The politically explosive issue of the official retirement age has drawn academics from two of China's most august educational institutions into a public standoff, signaling how closely fought the policy contest over how to cope with the country's shrinking work force has become.

standoff:和局,僵持,冷淡,平衡    

The war of wonks revolves around a yearslong effort by some quarters in the central government to raise the retirement age in the world's most populous nation to 65. Currently, male Chinese employees retire at 60 and female at 50 or 55.

To call the idea unpopular is putting it mildly. Local media report widespread public opposition to the measure in survey after survey, arguably most pungently in a poll by the Beijing Morning Post in July last year, which found that 96% of respondents said they would not support ( in Chinese) the proposal.

pungently:尖锐地,苦痛地    

But, faced with vexing questions of how to pay for China's aging population, the trial balloons keep floating up from Beijing. Last week, China's official Xinhua News Agency sent another apparent telegraph, quoting experts from Tsinghua University who proposed ( in Chinese) in a study to gradually raise China's pensionable age, starting in 2015 for women and to be followed thereafter for men, with retirement at 65 becoming mandatory by 2030.

mandatory:强制的,义务的    

The denizens of China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service -- a proxy for opinionating in China's public squares -- took note, not least because Beijing's Tsinghua University is considered a cradle of the country's technocratic elite and often a fount of social policy.

proxy:代理人,委托书    cradle:摇篮,发源地    technocratic:技术层面

'What the government really wants is for you to retire at 50, give younger people the jobs, and only give you your pension at age 65,' said a Weibo user who went by the name Wenrou Xiangli. 'The 15 years in between -- you take care of that yourself.'

The naysayers weren't alone. On Tuesday, Tang Jun, secretary-general of the social policy research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also took to Xinhua to ( in Chinese) excoriate the Tsinghua proposal. The academy is a heavyweight entity that reports directly to China's cabinet, though its input isn't necessarily decisive in policy-making.

naysayer:否定者,反对者    excoriate:批判,呵斥    

Describing retirement policy as 'a political choice in the final analysis,' Mr. Tang rhetorically asked in his essay whether China could guarantee every worker would be able to work until 65 and that younger workers would still be able to find employment.

'If not, let's not discuss it,' he wrote. 'It will create resentment among the older workers and anger from the youths when they can't find jobs.' Mr. Tang then poured doubt over the assumptions in the Tsinghua proposal, including Chinese life expectancy data and actuarial theories.

actuarial:保险精算

Neither Mr. Tang nor Yang Yansui, director of the Tsinghua Center for Employment and Social Security, was immediately available for additional comment.

The public sniping surrounds a policy with major repercussions for public finances in the world's second-largest economy. Mr. Tang flecked at the notion of an intensifying tussle in his essay, recalling how media reports in June suggested China's Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security had stepped back from the idea, only to resuscitate it in August as multiple academic proposals again rehearsed the arguments to raise the age ceiling. An official at the ministry declined to comment.

sniping:狙击,诽谤    repercussion:反响,弹回    tussle:扭打,争斗    

The central government's biggest quandary is that China's pool of working-age people began to shrink last year and is likely to keep doing so, making it harder to replace retiring workers and posing a growing burden on the country's pension system. This is also complicated by China's 30-year-old one-child policy, which slows the country's replenishment of its labor force. The number of new entrants to the workforce is likely to decline by 30% in 2020 from 2010, according to Beijing-based research firm GK Dragonomics. Chinese media have reported that the country is studying possible changes to the controversial one-child policy.

quandary:困境,窘境,为难    replenishment:补充,补给    

Even so, upping the retirement age is fraught with political blowback. Both the Tsinghua proposal and Mr. Tang's essay lit up the Web, but few were found in favor of raising the retirement age.

fraught with:充满    

'If it's really implemented, we won't reach 65 before we're worked to death on the job!' a blogger with a name translated as Minty Cat Space wrote. 
'Without completely abolishing family planning, the government won't dare push the retirement age,' another called Devils said, referring to the one-child policy. 'The public would never allow it.'

