Let people retire when they are ready

Ask the Internet "When is best time to retire?" in English and you will get more than 1.5 million replies, most of them offering financial advice and warning against early retirement.

A similar search in Chinese yields about 43,000 results, many of them engaged in an on-going debate over a proposal to push the mandatory retirement age back to 65 - from the present 55 for women and 60 for men - by the year 2030. The proposal would increase the retirement age by one year every three years, starting in 2010 for women and 2015 for men.

People who support the proposal argue that postponing retirement would increase the amount paid into social security, while reducing the amount paid out to the increasing number of the elderly.