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In a policy unchanged since 1950's women in China retire at age 50 and men at age 60 years. China is aging faster than the US and it's population that is over 60 years is 20% of the population. Over the 5 years to 2025 about 40 million people will retire, about the size of the population of Canada. There will be 36 million fewer people in the working age population ages 16-59 to support them. Chinese migrant workers and families work longer hours than white collar workers making it difficult to raise the retirement age to European levels in a short time. The government's approach is to get public support by creating awareness about the problem and change the retirement age gradually over a longer period. The first step will be bringing the retirement age of women to the level of men. The 10 year gap in retirement age of men and women is not found in any advanced economy.

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China shifts its policy to allow 3 children per family after it sees the percentage of people in the population over 60 rising. This WSJ report show that the policy shift is being followed by changes in policies related to education with more equitable educational resources and reduced expenditures for education for families. Policies that were seen as making families hesitant to have more children.  Changes of the Mao era policy of one child, one family, are very recent. Not till 2013 has this policy changed, since its implementation after the Communist Party took over mainland China in 1949. In 2013 the government allowed families to have 2 children if one of the parents was an only child, and two years later in 2015 the policy was changed to allow 2 children per family. Only half of Chinese couples are willing to have 2 children, according to a study by the state backed All China Women's Federation. A once in a decade census shows 12 million babies born in China in 2020. In 2016 there were 17.9 million births. China's leaders noticed a change in the census for people over 60 as a percentage of the population, which was growing much faster than imagined from 13.3% in 2010 to 18.7% in 2020.  The perception of experts and Chinese couples in their thirties shows that the policy is seen as not enough to convince young couples to have another child. Typical is the situation of one parent cited in this report, a Beijing father of two. He says the policy has changed but it does not mean that he would have another child. He says it takes a lot of money and energy to take care of another child. It also affects the standard of living and education of the two children as he has already moved to a new 2 bedroom apartment to be near top schools in the Chinese capital. Another facet of this development is women in China postponing children to pursue their careers. Government policy is now to raise the retirement age with fewer people of working age to support the senior population. The percentage of the population of working age 15 to 59 years dropped from 70% in 2010 to 63% in 2020. Fewer people for working at Chinese factories and manufacturing. China's retirement age is now 60 for men and 50 for women, giving the government room to do this by bringing it up to western levels that are much higher in the US and Europe.   ...

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In a program of gradual change the new leadership under premier Li Keqiang steers China's economy in the new direction set by the DRC Report: China 2030 and the Third Plenum in Nov. 2013. New priorities listed under major Tasks in the annual work report by Li Keqiang place setting up deposit insurance at the top of the list. Policy changes include allowing cities to issue bonds directly to increase transparency in construction spending and control burgeoning debt.

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The Economist points out that China's total debt of government, corporate and households has grown by about 100% of GDP since 2008. The 2009 crisis led to rapid increase in debt. It is now about 250% of GDP, according to the Economist. Slower growth of below 7% risks reducing China's ability to service this debt. About half of this debt is owed by state owned companies and property developers. China can use its sovereign reserves to continue supporting bank and state owned companies. Investor's are pricing bank shares to reflect about 10% of this debt as bad debt even though government estimates are much lower. The reserves provided China time to fix the banking system since 2008, yet the debt keeps growing and China has failed to take strong action in the last 6 years. Complacency is a problem, and the incentives for local governments to continue prior practices that increase debt continue. As Krugman and other experts have pointed out at some point the rules of finance will apply to China as they have for other countries that faced a debt crisis- Japan in the late 1980's, South Korea and other Aisan countries in 1997, and the U.S. in 2008. Even without a crisis through deft managemen and use of reserves China risks zombifying the economy as old loans are backed up by new loans, with the further risk of misallocation of capital or poor use of capital. This lowers productivity of capital and hurts development. With poor statistics such as the figure of 1% of debt being bad debt cited here, the problems of complacency can be magnified, as there is less reason for a strong response....

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Prof. Peterson of Harvard and Hanushek of the Hoover Institution, authors with Woessmann of the book "Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School," offer some startling reminders about the importance of education to economic growth and incomes in countries. Simply by raising the math standards in the U.S. to the higher standards in Canada would raise GDP by three fourths of one percentage point. One advantage that the U.S. enjoys comes from its good university systems, open markets, rule of law, tax rates, and open immigration policies, which give it about two thirds of a percentage point in higher GDP growth per year. The estimates are from the authors calculations. For the period 1960-2009, a period of rapid growth in Asian countries Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, higher test scores in math and reading compared to the wrold average as measured by NAEP test and PISA, have led to 2% higher GDP growth. NAEP shows only 32% of U.S. high school students proficient in math compared to 45% in Germany and 49% in Canada and 63% in Singapore. By contrast to Korea and Taiwan, Peru, Argentina, the Philippines and S. Africa have about 2% less in GDP growth because of lower scores compared to the world average....