Last week, a group of 546 seniors took a trip from China’s northernmost province to Hong Kong in the south aboard a ‘silver-haired express’. From mahjong tables and karaoke rooms to handrails and a doctor on call, these trains have everything their silver-haired passengers might need. This trip lasted 14 days but there are also shorter trips for those old people who cannot stay away from home for so long. A retiree who had just completed a five-day trip was already looking forward to his next journey with his wife. Their combined monthly pension of 10,000 yuan made such short trips, costing between 3,000-5,000 yuan, affordable.
The “silver economy” is all set to bloom in this ageing country. Reverse migration during the Spring Festival, where parents travel to their children’s homes to spend Chinese New Year with them, instead of it being the other way around which has been the norm, has been steadily increasing. This is another indicator of the growing consumption trends among older people.
But away from the media lies another world of the elderly: farmers in the countryside. Left behind by children who migrate to cities for work, these elders cannot even dream of travelling. Farming barely sustains them. Yet, they cannot survive without toiling on their meagre lands. If they do travel to cities, it is to work: old people carting heavy baskets of vegetables in the sleek trains of China’s metros is a common sight. Their days start as early as those of rural farmers — from their homes in the villages on the outskirts of cities they often have to change trains to reach the market where they sell their vegetables.
Some 33% of the Chinese live in villages. For these old villagers, there is no retirement. But they do get a pension. Alas, it is not even half of what their urban counterparts get. Monthly urban pensions range from 3,200 to 6,000 yuan (depending on the province and the kind of job). Rural pension is a measly 240 yuan, hardly enough for old villagers to sit back and rest, let alone travel for leisure.
Selective portrayal
But the State-owned media only shows farmers beaming from ear to ear with crops or gushing about how their pensions have freed them from care. However, this rosy image was shattered last week by the speech of an important economist at the recent Boao Forum for Asia, often referred to as the Asian Davos. Decrying the “unreasonable” gap between urban and rural pensions, the vice-chairman of the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee of the country’s National People’s Congress, equivalent to Parliament, said that China should aim for rural pensions to at least match the lower end of urban pensions in the next five years. The villagers deserve this, having made vital contributions to the economy, said the now-retired secretary of the central bank and former head of the country’s banking and insurance regulator.
This is not the first time the meagre pensions for farmers have been criticised. Just this January, a Tsinghua University professor suggested that Beijing should allocate more funds to raise the monthly pensions of farmers to 800 yuan, adding that it could afford to do that. Back in 2022, another high-ranking economist had pointed out the debt the country’s economy owed its farmers right from the days after Liberation when food prices were kept deliberately low and farmers had to do compulsory labour for a certain number of days every year.
Will these voices be heard? Already, another economist has warned that the government cannot afford to raise rural pensions to these levels. There is not much hope then for China’s old, overworked and weary farmers.