By Li Hongmei People's Daily Online

If there is something really eternal, that will be the fact that everyone is turning old someday. As for the issue of ageing, its situation has been growing increasingly severe in spite of the fact that people tend to be ignorant of the problems it brings about. Things turn out even graver for China, as fighting poverty remains the top priority for the developing country feeding a population of over 1.3 billion.

Scholars on social sciences have already expressed their concerns over the vexing demographic situation, some even pointing China would probably be getting old before becoming rich. Statistics indicate the ageing of China's population will approach its peak by the year 2050, since China has crossed the threshold of the ageing society by the United Nations' criteria since 1999, and the population is still ageing at a speedy pace.

For every five people older than 60 in the world, or every two in Asia, one is Chinese. It is expected that in the following 25 years there will be one senior citizen for every four Chinese. The more detailed and more harrowing data, released years ago by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), showed that even by the end of 2004, Chinese over 60 years old had accounted for 10.97 percent of the nation's total population, and those older than 65, for 7.7 percent.

By the U.N. criteria, an ageing society refers to one where 10 percent or more of its population is over 60, or over 7 percent of its population is older than 65. And China has already fully and veritably answered the description of such a society.

The rapidity of the population's ageing has, therefore, made it more urgent for the adoption of countermeasures. Undoubtedly, the key is to build a solid economic foundation. Meanwhile, importance should also be attached to overall social progress by changing the backward situation in social security, welfare and service and, stopping up loopholes in the existing old-age social security system and social welfare institutions for the aged.

However, a speech on social welfare system with Chinese characteristics made by Li Baoku, leader of the China Ageing Development Foundation (CADF), at the Well-being Society Forum held by CASS recently, came as a complete bombshell setting up a spate of arguments, with posts and blog articles centered round his speech blossoming online. In his speech, Mr. Li vocally advocated to build a social welfare system with Chinese characteristics, in which the Chinese traditional filial duty should play a decisive part and "provides a key moral guarantee", as Mr. Li put it in the speech.

"China has a long history of respecting the old, and this virtue is especially important as we have become an ageing society since 1999," said Li Baoku. It seemed that, some bloggers commented, if the adult children provided for their aged parents and fulfilled their filial duty, the well-being status of China's ageing population would not be so pressing a social problem. But he also released that the suicide rate among the rural Chinese elderly was 4-5 times higher than the world average. The data were appalling but too blurred, as there was no distinct reference available----such as compared with the rural elderly in the world, or the entire world ageing population.

When touching on the old-age social security system with Chinese characteristics, Mr. Li explained not only why supporting and assisting the elders should act as the pivotal welfare guarantee in the remaining days of the aged, but why "supporting the old by filial duty" has not been ideally fulfilled in recent years.

"Some people blindly learn from the West, where there is neither culture nor tradition encouraging the young to show filial piety to their elders," he explained. But what he said is self-contradictory, a blog article read, he failed to bring home the critical point that why China, which he said enjoys a long history of showing respect to the aged and today the majority of Chinese still take it a duty to support their aged parents, could have much higher suicide rate in its old population than that of the West, which he described as "a desert of family love and care for the old."

The linchpin may lie in the fact that relevant social security and welfare policies and government investments are much more effective in ensuring the old to lead a care-free life in their remaining years than, say, proving for the old merely by family care and adult children fulfilling their filial duty.

Even though a report published by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs stated that presently only 1% of the Chinese elders chose to spend their later life in old people's homes or other social welfare institutions for the aged, while the rest 99% of them would prefer to stay at home or with their adult children, the governments and institutions at all levels should by no means evade their obligation to provide the aged with adequate welfare and social security, on the pretext that the old themselves choose to lead the life as they please.

Admittedly, showing filial respect to the aged is a time-honored tradition and still much cherished by the Chinese people. Whether or not a young person would like to support his or her elders is even elevated as a standard to choose wife or husband, or at times a prerequisite to be promoted by the employer. All this, nonetheless, cannot take the place of the government's efforts to build a well-managed and widely-covered social security and welfare system, which is the only effective way holding up a protective umbrella for the ever-growing number of the Chinese senior citizens.

The welfare system as a whole, including the one intended to protect and support the ageing population, is literally a political design assisted by the relevant policies. It is first of all a general guarantee in system, shielding the individual's happiness linked to the chain of social distribution.

As regards providing for the aged, one should not put the cart before the horse. Government is invariably cast in the leading role, while family support or the so-called moral guarantee like the fine tradition of fulfilling filial duty plays a supportive part. Just for one thing, families which are ready to share the government's duty to support their elders should be funded with the money otherwise going to the social welfare institutions for the aged. In so doing, some family crisis incurred upon the low-income families by taking care of their pensionless elders would possibly be curbed.

Due to the decades-long family planning policy in China, when today's teenagers grow up, each of them will have responsibility for two parents and four grandparents. Without a full government involvement and a perfect social security and welfare system, Mr. Li Baoku's illusion of building an old-age social security system with Chinese characteristics would be nothing more than Utopia.