A comprehensive pension scheme is currently being developed to guarantee social fairness across all sectors of Chinese society, says the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

Vice Minister Hu Xiaoyi assures that the pension's top-level design, developed by the ministry in cooperation with 7 institutes, will be implemented as soon as it is ready.  

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Hu says the bold pension reform is a multi-faceted one and must carefully study every situation and every group that will be covered by pension insurance.

China has different pension schemes for civil servants, public institution workers, enterprise employees, rural residents and urban dwellers. 

On one side, the institutes need to consider how to balance and advance each policy. On the other side, they need to build a system with a fairness-inspiration balance as well as think about long-term issues, Hu explained.

Last year, MOHRSS authorized seven institutes including the Development Research Center of the State Council, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Renmin University of China to create a pension reform scheme.

At least three pension policies have been released since last year, including one that integrated rural and urban pensions.

The two others were the "interim procedures about urban pension insurance relation" and "tax-deferred policy on enterprise annuity and occupation annuity".

Zheng Bingwen, Director of the Centre for International Social Security Studies at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, lauded the pension reform initiative because the national government is working with research experts and academic scholars for the first time in years to bring about a comprehensive scheme.

Zheng explained that the new rural social pension and urban residents' pension, which focuses on urban unemployed residents, are very similar in scheme such as application requirements, account setup, and payment methods. 

Some provinces have already utilized one policy to handle these two kinds of pensions since the urban residents' pension was carried out in 2011. The policy helps related departments save cost and increase work efficiency.

In addition, individuals who move to other cities or provinces are able to apply a one-time transfer of pensions and social insurance to their new place of residence without a discontinuance in their pension plan. Participants, no matter if they are rural residents or urban unemployed residents, can also select their pension plan independently.

Hu says the public can look forward to more beneficial pension policies in the near future.