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China forecasts longer lifespans and no poverty

Average life expectancy in China will jump 13 years to 85 years and all household living standards will improve, ending poverty by the middle of the century, Chinese academics forecast in a report issued in state media yesterday.

China's average life expectancy was 70 for men and 73 for women in the 2000-2005 period, according to the UN. Those figures compare with 78 and 85 respectively for Japan, and 75 and 80 for the US.

The report also says that by 2050, Chinese will spend nearly six more years of their lives in school -- almost double the current average -- as a far smaller proportion of income will be spent on food, the official China Daily said, citing a 20-volume report called An Outline for China's Sustainable Development.

The report comes as the communist welfare system disintegrates under the pressure of economic reforms, with layoffs from state-owned enterprises and the lack of a social safety net for migrant workers.

Problems

But the weighty report, put together by 184 academics and policy makers mainly from the influential Chinese Academy of Sciences, warned that a growing population and environmental problems poses risks to China's sustainable development, the Chinese News Service said.

China's booming economic growth in the last several decades has pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty, but a growing wealth gap in recent years has exposed cracks that the government has acknowledged threaten social stability.

A growing elderly population presents big problems for the Chinese government, which is already predicting serious challenges as its 1.3 billion population ages, requiring vast amounts of funding for pensions, health care and other programs for the elderly.

The People's Daily, published by the Communist Party, said last year that the elderly would make up 30 percent of China's population by 2050.

Poor use of energy, social inequality, the country's rural woes and a lack of creativity and innovation were also risks, the report added.

About 200 million people in China live below the poverty line.

Large swathes of China are affected by chronic air pollution from factories, vehicles and coal-burning power plants. Water and land pollution have poisoned many other parts of the country.

Only last month the China Modernization Report 2007 said that China had failed to make any progress in protecting the environment in the past three years, despite government pledges to put the issue at the top of its agenda.

China ranked 100 out of 118 countries in terms of environmental protection -- the same level as in 2004, the modernization report said. But it said that by 2015, China's social and economic indicators should be on par with developed countries in the 1960s, by which stage China would have moved from an agrarian economy to an industrial one.
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