Anger as China cuts healthcare benefits for elderly to tackle COVID-induced cash shortage

China's botched and now-abandoned zero-COVID policy has left the country scrambling for ways to cover deficits in funds. In an attempt to do this, the Chinese government has been considering to increase the retirement age and slash medical benefits for the elderly.

According to CNN, the plans have sparked widespread anger, prompting thousands of older citizens to take to the streets and protest in four major cities. Analysts have said that the changes are part of a larger picture, a national overhaul that will try to pull the country out of fund shortage after it spent heavily on mass testing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the past three years. 

The latest demonstrations have been dubbed "grey hair movement," marking another rare public act of dissent after a wave of protests took over China against stringent COVID lockdowns and then snowballed into outrage for the Xi Jinping government. The Chinese government's covert attempts to wipe out health benefits began in January, when censors removed hashtags for "Wuhan health insurance" from the hot topic section of the microblogging site Weibo.

Images and videos of the protests were also censored. But speculations of such plans started to emerge as early as 2022, when the Guangdong province and Dalian city declared that they would channel public medical insurance funds towards mass testing of the coronavirus. Later on, the National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) stated that funds should not be used in such a way and local governments must perform testing with their own separate budgets.  

Experts say elderly citizens disheartened by another 'broken promise'

“Local governments are running short of money, or in some cases, out of money. Funding zero-COVID was the most proximate cause for the crunch, but local finances are deteriorating for other reasons too, notably the rising burden of expenses associated with age-related spending," said George Magnus, an associate at the China Centre at Oxford University.

“Chinese pensioners view these latest reforms as yet another broken party promise, one that could profoundly impact their quality of life in the face of China’s looming demographic crisis,” said Craig Singleton, senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.