China

Honey, I shrunk the population

By in Demographie, International Tags:

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(WSJ) By 2050, the U.N. now projects 31% of Chinese will be 65 or older. By 2100, the share will be 46%, approaching half of the population. In the U.S., the share is expected to be 23% and 28%, respectively.

The U.N.’s revised forecasts see Chinese births dropping below nine million this year. In 2022, it had predicted that 10.6 million would be born in China in 2024. The U.N. now expects China will have only 3.1 million newborns a year by 2100.

Not only are there fewer women to give birth these days, but many young women, mindful of their mothers’ suffering during the one-child policy, are less interested in marriage and children, driving down the fertility rate.

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WSJ: Chinas Reproduktionsrate sinkt auf 1.09

By in International Tags: ,

image(WSJ) A Chinese state-media report this week cited a sharp drop in the country’s fertility rate, offering a rare glimpse into China’s deepening demographic plight and highlighting the country’s increasing lack of transparency on data.

China’s total fertility rate—a snapshot of the average number of babies a woman would have over her lifetime—fell to 1.09 last year, from 1.30 in 2020, according to a study by a unit of the National Health Commission cited this week by National Business Daily, a media outlet managed by the municipal government of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province.

At 1.09, China’s rate would be below the 1.26 of Japan, a country long known for its aging society—throwing one of Beijing’s long-term challenges into sharp relief even as the country struggles with an economic slowdown right now.

  WSJ

China testet Alters-Sparfonds

By in International Tags:

imageHZ Insurance. Das chinesische Rentensystem steht vor einer massiven Umwälzung: Arbeitnehmer können künftig mit dem ersten privaten Fonds der Volksrepublik fürs Alter vorsorgen.

Das soll dabei helfen, die wachsenden Probleme der schnell alternden Bevölkerung zu bewältigen. Demnach können Arbeitnehmer künftig bis zu 12.000 Yuan (rund 1’700 Euro) pro Jahr in den Rentenfonds einzahlen. Zum Vergleich: 2021 lag das durchschnittliche verfügbare Pro-Kopf-Einkommen bei 35.128 Yuan. Das System werde zunächst in einigen Städten für ein Jahr erprobt, bevor es dann landesweit eingeführt werden soll, wie die Regierung in einem Strategiepapier mitteilte. Bislang zahlen sowohl Arbeitnehmer als auch Arbeitgeber feste Beträge in die staatliche Rentenkasse ein.

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WSJ: Beijing’s Pension Dilemma

By in International Tags:

chinaIt’s now a truism that China will grow old before it grows rich. The pension system is where that abstraction becomes a reality for ordinary Chinese people. China’s elderly dependency ratio, the number of people over 65 per 100 people age 15 to 64, is approaching developed-country levels at 17 and rising (it’s 25.6 in the U.S.) compared with India’s 9.8 and Vietnam’s 11.4. But China’s per capita income—a proxy for the resources from which those workers can support those retirees—is one-sixth to one-fourth the level of a developed country.

This is a political problem for governments everywhere. But the prospect of widespread elder poverty risks becoming an existential threat for China’s Communist Party because the party manufactured this crisis with its one-child policy. That policy has destroyed countless lives and represents a rot eating away at Chinese society from the inside. The pension system is the vector by which a prematurely aging society robbed of its young people will descend into an economic crisis.

  WSJ

US government pension fund urged to reverse China investment

By in International Tags: ,

usSenior US senators are demanding that one of America’s biggest government pension funds reverse a decision that is set to channel billions of US dollars into funding Chinese companies that they say support Beijing’s military, espionage and domestic security efforts.

The demand shows how the US-China rivalry, which has thus far focused mainly on trade war tensions, is spreading further into the arena of financial markets.

Senators Marco Rubio, a Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, told Michael Kennedy, chairman of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, in a letter that his fund is supporting Chinese state-owned companies with “the paychecks of members of the US Armed Services and other federal government employees”.

The letter — a copy of which was seen by the Financial Times — said an impending investment shift by the FRTIB would mean that about $50bn in US government pensions becomes exposed to the “severe and undisclosed” risks of being invested in selected Chinese companies.

  FT