Long-term Focus on Pension Research: Professor Yang Changhan's Four Papers Fully Reprinted by Xinhua Digest

Xinhua Digest Issue 21, 2023, fully reprinted Yang Changhan's article "Stimulating Effective Demand to Promote the Development of the Personal Pension Market," which originally appeared in Tsinghua Financial Review Issue 7, 2023. Professor Yang Changhan is a professor and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Finance and Financial Management at the Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics. He has long been tracking and researching social security funds, pension finance, and pension fund investment management, etc.

The article argues that, in the context of an aging population, individual pensions face a significant potential market demand. However, there is a substantial gap between potential demand and effective demand, which urgently needs to be bridged through proactive efforts by both the government and the market. Leveraging the roles of an active government and an efficient market to stimulate effective demand is crucial for promoting the development of the individual pension market. The article suggests policy measures: on one hand, the government should be proactive in stimulating effective demand in the personal pension market. This includes actively promoting and implementing personal pension schemes, optimizing the supply strategy for personal pension schemes, and implementing tax incentives for personal pensions to provide motivation for their development; enhancing the collaborative supervision of personal pensions to improve regulatory effectiveness; building an efficient and convenient personal pension information platform to facilitate the efficient operation of the personal pension market. actively promoting policy and investor education for personal pensions to guide personal pension demand. On the other hand, an efficient market should be leveraged to stimulate effective demand in the personal pension market. This involves optimizing the supply strategy for personal pensions based on market demand, using the preservation of value and investment returns as a driving force to stimulate effective demand for personal pensions, leveraging comparative advantages through competition and cooperation to expand the personal pension market, integrating market mechanisms with government mechanisms to promote the expansion of the personal pension market through policy measures, and actively using financial technology to improve the operational efficiency of personal pensions.

Prior to this, Professor Yang Changhan had three papers in the field of pension funds that were fully reprinted in the Xinhua Digest. These papers are “How to Manage the Transferred State-Owned Capital in the Social Security Fund” in the 4th issue of the Xinhua Digest in 2022, “China's Pension Fund: Hidden Deficit and Visible Surplus” in the 19th issue of the Xinhua Digest in 2018, and “China's Enterprise Annuity: Development Evaluation, Key Issues, and Policy Recommendations” in the 7th issue of the Xinhua Digest in 2018.

China is grappling with the long-term challenge of population aging, and the issue of pension funds is of vital concern to the country's economy and people's livelihood. Professor Yang Changhan has been conducting long-term tracking research on the theory and practice of China's pension fund finance, and his research has garnered positive attention from both academia and industry.