Nearly one tenth of China's state assets which stand at more
than 12 trillion yuan (US$1.4 trillion) will be transferred to the
insufficiently funded social security system within five years.
The National Council of Social Security Fund (NCSSF) President
Xiang Huaicheng Friday announced the blueprint, saying "to expand
the scale of the fund is the priority" of his organization.
"It will take five years or more to achieve the goal," Xiang
said Friday in an address on China's social security system at the
week-long 28th General Assembly of the International Social
Security Association held in Beijing.
He said the now elderly laborers who for years endured low pay
in the planned economy in order to accumulate vast State assets
were now entitled to be paid off by social security guarantee.
But Xiang said previously that China's pension problem can be
basically solved if the fund reaches two trillion yuan (US$240
billion). By the end of June, the total assets of China's social
security fund stood at 143.2 billion yuan (US$17.3 billion),
realizing 9 billion yuan (US$1.08 billion) of accumulative
profits.
"To expand the national social security fund, a major source of
China's financial reserves, we are working with related State
Council departments to start transferring State assets as soon as
possible," said Xiang.
Xiang said the major source of the fund since it was set up in
2000 was the central government's financial treasury.
At Friday's special session, top State Council officials voiced
serious concerns about China's increasingly serious pension
problems, while boasting that after years of experiment and
practice, a social security framework with Chinese characteristics
has taken shape.
China is now an ageing society. As the population's ageing
quickens, the number of elderly people is becoming increasingly
large.
"This trend will reach its peak in the 2030s," said Zheng Silin,
minister of labor and social security.
A recent report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said
that compared with developed countries, China's ageing issue will
give rise to serious challenges to the country's lofty ambitions of
building an all-round, well-off society due to its comparatively
poorer social and economic conditions.
Statistics show that, from 2000 to 2007, the number of Chinese
people aged 65 or older will increase from less than 100 million to
more than 200 million, increasing more than 14 million per year
leading to the elderly making up 14 per cent of the total
population.
Zheng said China's current framework of support for the elderly
will face historic challenges.
There is no doubt that during the ongoing transitional process,
the low pension coverage, with only 44.9 per cent of urban
employees and 85.4 per cent of retirees covered, will remain a
tough issue that will require more governmental efforts.
Since China established and improved its socialist market
economy system in the mid-1980s, a series of reforms have been
introduced to update the old social security system in place under
the planned economy.
(China Daily September 18, 2004)