China Reform Monitor: No. 1041

June 9:

The South China Morning Post’s editorial page believes China faces “an economic and social crisis” due to its fast aging population that requires “officials finally lay to rest the one-child policy.” Today, 14.8 percent of Chinese are over 60 and that number will peak at 33 percent if current trends continue. An estimated 100 million elderly people (almost half of the over-60 population), live alone, many with children now living in far off cities. Due to the one-child policy there are less and less working-age people to care for the ever-growing number of elderly, resulting in a shrinking labor force and rising health care and retirement costs. A recent study of 17,708 people 45-and-over from 28 provinces showed one third were in poor health and one quarter of those over 60 lived below the poverty line. Almost 38 percent of the elderly had difficulty completing daily tasks alone, while 24 percent needed help.

Chen Shuizong – 60 years old, impoverished, and unemployed – blew himself up in an enormous explosion on city bus in Xiamen, Fujian killing 47 people and hospitalizing 34 others. Chen left a suicide note in which he expressed his frustration and anger with his state of deprivation after years of hard work. Ninety people were aboard the bus, AP reports.

June 10:

The number of Chinese students taking the gaokao – the notoriously stressful exam that determines Chinese university admissions – has fallen for the fifth straight year. This year 9.12 million students took the exam – 30,000 fewer than last year. Test-takers peaked in 2008 at 10.5 million, but by 2010 nearly one million eligible students decided against taking it. Of those students, the New York Times reports, about one-fifth decided to study abroad. There have been continued problems with cheating on the gaokao. In Jilin province authorities hired security to check students for gadgets and wireless digital devices.

June 12:

Nicaragua’s legislature has approved a concession for HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment to build and operate a canal between the Pacific and Caribbean several hundred miles from the Panama Canal. The Chinese company is working with the Nicaraguan government on the project, which is expected to take 11 years to finish, cost $40 billion, and require the digging of about 130 miles of waterway, ABC News reports. Proponents say the project would create 40,000 construction jobs and double Nicaragua’s per-capita GDP. The government plans to grant the Chinese company a 50-year concession to operate the canal with a possibility extension. Despite the legislature’s approval the canal’s final location remains undecided, with a half-dozen possible routes still under consideration.

[Editor’s Note: Next year the Panama Canal, which provides Panama City with steady income, will complete a seven-year, $5.2 billion expansion allowing bigger ships to use the waterway.]

June 14:

Last month Chinese scholars, analysts and military officials gathered at Renmin University in Beijing to argue for Chinese sovereignty over Japan’s southernmost island chain, which includes Okinawa, home to 1.3 million Japanese citizens, and 27,000 American troops. A Foreign Ministry-affiliated magazine recently published a four-page spread on the topic and in March, an op-ed by two scholars at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences appeared in the official People’s Daily, and two more were run in Global Times. The New York Times called it “a semiofficial campaign in China to question Japanese rule of the [Ryukyu] islands.” A week before the seminar, Major General Luo Yuan, argued that Japan does not have sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands because its inhabitants paid tribute to China before Japan.