中国社会保障改革中英文对照外文中英文翻译文献.doc

中国社会保障改革中英文对照外文翻译文献 SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM IN CHINA: ISSUES AND OPTIONS Summary As part of its far-reaching reform of the overall economy, China has successfully initiated fundamental reforms of the social security system over the past decade, establishing a structure consistent with the needs of a market economy. The combination of a social pool and individual accounts in the mandatory system provides a structure which addresses the basic objectives of a pension system – poverty relief, income redistribution, insurance and consumption smoothing. Outside the mandatory system, enterprise annuity schemes, individual retirement plans, and other pension schemes organised by industries or localities are further essential components. These voluntary pensions can accommodate different needs, tastes and jobs, particularly necessary in a country as large and diverse as China. Thus the three elements of the present reformed system, if properly designed and administered, complement and strengthen one another, and together can serve as the basic structure of China’s pension system for the coming decades. In the course of implementation, however, problems have emerged. Fragmented organisation and limited coverage contribute to financing difficulties and to incompleteness of social insurance. The deficits contribute to the ‘empty individual accounts’ – empty because local governments often use the contributions made by workers to their individual accounts to finance deficits in the social pool. Moreover, a system has not been developed for organising investments in capital markets by individual accounts. Nor are the capital markets in a satisfactory condition for such investments. Over time these problems will be a vicious circle, as the deficits are likely to persist, requiring continuing large fiscal subsidies, while ‘empty accounts’ and other systemic problems continue to undermine the credibility of the system, making further implementation enforcing compliance and extens