[1/7] Farmer Wang Zhanling sits next to his wife in their house in Quansheng village, Heilongjiang Province, China, February 8, 2023. The state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences sees the pension system running out of money by 2035. "If the pension system does not change, this is unsustainable," said Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow in the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University in Australia. The province has the lowest birth rate in China, with just over 100,000 births in 2021 and 460,000 deaths. Many experts, including Macquarie's chief China economist Larry Hu, suggest implementing a unified national pension system, backstopped by the more resourceful central government rather than cash-strapped local administrations.

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