Tackling the Chinese Pension System

Organized into three parts, this policy memorandum describes the current state of the Chinese pension system, as well as its shortfalls, and then offers some suggestions to help address these issues. First, it will discuss the key challenges facing the Chinese pension system: the aging of the population, the fragmentation of the system, the lack of advance funding, and the low level of investment returns. Second, it will examine the causes of each of these challenges. Third, it will put forward several proposals to address each of these challenges. In each of these three main parts, the memorandum will focus primarily on the Urban Enterprise Pension System (UEPS) portion of the Chinese pension system.