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Revisit tradition to provide better for elderly
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THERE was a time when the size of the family was subject to the strictest national plan, a policy partly inspired by Malthusianism.
According to a law proposed by the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, all life forms, including humans, have a propensity to exponential population growth when resources are abundant, while actual growth is limited by available resources.
In all spheres of human endeavor, there have been attempts to hold up economics — buying and selling — as the dominant ideology for human relations and society. What seemed to have eluded the followers of Malthus is that human beings have an aging problem, while other life forms do not.
China, especially urban China, is aging fast, although the many ramifications of aging are far from fully comprehended. By contrast in Japan, a super-aged society, you are more likely to confront the many consequences of an aging society. In Japanese hotels, the sight of hoary-haired women busy with room services often made me uneasy.
A couple of years ago, during lunch break at a conference in Fukuoka, I found myself sitting next to a gentleman who spoke fluent English.
During our conversation I asked him why there were quite a few senior citizens holding colored batons directing traffic on some streets.
He explained that while remuneration from these services is way below the old-age pension, such make-work schemes, by keeping the elderly occupied, gave them a sense of fulfillment.
Later I was told the gentleman was Wataru Aso, former governor of Fukuoka Prefecture and brother of Taro Aso.
I subscribed to his view, for I thought helping the elderly feel needed (rather than uselessly waiting for the inevitable) is an important way to help the aged spend their retirement with dignity, for unfortunately for us all, in industrial society, labor participation has become the prerequisite for usefulness.
By all accounts Shanghai is fairly aged, although you sense the situation obliquely, in the crowds of aunties in parks dancing to the tune of “Little Apple.” We are wont to talk about the challenge for a nation getting “old before it gets rich,” but the pervading loneliness felt by the aged in a big city has nothing to do with getting rich.
We heard about how some elderly people would travel on a bus to a suburban destination, and then went back by the same bus, day in and day out, when elderly could still use public transport freely at designated hours.
And compare these free-riders to a well-off couple spending 20 days rocking on a luxury cruise, and when alighting from the ship in another port at arrival, the doting couple, checking the menu, mumbles, “Oh, this must be Monday!”
Their sense of loneliness is essentially the same. But otherwise, the much-discussed economic implications of aging is still hypothetical in a big Chinese city.
In restaurants or hotels the most basic of service jobs are still eagerly competed for by young men and women.
On the streets, you will see clusters of young men in their 20s ready to thrust you bills of property listings.
One does not often associate these with a city struggling with demographic woes. In this we are indebted to what’s touted “demographic dividends,” or the steady flow of a large number of prime-age rural youth into cities.
But we are likely witnessing a paradigm shift, thanks to regulatory efforts and soaring living costs, as a sizable portion of the migrants are being priced out of the cities.
Beyond economics
The migrants’ ties to their adopted cities have always been tenuous. They are aware that after outliving their usefulness, their chances of settling down here are slim, if not downright impossible.
Subtle changes are also taking place elsewhere. The first-generation migrants had been very hard working, while the second generation, some of them brought up in cities as an only child, are less ready to jump for jobs deemed menial by the locals.
A desperate situation calls for a desperate remedy.
In a move to further deregulate family planning, most young couples can have a second child now. But according to a survey of 1,489 newlywed couples in Shanghai (conducted late last year), only 25 percent showed volition to have a second child.
The cost of bringing up a child in a big city can be intimidating, in addition to the fact that after decades of restrictive birth policies, small family sizes have become normalized. While governments had been fairly efficient in enforcing birth control, their capability at encouraging people to have another child seems to be dubious.
Chinese used to believe, justly, that bringing up children is less about economics, and more about caring for the parents in their old age.
Sadly, children can no longer be counted on for warming one’s old age.
The religious respect for the aged used to be a trait that set Chinese apart from nearly all other peoples.
For instance, when Buddhism and Christianity were introduced to China, one of the most damning critiques of them was that they were inconsistent with Confucian notions, in that they presuppose a strong love for objects other than one’s parents.
One of the most intense regrets for Chinese used to be the eternally lost opportunity to serve one’s parents with medicine and soup when they are ill, or to be present when they are dying.
Mencius said: “People with gray hair should not be seen carrying burdens on the street,” and talked about an ideal society when people aged 50 could be clad in silk, and those aged 70 could afford meat (as their weakened physique demands).
Today, in our superstition in modernity (which is often a byword for Westernization), we have developed a way of life that is essentially hedonistic and individualistic.
But old-age pensions and an institution are poor substitutes for home.
In view of the inadequacy of mere economics in providing for the aged, there is every cause to revisit our traditional wisdom in caring for the aged.
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