Editor’s note for Tuesday, November 24, 2020

A note from the editor of today's The China Project Access newsletter.

editor's note for Access newsletter

My thoughts today:

One item in the Chinese Communist Partyโ€™s communiquรฉ released in Octoberย that laid out broad goals for the country for the years 2021 to 2025 was to โ€œimplement strategies to address the aging population.โ€

We are starting to see the first actions based on some of those strategies. Earlier this month, government documents suggested that the retirement age would be raised (a proposal that was met with anger online by young and old alike). Yesterday, state media published a clutch of articlesย on Chinaโ€™s family planning policies, essentially suggesting that the way to solve Chinaโ€™s aging crisis was to get young people to have more babies.

Today, China has launched an initiative to ensure that elderly people are not left on the wrong side of the digital divide, unable to access social and financial services because they do not have a new smartphone or know how to use a QR code โ€” see our third story in this newsletter.

We can expect to see more government focus on senior citizens in the months to come.

Our word of the dayย is list of impoverished counties (่ดซๅ›ฐๅŽฟๅบๅˆ— pรญnkรนn xiร n xรนliรจ).

โ€”Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief