Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:
Rust belt province got old before it got rich, as much of
China will (1/2)
Mon, February 27, 2023 at 5:13 p.m. PST
By Eduardo Baptista and Farah Master
WUDAOGANG, China (Reuters) - Wang Fengqin suffered from
hunger in her youth, when Mao Zedong was running China, so it brings her joy to
cook a nice dinner whenever her sons visit her in the rapidly depopulating
northeastern village of Wudaogang.
"Come home to eat, mum can still afford to make you
this meal," the 70-year-old retired farmer said, recalling how their phone
calls usually start, as she took a break from chopping cabbage in her
wood-fired kitchen.
On a 2,000 yuan ($290) monthly pension, she can hardly afford anything else. Going to the hospital to check her growing abdominal pain could cost her 1,000 yuan, she said.
A problem for Chinese leaders as they plan to reform the country's fragmented, poorly funded pension system, is that the provincial government in Heilongjiang needs cash transfers from richer regions to pay even Wang's modest benefit.
As China's 1.4 billion population declines and ages, in part because of a policy that limited couples to one child from 1980 to 2015, pressure on pension budgets is soaring.
Already, there are cracks in the system.
Eleven of China's 31 provincial-level jurisdictions are running pension budget deficits, with Heilongjiang's the biggest, at -2.4% of its GDP, finance ministry data show. The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences sees the pension system running out of money by 2035.
"If the pension system does not change, this is unsustainable," said Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow in the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University in Australia.
Peng said richer provinces currently fill the gap, "but they cannot do this forever, so this is a problem for the whole country."
The Heilongjiang provincial government, China's National Development and Reform Commission - the top state planner - and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security did not respond to requests for comment.
Heilongjiang, which shares a 3,000-kilometre border with Russia, offers a cautionary tale for how China's demographic problems might manifest elsewhere in the country.
Reuters interviewed a dozen, mostly elderly, people in the province, as well as demographers, academics and economists, who described a region struggling to support its growing ranks of seniors, many of whom can barely afford the basics.
As the economy opened up to private enterprise after Mao's death in 1976, and as those resources dwindled, China's industrial epicentre moved south, and with it, the money and the people.
Income per capita in Heilongjiang, now known as one of China's three "rust belt" provinces, was 50,900 yuan in 2022, below the national figure of 85,700 yuan. A quarter of its people were aged 60 and over, according to official data published last year, compared with 20% nationally.
The overall population shrank 17% in the decade through 2021 to just over 30 million, while the workforce contracted by about one-third, official data show.
Wang said her hilly village is down to about 70 households, from 400 in 1976 when she moved in.
The province has the lowest birth rate in China, with just over 100,000 births in 2021 and 460,000 deaths. The pension income per capita is 38,792 yuan per year, among the lowest in the country, and about half of Beijing or Shanghai levels.
Like elsewhere in China, rural pensions can be as low as 100 yuan a month.
"What can I spend that on?" asks Wang Zhanling, 71, in Quansheng village, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) south of Wudaogang. He still farms and takes odd jobs, such as fixing pot-holes, to earn more.
"My body can't take it, but I still need to make ends meet," he said, bundling mounds of corn stalks he uses to heat his house during winter, when temperatures drop well below freezing.
FRAGMENTED SYSTEM
China created a special fund in 2018 to shift pension funds from richer provinces like Guangdong to those facing deficits, but economists see that only as a stop-gap.
Many experts, including Macquarie's chief China economist Larry Hu, suggest implementing a unified national pension system, backstopped by the more resourceful central government rather than cash-strapped local administrations.
That may also require changing China's home registration system, known as hukou, Hu says.
Hukou dates from the famines many of China's pensioners endured as Mao experimented with collective farms, starting in the 1950s. Rations were tied to where people were registered, keeping starving peasants from flooding into better-fed cities.
Nowadays, hundreds of millions of workers in China sell their labour in places other than their home towns. But they can only access social services in their place of origin, where anything from education to medical care is of lower standards than in major cities, so they are reluctant to pay social contributions.
Many employers do not pay contributions for such workers either, as they are on temporary, often informal contracts.
A unified pension system would contribute towards formalizing employment, allow money to flow freely outside the confines of provincial borders, and encourage participation, economists say.
"Those without a city hukou tend to return to the countryside in their late 40s-early 50s. A reform of the hukou system could significantly extend their working lives," Hu said.
