When do the Chinese retire?

There is a widespread belief that in China there are either no pensions at all, or this is a very rare privilege, and the maintenance of the 200-million-strong army of the elderly falls solely on the shoulders of their children.

So it really was until the 90s. last century: at that time, only about 6% of Chinese received pensions.

The state directly stated that it could not take on the maintenance of such a huge number of disabled citizens, so their children took care of their elderly parents. But in 1997, China created a pension system that extended to employees of industrial enterprises. Subsequently, it was expanded to other categories of workers.

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What Now

In China, as well as in Russia, the distribution system works. Able-bodied citizens contribute up to 8% of their salary to the pension fund, employers – up to 20%. The pension fund is formed not from state payments, but from these contributions. Therefore, if a person did not work (was not formalized), he will not receive anything. There is no guaranteed minimum for pensions in China. Residents of rural areas did not have pensions for the longest time – until 2009. Now they can count on minimal payments. The highest pensions are among residents of large cities and civil servants.

But the Chinese still do not count on a pension, almost all of them save money for old age.

The following conditions exist for assigning a pension:

1. A man must be at least 60 years old and a woman 55 years old. For women engaged in manual labor, the retirement age is 50 years.
2. The official length of service must be at least 15 years. All these years, the employee and the employer pay insurance premiums to the pension fund. People with less than 15 years of experience can retire later or pay the missing amount in one big payment.

China has not bypassed the global trend of population aging, forcing the authorities to think about raising the retirement age. Chinese officials argue that when the pension system was created, the average age of life was 50 years old, but now it has reached 75 years old, so the old retirement norms are no longer relevant.

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