China raises retirement age for the first time since 1950

The statutory retirement age is still 60 for men, 55 for women and 50 for women in physically demanding jobs. This regulation dates back to 1950, when China was impoverished and war-torn and the average life expectancy at just 35 years old lag.

Today, Chinese people live to an average age of 77 years, supported by the state longer than in any other industrialized nation. Even according to conservative estimates, China’s state pension fund would have run out of money by 2035 under current legislation.

Careful, gradual reform by 2040

The new regulation stipulates that men may only retire from the age of 63, women from the age of 58, and women in physically demanding jobs from the age of 55. However, this will not happen until 2040. Until then, the threshold will be gradually raised, starting on January 1, 2025.

In concrete terms, this means that the minimum retirement age for women in physically demanding jobs will then increase by one month every two months, and for the rest of the population by one month every four months.

This strikingly cautious approach is not unfounded. The fear of popular anger is great, especially because mass protests against pension reforms in other countries – such as in Russia in 2018 or in France in 2023 – serve as a warning.

The current five-year economic plan therefore states that changes to the pension system must be implemented in “small steps” so as not to endanger “social stability”. Nevertheless, the discontent of many Chinese is already palpable, even if the state control and surveillance apparatus will probably prevent public protests.

Anger on social media: “They sit on the toilet without shitting”

There was so much criticism on Chinese social media that the government’s censors did not delete the posts in time: on the messaging service Weibo alone, there were 870 million posts in the first few hours after the measure was announced.

However, the reason for most users’ anger is not the fact that the average Chinese will have to work longer in the future – most pensioners in China already work odd jobs well into old age in order to keep themselves financially afloat.

On the contrary, younger Chinese in particular are angry that well-paid jobs are now being held by older people for longer.

Youth unemployment is so dramatic that the government last published credible figures in June 2023 (21.3%), and has not published any since August 2023. According to surveys, most young people want to become civil servants because of the better security – but the civil service in particular is dominated by older people.

This is why the oft-quoted saying “They sit on the toilet without shitting” has become popular among young Chinese.

A later retirement age is likely to lead to fewer births

Another major issue is family planning: for years, the government has been trying to get Chinese families to have more children. However, grandparents in China are playing an increasingly important role in child care.

According to a study by Shanghai’s Fudan University, 61 percent of all couples would be more willing to have children if their own parents retired.

That will be the case later in the future. And so the young Chinese influencer He Lin-shan summed up the frustration of her generation in a video that has since been deleted: “Let the party officials look after our children!”