Pensions 养老金
Fulfilling promises 兑现承诺
China is beginning to face up to its pension problems 中国开始直面养老金难题
Aug 11th 2012 | HEIJINGYING | from the print edition
IN THIS village in the cornfields outside Beijing, a 74-year-old woman whiles away the time in the forecourt of a local eatery, chatting to the owner stacking chairs around her. She can enjoy an unhurried retirement thanks to the money her daughter sends, the monthly pension her husband collects from his former employer, and, in the past few years, a small pension, now worth 275 yuan ($44) a month, from the Beijing municipal government.
北京城外这座村庄的麦田旁，在当地餐馆前的空地上，有一位74岁的老妇人和身边正在堆放椅子的店主闲谈，借此消磨时间。她能享受退休后的悠闲生活，多亏了她女儿寄来的钱和她丈夫从以前老板那里按月领取的退休金。在刚过去的几年里，还多亏了北京市政府发放的一小笔养老金，如今为每月275元（合44美元）。
Public pensions are fairly new to China‟s countryside. Security in old age used to mean the family farming plot, not a pension pot. But by the end of last year 326m rural residents had been enrolled in a public pension, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. That is an increase of over 240m since 2009, when China rolled out a new rural programme, based on pilot schemes in places like Heijingying. This wave of rural Chinese joins nearly 300m city dwellers enrolled in a variety of urban pensions. Add them all up, and China‟s social-security system is now “basically” in place, the National Audit Office (NAO) has just said.
公共养老金对中国农村来说还是相当新鲜的概念。过去，老年人的保障在于家里的农田，而不是养老金。但根据人力资源和社会保障部的信息，到去年年底，已有3.26亿农村居民参加了公共养老金计划，相比2009年增加了超过2400万人——当时中国以 Heijingying 等地为试点【注1】，在此基础上推出了新的农村项目。已有近3亿城市居民参加了各种城市养老金计划，现在这一批中国农村人口也加入了进来。国家审计署日前表示，把这些人全部加起来，中国的社会保障制度如今已“基本”就位。
That is just as well, because the system will soon have a lot to cope with. The number of Chinese aged 60 or more is projected to grow from 181m today to almost 390m in 2035, almost a quarter of the world‟s total. And only two working-age Chinese will support every person in retirement. China is turning Japanese (see chart).
这么说倒也无妨，因为中国的社保制度很快就将应对诸多问题。2035年，中国60岁以上人口的数量预计将从目前的1.81亿人上升到接近3.9亿人，占世界总量的近25%。而且每两个处于劳动年龄的中国人就将需要供养一位退休的老人。中国正在向日本靠拢（见图表）。
Pensions can rest on a variety of “pillars”, among them government handouts, schemes financed by mandatory contributions, and voluntary arrangements. China‟s pillars are all of different heights, and some are wobbly.
养老金可依托于各种“支柱”，其中有政府拨款、由强制性缴款提供资金的方案以及自愿安排。中国的“支柱”高低有别，而且其中一些并不稳固。
In the countryside local governments pay a basic pension which varies greatly depending on their financial health. Personal accounts supplement this, into which individuals may put money over their working lives, encouraged by matching contributions from the state. In the cities the main system combines social insurance, paid for by payroll taxes, with individual accounts, into which workers must pay 8% of their earnings.
在农村，地方政府根据其财政状况发放基本养老金，各地的额度差别很大。私人账户对基本养老金加以补充，个人可以在工作期间向该账户存钱。国家发放相应的缴款对此加以支持。在城市里，主要的养老金系统包括通过工资税交纳的社会保险和个人账户（劳动者必须将他们8%的收入存入该账户）。
But a kind of apartheid is at work, distinguishing urbanites from country folk, and locals from
migrants. Ma Wanzhi, who now lives in Heijingying, enrolled in a scheme through her employer, a factory making the incense sticks for temples. Her 61-year-old sister, on the other hand, still lives in the neighbouring province of Hebei, where she collects a meagre pension of 80 yuan a month. She supplements her income by travelling to Heijingying to sell peaches by the roadside.
