One of the great successes of the Chinese government's social security policies in the past decade has been its expansion into the hitherto untouched area of the nation's countryside.

The introduction of nationwide rural pension scheme in 2009 was a landmark move. By the end of 2011, it had covered 326.43 million people, a number larger than that of the entire US social security system. The pension recognizes that farmers never strictly retire from work and instead become increasingly unable to maintain their income as they start getting old and weaker.

That, of course, is even truer in 21st century China, because the impact of the strict family planning policy and mass rural-to-urban migration has left many farming families with no one to depend on in old age. In this sense, the rural pension scheme fulfills the original purpose of a pension as a form of income replacement, rather than a reward for past employment as urban workers worldwide generally see it.