Though China is still trying to catch up with Western countries in terms of socioeconomic development, it is an indisputable leader in at least one field: the size of its aged population.

At present, Chinese aged 60 years and above number 144 million, or 11 percent of the nation's total population. They account for 20 percent of all the elderly worldwide and nearly half of all the seniors in Asia. More importantly, this figure is rising by 3 percent on an average annual basis. By 2050, 31 percent of the Chinese, 437 million people, will be statistically old at the peak of the aging process, twice the size of the junior population of the country. China, in some sense, will be a domain of elders in the next 100 years.

Against this backdrop, the biggest challenge facing China now is that an efficient, well-funded pension and health care system for seniors is still far from a reality.

When Western countries began to deal with their aging societies decades ago, their respective per-capita gross national product was between $5,000-$10,000. But in 1999, when China's population entered the aging stage as the proportion of over 60s to the total population topped 10 percent, its per-capita gross national product was less than $1,000. This weak financial position has remarkably increased the fragility of the country's pension system.

According to a World Bank report, the deficit of China's pension funds will be a sky-high 9.15 trillion yuan between 2001 and 2075.

In the meantime, with more and more newlyweds born to single-child families, as a result of the family planning policy implemented since the mid-1970s, the traditional family-based elder support system is expected to come to its end in 20 years.

An aging society places increasing daily loads on China's pension and medical insurance systems, and the lack of other social service programs to care for the elderly is also plaguing the state-run social safety network. Thus, it is imperative for the government to resolve the problem.

It is well known that China faces a number of difficulties in overcoming these challenges. China still uses a social security system that mainly targets urbanites, but today millions of rural people are pouring into cities as the urbanization process quickens. How will the country take up this challenge to guarantee these farmer-turned-workers equal pension funds and other retirement benefits equal to their urban counterparts?

Moreover, the transfer of major labor forces from the countryside to urban areas has worsened the living conditions of the aging and poverty-stricken population left behind.

On the other hand, the reform of China's economic structure now allows more people to enter into non-public economic sectors, and an increasing number of youngsters are opting for more flexible employment. The traditional social security system based on lifetime employment is no longer viable in a market that sees such frequent migration of labor.

In the next 25 years, China will be in a prime position with the most desirable national age structure, offering a transition period to get prepared for the inherent problems of an aging society. Nonetheless, the obvious financial pressure caused by the costs of medical care, pension programs and retirement homes have made people anxious about the foreseen difficulties they will face in their old age.

But at least the country is more aware of the problems and is busy planning the solutions to a worsening situation in the hopes of laying a solid foundation for the building of a harmonious society that includes all our elderly.