if we go to the parks and plazas of major cities such as beijing and shanghai, we can see that hundreds of retirees singing chinese folksongs, kicking a little foot shuttlecock back and forth. it is because china soon will face a rapid increase in its elderly population. the fifth national population census carried out in 2000 showed that the number of old people aged 60 or above had reached 131 million, accounting for 10.4 percent of the country’s total population. and this number is expected to rise at an annual rate of 3 percent. calculated at this rate, the number of china’s senior citizens exceeded 140 million in 2003, accounting for approximately 11 percent of the country’s total population. worse still, the number of old people aged above 80 is increasing at an annual rate of 5 percent. among the total 340 million families throughout the country, 20 percent are made up of people aged above 65.

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