistics Yearbook and cross-sectional data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) of 2015 and 2018. Based on the Heckman two-step...

July 2022

In a Highly Indebted Economy: Security Issues for the Asset-based China’s Reform and the Financial System

By Tianyong Zhou Since the start of the 21st century, all major global economies have been experiencing a shift to a model of low consumption, low interest rate, low inflation, low growth and high debt. China is no exception. This article argues that in the high-indebtedness economic model, the proportion of committed and guaranteed debt service credit is decreasing, while the proportion of asset-backed credit corresponding to debt is on the rise; and with respect to currency stability, the role...

China faces largest retirement wave in next 10 years

It is estimated that in the next 10 years, an average of 20 million people will retire each year, according to a recently published article by Banyuetan, a journal under China’s Xinhua News Agency. According to mainland media, the first impact of the retirement wave is the significant decline of the working-age population. Peng Xizhe, Dean of the Institute of Aging at Fudan University, pointed out that in the tide of retirement, more than 20 million people will retire every year....

China’s population to start to shrink before 2025: Global Times

China's population growth rate has slowed significantly and is expected to turn negative ahead of 2025, the state-backed Global Times reported, citing a senior health official. Birth data released late on Sunday showed that the number of new births in 2021 was the lowest in decades in several provinces. The number of births in the central Hunan Province fell below 500,000 for the first time in nearly 60 years, the Global Times said. Only China's southern Guangdong Province had more than...

Sistema privado de pensiones: la apuesta de China por dinamizar su economía

De ahora en adelante, los trabajadores dependientes chinos podrán invertir y complementar los fondos en sus cuentas de pensión, dijeron las autoridades de Beijing la semana pasada, lanzando así el primer plan privado de pensiones del país a medida que enfrentan los desafíos económicos relacionados con el envejecimiento de la población. Los empleados podrán aportar hasta US$ 1.860 por año a su fondo de pensión bajo el nuevo esquema, que se implementará con pruebas de un año en algunas ciudades...

China Turns to Automation and Robotics to Solve Aging Problem

The impact of an aging population has taken a toll on China’s economy. Industrial automation and robotics could be the solution. We believe that China is at the beginning of a structural shift thanks to the country’s policy support, demographic trends and technological progress. Furthermore, the ongoing trend of domestic substitution will likely provide a fertile breeding ground for local champions to be born and thrive – and our portfolio companies Shenzhen Inovance Technology Co., Ltd Class A (“Inovance”) (0.64%...

June 2022

China: Securities regulator proposes rules for inclusion of mutual funds in private pension scheme

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has said that mutual funds with at least CNY50m ($7.48m) of assets over the past four quarters are eligible to participate in the country's pilot private pension scheme. The securities regulator has proposed rules to regulate mutual funds, setting the criteria for qualified products and sales agents under a private pension scheme that will channel fresh savings into the country's capital markets, reported Reuters. The draft rules, published on 24 June, follow the launch by...

Financial Literacy, Gender and Investment Choices

By Xin Wen, Zhiming Cheng & Massimiliano Tani Over the past thirty years Chinese households have enjoyed substantive increases in income and savings and witnessed a rapidly developing financial market offering investment choices and risks away from bank deposits – the traditional form of financial investment. We explore whether this evolving landscape has been advantageous to every investor or mainly those with better financial literacy, by focusing on the portfolio decisions of the household head, by gender. Using data from...

Hong Kong Pension Pot Shrinks 11% on China Market Turmoil

It’s been a bad year for Hong Kong residents counting on Greater China for their retirement savings. The mandatory provident fund -- Hong Kong’s pension system -- has lost about 11% since the start of 2021, walloped by China’s industry crackdowns and Covid Zero policy, which overshadowed gains in US assets. That erased HK$130 billion ($17 billion) in total, or about HK$28,300 for each account at the end of May, according to researcher MPF Ratings Ltd. The retirement losses add to...

China: National pension insurer’s first annuity product approved

Beijing-headquartered national pension insurer, Guomin Pension & Insurance Co, has got off on a flying start with approval from CBIRC for a product named "Guomin Good Life Pension Annuity Insurance". This is the first annuity insurance of plan of the start-up company that was established only in March 2022. The product was included in the catalogue of filed life insurance products on the official website of the CBIRC in mid-May. This product, which pays benefits for the rest of the policyholder's...