As the fifth plenary session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China approaches, several issues are being brought to the table. A top priority will be the nation’s quickly growing population of retirees.
The senior citizens of China are fairly active; they frequently can be found dancing in parks and bartering relentlessly with the best of them. The more bad ass of them ride bikes, cross the street fearlessly, fight for seats on the metro and cast the stink eye on girls in too-short skirts. But according to a recent report from CCTV, they aren’t doing enough.
Currently, 16 out of every 100 Chinese citizens are over the age of 60, predicted to rise to 40 out of 100 in the next few years. The national retirement age is 55, the lowest in the world. The International Business Times reports that according to Zhang Juwei, director of the Institute of Population and Labour Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, if current reproduction rates continue, the population is estimated to decline from 1.37 to 1.3 billion in 2050.
The 13th five-year plan will have to consider making adjustments to China’s 35 year-old Family Planning Policy. Indeed, several of the nation's top think tanks have urged the government to replace the 36-year-old one-child policy with a two-child policy, and introduce other measures to prevent a decline in the population, and subsequently, the economy. Also on the table – getting wai po out of the park, and into the office.
[Photo via Time Travel Turtle]
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