Newsletter 3: January 2009
Social Protection and Ageing

Recent development in China indicates that the Chinese government is working toward the establishment of a social security program for the rural aged. In April1st, 2008, Mr. Yin Xinmin, minister of Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security of the People’s Republic of China, made an announcement to the media that a national insurance program for migrant labor would soon be introduced by his ministry and a national pension program for the rural aged was also planned.

The pension program for the rural aged is supposed to be of low-level benefit but universal coverage. Already by the end of 2007, more than 2000 counties all over China established experiments organizing income insurance for more than 50 million rural aged peasants, with about 4 million aged peasants already receiving a regular pension income.

On April 25th, the Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security convened a conference in Nanjing, the capital of one of the most developed provinces of China, to discuss the generalization of rural income insurance system, followed by a seminar in September in Beijing, exploring institutional strategies of new rural social insurance programs. Mr. Hu Xiaoyi, vice minister stated their aim to establish a universal social security system by 2020, leaving only 12 years for the Chinese to establish a relatively mature rural social security system for the aged. Another seminar was held in November in Shandong, one of the heavily populated provinces of China, where a Sino-Japanese cooperation program of institutional protection for rural aged had been tried out. Experts from Japan gave constructive suggestions for organizing social insurance for rural residents. The State Council of People’s Republic of China also listed the establishment of more experimental units of rural social insurance nationwide and introduction of a pension plan for migrant labors as two of key emphasis in work of 2008.