Senior citizens sleep at a daytime service center in Shanghai in April. The city has 3.67 million people aged 60 or older, accounting for 25.7 percent of its registered population.  [China Daily]

China's aging population and the problems that come with it have become so much of a talking point that they have even entered popular culture. A TV series reflecting the aging population will be aired in Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai and Zhejiang Province over the next few days. As well as focusing on relations between old and young people, it calls into question how society treats the aging population.

According to the Financial Times, China's population aged over 60 will double by 2030, reaching 300 million. This demographic shift will challenge the country's pension and social security systems.

Due to China's family planning policies, the aging generation in big cities generally only has one child at home. Unlike in previous generations, where more than one child would nurse a couple of parents in their old age, the new aging generation have come to expect less care from their single child, therefore nursing homes have become more popular.

However, current old people's homes are unable satisfy growing demands.

"In many mega cities, people above 50 need to wait for 30 to 40 years to get access to the public nursing houses, which means they need to wait until they are at least 80 to secure a bed -- this shows the insufficiency of the service," said Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the 16th National Congress of All-China Federation of Trade Unions in the beginning of this month.

Besides the lack of nursing home beds, prices of care have also become prohibitive for many elderly people. The average pension of 2,773 yuan a month in Beijing is much less than the price of a bed in a nursing home, at 5,000 yuan, the Beijing Morning Post reported recently.

According to the report issued by the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China will improve its fundamental pension system and build a fixed social security system to benefit all people.

The pension system in China is highly stratified, with government officials and staff in state-run organizations getting the most.

According to a survey carried out by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), about 75.4 percent of retired workers and employees live on a pension of less than 2,000 yuan, while pensions for retired government officials and employees of state organizations can reach 4,000 yuan.

The unequal pension system clearly demands urgent reform. However, Zheng Bingwen, director of the World Social Security Center at CASS said that the impossibility of lowering official and state organization pensions has caused a bottleneck.

China initiated pension reform in state organizations in 2008, although it has been hugely unpopular and achieved very little.

Wang Xiaojun, professor from Renmin University of China, said that complicated salary standards increase the difficulty of equalizing and unifying the pension system between the state-run organizations and the rest of society.

Despite the complexity and difficulties, Wang predicted that China will have a complete and equal pension system by 2049.

Experts also predict that the ongoing Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee will take measures to improve the current pension system amid the fast growing aging society.

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