但某种意义上的“种族隔离”起了作用，把城里人和乡下人、本地人和外地人区分开来了。现在居住在 Heijingying 的马万芝（音）是一家香烛制造厂的员工，她通过单位参加了一项养老金计划。另一方面，她61岁的姐妹仍然生活在邻近的河北省，每月领取80元的微薄退休金。她来到 Heijingying，在马路边卖桃子，借此补充收入。
Like these women, many of China‟s workers are highly mobile. Yet China‟s pensions are not. In principle, workers may take their individual contributions with them if they move, as well as 60% of their employer‟s. In practice, the system struggles to keep track of the money. Only a quarter of migrant workers in the cities were covered by pensions in 2010, compared with four-fifths of locals, according to Albert Park of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
和她们一样，很多中国劳动者具有很高的流动性。但中国的养老金却并非如此。原则上，如果劳动者移居到外地，可以把个人缴款和单位社保款项的60%一并带走。但实际上，中国的养老金制度很难记录社保资金的流动情况。香港科技大学的 Albert Park 表示，在2010年，城市里仅有25%的外来务工人员享有养老金保险，而在本地人中这个比例却为80%。
Another problem: the government envisages urban workers retiring on nearly 60% of their final wage. But that assumes their contributions earn high rates of return, keeping up with wage growth. In fact, most of the system‟s assets languish in bank deposits or government bonds, where they barely keep up with inflation.
还有一个问题：政府预计城市劳动者退休后依然可以领取最终工资的60%。但这需要一个前提条件，即他们的缴款要获得高回报率，和工资增长相齐平。实际上，中国养老金制度中的大部分资产都困在银行存款或是政府债券里，难以与通货膨胀抗衡。
And that is not the worst of it. A lot of individual accounts hold no assets at all. According to Zheng Bingwen of the Centre for International Social Security Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, individual accounts held assets worth only 270 billion yuan at the end of 2011, even though 2.5 trillion yuan had been paid into them. Local authorities had collected the
remainder and diverted it to other, more pressing ends. These include building stadiums, buying cars and outright fraud. The NAO identified 132 cases of malpractice in the 18 funds it investigated. Last month the former director of a social-security fund in Gansu province was sentenced to death for embezzling 28m yuan over a decade.
而这还不是最糟糕的。很多个人账户中完全没有任何资产。中国社会科学院国际社会保障研究中心的郑炳文表示，尽管中国向社保个人账户注入了25000亿元人民币，但在2011年年底，个人账户的总资产值仅为2700亿元。地方政府收取了其余的注资，并挪用于其它更为紧急的事项——包括建造体育场馆、购买汽车，甚至用于一些纯粹的欺诈性项目。国家审计署调查了18项专款，发现其中有132起营私舞弊事件。上个月，甘肃省社保办原副主任因在十年中侵吞2800万元公款而被判处死刑【注2】。
Embezzlement is to blame for only a small fraction of the money emptied from individual accounts. Most of it goes to pay today‟s pensions, including to workers who were made to retire in their 40s from state-owned enterprises anxious to shed staff during the 1990s. Their legacy weighs heavily on China‟s rustbelt provinces in the north-east. Liaoning, for example, needed to impose a payroll tax of about 30% to meet its pension obligations, says Stuart Leckie of Stirling Finance. By contrast, Shenzhen, a southern city full of sunrise industries, got away with a 13% rate until recently.
社保个人账户资金外流，官员贪污只是其中一小部分原因。该资金大部分都用于支付目前的养老金了。收取这笔养老金的劳动者中，有些是国企员工。他们在四十岁左右就被迫退休了，因为国企在二十世纪九十年代曾急于进行裁员。为了支付他们的退休金，中国东北的一些老工业省份背上了沉重的负担【注3】。斯特林金融公司的 Sturat Leckie 表示【注4】，比如辽宁，当年需要征收约30%的工资税来支付法定的养老金。相比之下，遍地都是朝阳产业的中国南部城市深圳直到最近都只需征收13%的工资税。
These pressures have turned the “pre-funded” part of China‟s pension system into a de facto “pay-as-you-go” system, where today‟s payroll taxes pay for today‟s pensioners. Some economists, including Peter Diamond, a Nobel prizewinner from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, think China should make its peace with this fact. It could emulate Sweden, Italy and Poland by converting its empty accounts into “notional” accounts.
这些压力将中国养老金制度一部分“先行出资”的方式转为了实际上的“现收现付”制度，即征收工资税来为同期的退休人员发放养老金。包括麻省理工学院的诺贝尔获奖者 Peter Diamond 在内的一些经济学家认为中国应当接受这个现实。中国可以仿效瑞典、意大利和波兰，把空头账户转为“名义”账户。
Under this system, individuals contribute to personal accounts, just as they would in a pre-funded scheme. But rather than relying on the financial markets to turn contributions into fatter pension benefits, notional schemes work on an actuarial formula that takes account of how well the economy has done and how long someone is expected to live. And rather than pay benefits out of a pot of past contributions, notional accounts remain empty, leaving pensions to be financed from current taxes, sometimes supplemented by a central trust fund.
