MCA missions in the past served merely weak and elderly people with no fixed income, no family support and no ability to work. Some welfare homes for the aged have therefore been built in rural and urban areas to maintain the basic lives of elderly people who have no other means of assistance. "But now, the civil affairs ministry advocates the formulation of a management system to serve the entire elderly population," said Wang Hui.

The aging issue is no longer a problem for individuals or families. The outline of a basic elderly-care service system for the next five years has been presented for public opinion. It says that the Central Government should formulate a general plan to set up goals and main tasks in this regard and make preferential policies to support its development. Meanwhile, local governments should, in line with the outline, shoulder major construction tasks, implement preferential policies, and promote the establishment of a grassroots network so as to maintain sustainable development of the elderly-care service system.

Major conflicts

China lacks a complete pension system and service network for elderly people. In the past, people relied on the allocation of resources in accordance with official status and administrative system. "But current society has developed to such a level that this kind of distribution approach is against the people's will," Wang Zhenyao, director general of the Department of Social Welfare and Social Security at the MCA, told Caijing.

"China's per-capita GDP has exceeded $3,000, which means social welfare in this period should be allocated according to demand. It is not a simple income allocation, but a large-scale adjustment for social resources distribution," Wang said.

The current elderly service system, strong in principles but weak in implementation measures, is unbalanced and lacks practical calculation and open discussion, said Wang. "The major conflict in China is that elderly service system lags far behind the level of economic development. Although the country has the foundation to set up a mid-level elderly service system, many policies are not carried out in a timely way.

"China has entered the aging age without an established popular retirement system, as only some of the urban population and a small number of rural people are included in the retirement insurance system," Wang continued.

China's retirement system in rural areas lags far behind the realities of demand. The traditional family-support model of elderly care is collapsing in rural areas, where a large number of young farmers are migrating to other provinces to work.

What's interesting is that the aging trend should have occurred first in urban areas due to the effects of a rigorous one-child family planning policy. However, the trend is developing simultaneously in both urban and rural areas, with the number of elderly people in the latter outstripping that of the former. Statistics show that the rural elderly population exceeds 100 million, with an aging rate of 15 percent, higher than the national average.

China passed the Law on Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Aged in 1996, but has not formulated specific welfare laws for the elderly like those issued dozens of years ago in many other countries, said Wang, which he does not think is reasonable.

Mending the system

China's Long March to Retirement Reform, a report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointed out that China's rapidly aging society and high-speed economic development require a broad-based retirement system, which should provide sufficient and reasonable welfare.

China plans to increase pension coverage and expand the basic pension system to cover the whole country. "The question is will it be fast or slow," said Wu Ritu, deputy director of the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee at the National People's Congress (NPC).

"To increase pension coverage, China needs to set up a series of related measures, along with reform of its existing, fragmented aging system," said Wu.

Currently, various government departments including the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), are planning to formulate a unified elderly-care service system with Chinese characteristics.

The NDRC, China's top economic planner, will be responsible for