Reduce schooling years to tackle aging population: Chinese lawmaker
A member of China’s top legislature has proposed shortening the number of years a child attends school, so they could enter the workforce sooner to slow down the country’s aging population.
Zhang Hongwei, a National People’s Congress member from Guangdong, said that children currently start school at the age of seven, and are 19 when they complete high school. They are 23 years old after graduating from university, and around 27 when they finish their postgraduate degree.
They may only find a suitable job when they are 30 if they follow this path, said Zhang, who is the chair of Guangdong Hec Technology Holding. The long education pushed them to start working later and caused other social issues such as high cost of education, delays in getting married and having children, making the problem of an aging population even more severe, Zhang said.
In China, children undergo six years of primary school, three years in junior high school and another three years in high school. Zhang proposed shortening primary school to five years and high school to two years, so they would start working two years earlier. This arrangement would allow people to better spend their time in terms of their career and family lives, Zhang said.
China’s shift toward an aging population is accelerating, with the number of people aged over 60 forecasted to exceed 300 million in the next five years, and pensioners being supported by a rapidly shrinking labor pool, according to You Jun, a vice minister of Human Resources and Social Security. The working population will drop by 35 million over the period.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang proposed in his work report on Friday that the country should gradually delay the official retirement age. Under existing laws formed in 1978, China’s retirement age ranges from 50 to 60 for different people, due to different pension systems.
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