China will have 240 million elderly people, aged 60 years or above, by 2020, accounting for 17 percent of the country's total population, Liu Qian, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said at the InterAcademy Partnership for Health 2016 Conference held on Tuesday and Wednesday in Beijing.

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The increasing number of elderly is a concern for Chinese leaders as the country faces the risk of being outsized by the elderly population before it becomes a developed economy, the Brics Post noted.

China's working age population, aged between 16 and 59 years, significantly dropped 4.87 million to 910.96 million last year, up from 2014's 3.71 million drop. It has been declining since 2012, and the number may even fall by more than 21 percent to about 700 million by 2050.

Beijing has already been feeling the increasing number of pensioners, which is growing up to 23.4 percent to about 22 million, the Navhind Times reported. By 2020, Beijing will pay out 200 billion yuan ($30.7 billion) in old-age pensions, and the amount is expected to surge more than threefold to 670 billion ($111 billion) by 2030.

To address the problem, the Chinese government finally scrapped its decades-long one child policy and encouraged some 90 million eligible couples to have a second child.

Other than the surging number of elderly people, China is also facing a more severe situation as Liu also said there were about 260 million Chinese suffering with chronic diseases. Such diseases are to be blamed for more than 86 percent deaths in China, according to Xinhua News agency.

Liu said China's per capita annual spending on health in 2015 was estimated at $472. He committed to improve China's medical insurance system and basic public service as well as boost the development of traditional Chinese medicine and research.

Tagschina, working population, Workforce, Elderly population, One Child Policy, elderly population in China