ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on government launched reforms and discusses the viability of the partially funded pension system that China is currently attempting to establish. China's economic reforms from the early 1980s have helped give rise to a wide array of social problems. Since the mid-1990s, however, the goal of pension reform has shifted to the transformation of the system from a pay-as-you-go to a partially funded scheme, attempting to resolve the problems of providing pensions for a rapidly ageing population. New workers who joined the labour force after the implementation of the reform policies, but their contributions in the individual accounts have been used to pay the pensions for the currently retired However, individual accounts would apply only to new employees, joining work after the implementation of the plan. National pension reform took place mainly during the 1990s. Between 1991 and 2000, the State Council issued four documents, which laid down the principles and direction of pension reform in China.
