The Communist Party’s pledge to gradually increase the retirement age has renewed unease in China, where people’s livelihoods are already challenged by a sluggish job market, persistent hiring discrimination and evolving technologies.

Officials in Beijing announced after a party conclave last week that the retirement age will rise in a “voluntary, flexible manner”, without giving more details. The retirement age for white-collar workers has been kept at 60 for men and 55 for women for more than four decades, putting China at the lower end of the spectrum worldwide. 

Upping that threshold would reduce the speed at which the working-age population shrinks and buy Beijing more time to figure out how to boost birth rates. And while raising the retirement age is generally unpopular in many nations, the backlash in China reveals deeper anxieties about the employment situation in the world’s second-largest economy. 

“At the rate that 35-year-olds are being laid off, how many people can still have a job at the age of 65?” one user asked on the X-like Weibo social media site, echoing a popular sentiment online. 

China’s job market remains sluggish amid an economic slowdown. The nation’s companies are infamous for their “996” culture - meaning working from 9am to 9pm six days a week - and for discrimination against hiring females and people above age 35. The growing use of artificial intelligence also threatens to compete with workers.

On Monday and Tuesday, hashtags related to the party’s decision were trending near the top of Weibo, with internet users largely criticising and mocking the move. Some topics were later censored with no explanation. 

It’s not the first time that Beijing has sought to move forward with higher retirement ages - the issue was raised in the current Five-Year Plan, which is set to end next year. It was also discussed in 2008. But so far, authorities have held off. 

Like many nations, China is grappling with a rapidly ageing society, leaving fewer workers to support the elderly and bolster the government’s tax base. While still the world’s second most-populous nation, China’s total population shrank by two million people in 2023, a trend that looks set to continue after the number of babies born also hit a record low. 

  - Bloomberg