DO U THINK CHINA WILL FACE THE SAME PROBLEM THAT WESTERN COUNTRIES HAVE EXPERIENCED?

With more than 160 million people over the age of 60 and its ageing rate gaining pace, China is facing a curious problem: It is greying while still in development - a challenge other economies have only had to face at a more advanced stage.

The speed at which the number of elderly in China is increasing has alarmed both the government and demographers about the future, with the nation's health-care system already straining and two-thirds of rural workers without pensions.

'Population ageing is going to be a big social problem in China,' said Ms Wang Xiaoyan, the founder of Community Alliance, one of the few non-governmental organisations in China that addresses the needs of senior citizens.

The first generation of parents affected by China's population control policy put in place in 1979 - which the government says has averted 400 million births - is now hitting the age of 60.

The tens of millions of one-child homes, coupled with mass migration of students and workers to urban areas, has destroyed the traditional nuclear family model.

Instead, ordinary Chinese are coping with a 4-2-1 inverted pyramid - four grandparents and two parents, all the responsibility of an only child.

As a result, half of China's over-60s - 80 million people - live in 'empty nests' without their children, who are unable to assume responsibility for their ageing parents.

'This is why we have problems now,' said demographer Wu Cangping, 88, who still teaches at Renmin University. 'Children do not have enough money to take care of their parents. We're getting old before we are getting rich.'

The thorny problem of a greying population has not escaped notice in the corridors of power in Beijing.

The authorities have put in place a system effective this year that will give pensions to 10 per cent of rural workers. In recent years, they have also been raising health-care allotments for the elderly.

The government wants to allow 90 per cent of older people to receive family care with welfare assistance, 6 per cent to receive state-backed community care services and the other 4 per cent to move to nursing facilities.

But the country's 40,000 retirement homes have only 2.5 million beds - enough for a little more than a quarter of the eight million it needs.