The graying of China

CHONGQING, CHINA -- One of the world's oldest nations is getting older. China's population of 1.3 billion is graying rapidly and the country, which now has about 146 million senior citizens, will have almost 290 million by 2025 -- nearly the entire population of the United States -- according to a study released last month by China's State Council.

With the number of people 60 and over increasing by 6 million a year and few social welfare programs, the fate of China's aged is uncertain. In areas such as central Chongqing and Sichuan provinces, where aging levels exceed the national average, the lack of government support for the elderly is clearly felt.

"We have nothing to do, and we sit around all day playing mah-jongg," said Dai Yong Fa, a senior in You Liang village in Chongqing, as she gestured to the tables of retirees along the main street of her village. "We get nothing from the government, and we have nothing -- even our kids are away in the cities working."

In China, where age and experience are revered, retirement has been seen as a "golden time" when a person could sit back and enjoy the rewards of a lifetime's work, the love and care of children and grandchildren, and communal respect. Because of the tradition of families caring for older relatives, the government never created a strong safety net for seniors.

It was only when children could not or would not care for their parents that the state stepped in to help in a very modest way. China's old-age homes can accommodate just 1.5 million people -- about 1 percent of the population 60 and over -- according to the National Working Committee on Aging.

Increasing numbers of children are moving away from their hometowns. A recent survey conducted in Beijing found that about half of the city's seniors now live alone. While most children still financially support their parents, it has become a strain. Since China generally limits each family to one child, a typical couple now has to support four elders.

"We don't need our children to help us," Dai said proudly when asked whether her children, who have migrated to the cities, help her financially. "We are self-sufficient and can take care of ourselves."

But the truth is that poverty seriously threatens China's elderly, as few have significant savings. In the Maoist years, rural communities toiling away in collectives received housing, food coupons, and clothes as compensation, so no one really made any money.

Urban workers employed by the government and state-owned enterprise fared slightly better. They receive meager pensions, but now even those are under threat. The World Bank says China's pension debt of about $1.5 trillion is woefully underfunded, in part because pension money is often misused by corrupt government officials. In September, Shanghai's Communist Party chief, Chen Liangyu, was dismissed for misusing pension money. Two months later, China's National Audit Office announced it had uncovered $1 billion in misused pension funds.

To ease the burden on retirees, the government makes it relatively easy for them to obtain subsidized housing and there are special stores where the cost of food is subsidized. But these efforts are waning since China embraced free-market principles, eliminating subsidies and allowing the market to set prices, said Ding Ning Ning, director of social studies at the Development Research Center of the State Council in Beijing. "We adopted the American model of development and economics, but now we are seeing the problems," Ding said. "The worst impact is in healthcare."

Where once almost all Chinese were covered by a rudimentary healthcare system, today about half the country lacks healthcare coverage. The problem is particularly severe for the aged because they do not have the income to pay for treatment, Ding said.

At the same time, life expectancy in China has crept up since reforms began in 1979, from 66 years to 72.

China officially became an aging society in 1999 -- defined as one in which more than 10 percent of the population is 60 and over -- but it has been slow to respond. Now, according to Li Bengong, vice director of the National Working Commission on Aging, "everything must be completed in terms of addressing the problem of the aging of the population before 2030."

One proposal is to end the one-child policy and encourage births. The government is also experimenting with different healthcare policies. But the central problem is cost. While advanced countries that have aging patterns similar to China's have annual per capita incomes of about $10,000, China's annual per capita income is just about $1,300, said Chen Zhi, chief of the department of population and social science in Sichuan Province, which has the highest proportion of seniors in China.

"We are like a man getting old before he gets rich," Chen recently told the local press.

The ratio of workers to retirees in China will decline to about 2 to 1 by 2040, short of the 5 to 1 ratio that economists say is needed to support a US-style Social Security system where workers pay for retirees. The government is also loath to pay pensions from general tax revenue as that would greatly burden the treasury.

Seniors who lived through China's wild political swings over the past half-century are left feeling alienated and lost. Trained to create a communist utopia, they now find themselves in a post-industrial, knowledge-led economy, where cozy old neighborhoods are torn down to make way for huge shopping centers and office high-rises. Some older residents in Beijing say they cannot venture far from their homes because they are illiterate and can't read road signs along new streets.

Alone, often widowed or divorced, most seniors spend their days on wobbly stools and tables they set up outside corner dumpling restaurants, playing low-stakes games of Chinese-style three-card poker, checkers, chess, and mah-jongg. Many of them still wear the worn blue Mao suits that were the standard national uniform from 1949 to the mid-1970s, and the men smoke incessantly as they quibble over game rules and weather predictions.

This sense of community keeps China's retirees feeling alive, and in the early mornings groups of seniors often meet to do tai-chi and other forms of exercise in parks and town squares. It is also common to see elderly couples waltzing in public places as a battered cassette recorder spills out music from another time.

No one discusses politics, at least not in front of foreign journalists.

"You foreigners only want to create problems for China," one of Dai's friends snapped when asked what his retirement was like.

Years of living under Maoist rule have made many elders wary of outsiders. Many cannot read and write effectively and have no marketable skills. That, coupled with high unemployment rates, means it is almost impossible for retirees to find even part-time work.

Yet retirees have not been shy about pushing authorities for adequate pensions and criticizing corruption in their pension plans. Over the past decade, seniors have staged hundreds of protests and sit-ins, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

"In the cities, people get something -- I think about $5 a month," said Dai, referring to a provincial program in Chongqing in which seniors get a monthly stipend. "But in the villages, we get nothing. The [Communist Party] cadres take everything. This is how it is."

To tamp down rising discontent among seniors, Beijing has created a National Social Security Fund that receives money from state-run lotteries, as well as 10 percent of the proceeds from initial public offerings of state-owned companies that go public abroad. But the total fund is only about $32 billion, which is considered far from sufficient.

Many seniors say they are resigned to being ignored by the government.

"I've never had a happy period of my life that I can look back on," said Tan Guang Quan, 70, a widow in Guangtiantou commune in central Chongqing who depends on her sons for financial support. "Now things are getting better, but not for me. My life is over."