(to be continued)
Translation
中國五道岗（路透社）- Wang Fengqin 的年輕時代在毛澤東統治中的中國飽受飢餓之苦，所以每當她的兒子們到人口迅速減少的東北五道岗村來看望她時，她都會為兒子們去做一頓豐盛的晚餐而感到高興。
“回家吃飯吧，媽媽還能給你做這頓飯”, 這位 70 歲的退休農民回憶起他們通常是如何開始打開話電對話的，當時她在燒木頭的廚房裏切捲心菜休息一下。
靠每月 2,000 元（合 290 美元）的養老金，她幾乎買不起其他任何東西。 她說，去醫院檢查她越來越嚴重的腹痛可能要花費 1000 元。
中國領導人計劃改革該國支離破碎、資金匱乏的養老金體係時面臨的一個問題是，黑龍江省政府需要來自較富裕地區的現金轉移，以支付 Wang 的微薄福利金。
隨著中國 14 億人口的減少和老齡化，部分原因是 1980 年至 2015 年限制夫妻只生育一個孩子的政策，養老金預算的壓力正在飆升。
系統中已經存在裂縫。
財政部數據顯示，中國 31 個省級轄區中有 11 個存在養老金預算赤字，其中黑龍江省的赤字最大，佔其 GDP 的 -2.4%。 國營的中國科學院預計，到 2035 年，養老金體係將用盡資金。
澳大利亞維多利亞大學政策研究中心高級研究員 Xiujian Peng 說: “如果養老金制度不改變，這是不可持續的” 。
Peng說，較富裕的省份目前填補了這一空白， “但他們不可能永遠這樣做，所以這是整個國家的問題。
黑龍江省政府、中國國家發展和改革委員會 - 國家最高規劃機構 - 以及人力資源和社會保障部沒有回應置評請求。
與俄羅斯接壤 3,000 公里邊界的黑龍江的中國人口問題, 警示出這問題可能如何在該國其他地方表現出來。
路透社採訪了該省的十幾名居民，其中大部分是老年人，以及人口統計學家、學者和經濟學家。他們描述了該地區正在努力支持其不斷增長的老年人隊伍，其中許多人幾乎買不起基本用品。
黑龍江的鼎盛時期是在毛澤東時代，當時國有工業集團開採了其豐富的煤炭、礦產和木材資源。
隨著經濟在 1976 年毛澤東去世後向私營企業開放，及隨著這些天然資源的減少，中國的工業中心南移，資金和人民也隨之南移。
現在被稱為中國三個 “生銹地帶”省份之一的黑龍江省，2022 年的人均收入為 5.09 萬元，低於全國 8.57 萬元的水平。 根據去年公佈的官方數據，該市四分之一的人口年齡在 60 歲及以上，而全國這一比例為 20%。
官方數據顯示，到 2021 年的十年間，總人口減少了 17%，僅略高於 3,000
萬，而勞動力減少了約三分之一。
Wang說，她所在有很多山的村, 從 1976 年她搬進來時的 400 戶減少到大約 70 戶。
該省是中國出生率最低的省份，2021 年出生人數略高於 10 萬人，死亡人數為 46 萬人。 人均養老金收入為每年38,792元，在全國最低，約為北京和上海水平的一半。
與中國其他地方一樣，農村養老金低至每月 100 元。
在五道岗以南約 100 公里（62 英里）的 Quansheng 村，71 歲的Wang Zhanling問道: “我能把養老金花在什麼上面？” 他仍然務農並從事散工，例如修理坑洞，以賺取更多收入。
“我的身體無法承受，但我仍然需要維持生計”, 他邊說邊把成堆的玉米秸稈捆起來，在冬天氣溫降至零度以下時用來給房子取暖。
有裂口的制度
中國的養老金制度主要在省一級管理，主要採用現收現付制，這意味著在職勞動力的繳款, 是用來支付退休人員的養老金。
中國在 2018 年設立了一項專項基金，將養老基金從廣東等較富裕省份轉移到面臨赤字的省份，但經濟學家認為這只是權宜之計。
許多專家，包括Macquarie首席中國經濟學家Larry Hu，建議實施統一的全國養老金制度，由資源更豐富的中央政府而不是資金緊張的地方政府提供支持。
Hu說，這可能還需要改變中國的戶籍制度，即戶口。
戶口可以追溯到毛澤東從 1950 年代開始試驗集體農莊時, 許多中國養老金領取者要忍受飢荒。 口糧與人們登記的地方掛鉤，防止飢餓的農民湧入有更好食物的城市。
如今，中國數以億計的勞動者在家鄉以外的地方出賣勞動力。 但他們只能在原籍地享受社會服務，那裡從教育到醫療的標準都低於大城市，因此他們不願意繳納社會保險費。
許多雇主也不為此類工人支付供款，因為他們簽訂的是臨時合同，通常是非正式合同。
經濟學家說，統一的養老金制度將有助於正規化就業，允許資金在省界之外自由流動，並鼓勵參與。
Hu說: “那些沒有城市戶口的人往往會在 40 歲尾到 50 歲初之間回到農村。改革戶口制度可以大大延長他們的工作壽命” 。
(to be continued)
Note:
The Rust Belt (生銹帶) is a region of the United States that
experienced industrial decline starting in the 1950s.The U.S. manufacturing
sector as a percentage of the U.S. GDP peaked in 1953 and has been in decline
since, impacting certain regions and cities primarily in the Northeast and
Midwest regions of the U.S., The term "Rust" refers to the impact of
deindustrialization, economic decline, population loss, and urban decay on
these regions attributable to the shrinking of the once-powerful industrial
sector especially including steelmaking, automobile manufacturing, and coal
mining. (Wikipedia)
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