From Chinese Press

Take good care of senior citizens

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-26 08:38

China has to devise a plan to deal with its aging population, especially in rural areas, says an article in Changsha Evening News. Excerpts:

About 70 percent of China's senior citizens live in rural areas, 80.9 percent of who have to fend for themselves, according to media reports.

Many of them not only live in poor conditions, but also have to take care of their grandchildren, because their children have migrated to cities in search of work.

A rural pension security system has already been introduced, and pilot insurance programs have started to ensure senior citizens in rural areas get a pension of 55 yuan a month. The healthcare insurance system has been extended to the countryside, too.

But the systems are inadequate to provide security and necessary services to the elderly in rural areas.

According to the "labor creates wealth" theory, there is no difference between farmer's plowing the land and laborer's working in factories. But retired workers can meet their basic needs with pension, whereas farmers face serious problems such as poor health and insecure old age.

All this makes China's pension security program more complicated and is the cause of its slow progress.

Whether or not senior citizens in rural areas enjoy the fruits of the country's economic development depends on whether the authorities correct the imbalance between urban and rural pension security.

China has to make more efforts to support special preferential policies and measures to ensure faster development of rural areas, which it cannot do without taking good care of its senior citizens in the countryside.

(China Daily 10/26/2010 page9)