It seems like this will be an ongoing trend, increased in part by the longevity therapeutics trend. Of course, people not on the longevity train are just going to loose their retirement periods entirely…
Anger abounds as China raises its strikingly low retirement age
Old people will have to toil a little longer, assuming they can keep their jobs
Sep 17th 2024
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, boasts that his political system has a matchless ability to get difficult things done. “For anything that benefits the party and the people,” he has said, “we must act boldly and decisively.” Yet it was not until September 13th, after years of indecision, that China announced the first raising of its retirement age since the 1950s. From among the world’s lowest, it will begin to creep closer to rich-world norms.
Having seen the unhappy reaction to similar changes elsewhere, Mr Xi may have had reason to hesitate. Turmoil in the West is normally something that China’s propagandists exploit. But huge protests in France last year against a higher pension age triggered anxious and angry comments in China over the government’s repeated mutterings since 2008—four years before Mr Xi came to power—about doing something similar. “The common people are cursing behind closed doors,” wrote one user of Weibo, a social-media platform, referring to the contrast between public anger in France and its furtive form in China.
When China at last bit the bullet and published its own timetable, it did so with little fanfare. State-run television mentioned the move below several other headlines on its main evening news. Viewers had to wait more than 35 minutes (and sit through nearly 20 minutes telling of Mr Xi’s activities) for just a bare outline. The retirement age for female blue-collar workers will rise from an astonishingly low 50 to 55, for female white-collar workers from 55 to 58, and for men from 60 to 63. These changes will begin in January 2025 and be phased in over 15 years. For men and female white-collar workers, the pension age will rise by a month every four months. For blue-collar women it will rise by a month every two months.
Read the full article: Anger abounds as China raises its strikingly low retirement age (The Economist)