在这种制度下，个人向私人账户缴纳款额，和“先行出资”方式中所做的一样。但并非是依靠金融市场来把缴款转为更为丰厚的退休补助金，而是由名义账户体制来产生一种精算公式，把经济运转情况和个人预计寿命都纳入考量。而且名义账户并不动用大笔补助金来支付过期的缴款，它将保持空账户状态，让本期税捐来为养老金提供资金，有时还通过中央信托基金加以补充。
Even if China‟s pension contributions were zealously guarded, they would fall short of the amounts required. In a recent simulation, Zheng Song of the University of Chicago, Fabrizio Zilibotti of the University of Zurich and two colleagues show that pensions need to be cut by over 35% to bring contributions and payouts into line over the long run.
即使中国的养老金缴款受到了积极保护，但在数额方面并未达到要求。芝加哥大学的郑松（音）、苏黎世大学的 Fabrizio Zilibotti 及两名同事在最近一次模拟实验中证明，从长远来看，若想让缴款和支出保持一致，需要把养老金削减35%以上。
However, they advocate delaying such a cut for 30-odd years. That would benefit people who retire before 2040 at the expense of future generations. The move, the authors argue, can be justified because China‟s future generations will be much richer than today‟s. Someone who started work in 2000 (and will therefore retire after 2040) will be six times better off than someone who started work in 1970 (and is therefore due to retire soon). In future China will have many fewer workers for each person in retirement, yet also much more output per worker.
然而，他们主张将这种削减措施延后三十余年。这将使在2040年前退休的人受益，但代价却是未来几代人的利益。笔者认为此举合乎情理，因为中国未来几代人将比当今这一代富裕许多。相比在1970年参加工作（并因此将马上退休）的人，在2000年参加工作（并因此将在2040年后退休）的人要富上六倍。在未来的中国，每位退休人员将由更少的劳动者来供养，但每位劳动者的价值产出也将会更高。
Rather than cut benefits, China could instead raise the retirement age, by perhaps five years. In the cities men now retire at 60, white-collar women retire at 55, and blue-collar women retire as early as 50. The system would be far more sustainable if the retirement age rose to about 65.
相比削减补助金，中国更应当做的是提高退休年龄，或许可以提高五年。如今在城市里男性60岁退休，白领女性55岁退休，蓝领女性50岁就退休了。如果将退休年龄提高到约65岁，该制度的可持续性将得到大幅改善。
Moreover, if China‟s elderly wanted to carry on working past the notional retirement age, its social-security system should allow them to do so. In the countryside people can collect their pension whether or not they continue working. That is sensible, because it reflects rural practicalities. A farmer, after all, wants to continue to work on his field. As Ms Ma, the peach seller‟s sister, says: “In the countryside, people don‟t use the word „retirement‟.”
此外，如果中国的老年人想要在名义上的退休年龄之后继续工作，该国社保制度应当允许他
们这么做。在农村，不管人们有没有继续工作，他们都可以领取养老金。这是合理的，因为它反映了农村的实际。毕竟，一位农民想要继续在田地上耕种。正如那位卖桃妇人的姐妹马万芝所言：“在农村，人们根本不知道什么„退休‟”。
from the print edition | China
译者注：
1. Heijingying：根据文章首句和本句， Heijingying 应该是北京的一处地名。这是汉语拼音，但译者并未查到具体在汉语里指什么地方。还望知道的朋友赐教。
2. 现年40岁的刘保禄是甘肃省农垦社会保险办公室（以下简称省农垦社保办）原副主任，他曾身兼数职，一人独揽省农垦社保办会计、基金监督、财务科科长、办公室副主任等多个职务，从2001年至2010年的十年间，刘保禄利用职务便利，采用私自隐匿转存、收入不入账、制作假银行对账单、假银行利息单等手法，疯狂作案101起，侵吞公款共计人民币2800余万元，虽追回赃款2600余万元，但如此行为必将迎来法律严惩。7月25日，兰州中院一审以贪污罪对其判处死刑，缓期两年执行。除此之外，因省农垦社保办在资金管理中存在严重漏洞，法院为此没收赃款895万余元以示惩戒。（来源：《兰州晚报》）
3. Their legacy weighs heavily on China‟s rustbelt provinces in the north-east.
\"legacy\" 本意为“遗产”，此处根据文意译为“退休金”。“rustbelt”指老工业基地。
4. Stirling Finance相关资料 Established in 1998, Stirling Finance is an independent research and consulting firm focusing on the pension fund, asset management, and insurance industries in Greater China. Over the years the firm has worked closely with numerous international institutions, governments, investment managers and multinational corporations. Stirling Finance is a thought leader in pension system reform in Hong Kong and in China, and has advocated reforms and best practices through various forums. The name \"Stirling\" is that of the town with its ancient Castle in Scotland. The firm has a team of experienced consultants based in Hong Kong. 文中译为“斯特林金融公司”。 P.S.
本文姊妹篇为同期《经济学人》文章《养老金·中国特色社会保障制度》 by 山东超峰 。有兴趣的朋友请移步此文。
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