每日英语:China's Retirement Age Sets Experts at Odds的更多相关文章

  1. 每日英语:China to Move Slowly on One-Child Law Reform

    BEIJING—China's family-planning agency is projecting a slow rollout for an easing of its one-child p ...

  2. 每日英语:China's Bad Earth

    In Dapu, a rain-drenched rural outpost in the heart of China's grain basket, a farmer grows crops th ...

  3. 每日英语:A Different Color: China's Chameleonic Politics

    China has tried your form of government and found it wanting. That was the message delivered by Chin ...

  4. 每日英语:Dashing the China Dream

    Much has been said about what the 'China Dream' really means to many Chinese -- whether it is nation ...

  5. 每日英语:Does China Face a Reading Crisis?

    For much of the last year, intellectuals and officials in China -- land of world-beating students an ...

  6. 每日英语:U.S. Media Firms Stymied in China

    China's recent clampdown on foreign media is crimping the expansion plans of Western news organizati ...

  7. 每日英语:China Overtakes U.S. in Number of Diabetes Cases

    China is now home to the world's largest diabetes population. The number of people who have diabetes ...

  8. 每日英语:Why Are Items Pricier in China?

    In China, consumers pay nearly $1 more for a latte at Starbucks than their U.S. counterparts. A Cadi ...

  9. 每日英语:China Targets Big Pharma

    China unveiled a litany of bribery and misconduct allegations against GlaxoSmithKline GSK.LN -0.26% ...

随机推荐

  1. 亲自己主动手从源代码 构建 Groovy 2.3.8 公布包

    今天为了学习 怎样使用 Groovy 写 Groovy 的測试代码, 所以到 http://groovy.codehaus.org/Download 下载了 Groovy 2.3.8 的源码包. Gr ...

  2. 算法笔记_177:历届试题 城市建设(Java)

    目录 1 问题描述 2 解决方案   1 问题描述 问题描述 栋栋居住在一个繁华的C市中,然而,这个城市的道路大都年久失修.市长准备重新修一些路以方便市民,于是找到了栋栋,希望栋栋能帮助他. C市中有 ...

  3. java 验证码生成

    import java.awt.Color; import java.awt.Font; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.OutputStream ...

  4. alipay

    //安装 插件cordova plugin add https://github.com/charleyw/cordova-plugin-alipay.git --variable PARTNER_I ...

  5. Android:Dialog中隐藏键盘的注意事项

    场景:弹出一个Dialog.里面有一个EditText.用来输入内容.由于输入时.须要弹出键盘.所以当Dialog消失时.键盘要一起隐藏. 如今我们做一个自己定义的Dialog MyDialog ex ...

  6. Linq to Entity调用存储过程【转】

    http://www.cnblogs.com/chenxizhang/archive/2010/01/03/1638201.html

  7. Java多线程系列目录(转)

    转载方便自己学习,转自:Java多线程系列目录(共43篇) http://www.cnblogs.com/skywang12345/p/java_threads_category.html 最近,在研 ...

  8. 分离Command

    要点: 1.请求类必须继承CommandBase 2.请求类类名为请求对象中的Key值,大小写可以不区分 3.类必须用public修饰,否则无法识别该请求,提示为无效请求 4.不能再调用NewRequ ...

  9. 23、List集合

    1.List List接口是Collection的子接口,用于定义线性表数据结构.List是可重复集 2.List自身定义的方法 List处理继承Collection方法外,自己还定义了其它方法,例如 ...

  10. 小白心目中的Java抽象类(abstract class)

    在java开发中,我们有时会定义了一个父类,这个父类只有对方法的描述,但却没有在父类中写出对方法的实现,这种被定义的方法称为抽象方法.那么理所当然,含有抽象方法的类就称为抽象类.用关键字abstrac ...