Pension Increase Notice Still Not Issued This Year — First Time Since 2005 That Pensions May Not Rise! Government Work Report Deleted the Line on Raising Pensions, Residents' Pensions Less Than Half of Rural Minimum Living Allowance, 1.5 Trillion Spent on COVID Recovered Through Drug Costs, Long-Term Care Insurance Deducted From Pensions Again! Xi Jinping's Old Remarks Republished as a Preview

This video discusses Xi Jinping's article on inclusive, foundational, and baseline livelihood construction published in late September 2026, as well as his National Day reception speech. The host analyzes China's current economic data, resident income, and unemployment rates, pointing out that the pension adjustment notice has been delayed and that retirement benefits face the risk of being frozen for the first time since 2005. At the same time, the program reviews the depletion of medical and social security funds caused by massive pandemic prevention expenditures during COVID-19, and looks back at the background of several major historical contractions in social security and the massive layoffs of the 1990s.

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Right on September 30, which was the day before the CCP's National Day, that fucking idiot Xi Jinping released two things on that day. At 3:00 PM, Xinhua News Agency published a communique saying what? Saying that the October 1 issue of Qiushi magazine would carry an article by that fucking idiot Xi Jinping, titled something like strengthening inclusive, foundational, and bottom-line livelihood construction. On the same day, didn't he hold some kind of National Day reception? What did that fucking idiot Xi Jinping say at the meeting? He said that since the beginning of this year, our country's economy has been moving forward under pressure. At around 7:00 PM, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted the full text online. Then, on one hand, they claimed the economy was pushing forward under pressure, and on the other hand, they said livelihoods needed to handle this inclusive, foundational, and bottom-line tier. Today we won't analyze his fucking nonsense; let's see how this fucking idiot is drawing boundaries in advance for the people's security, huh? Anyway, my first reaction after reading it was what? It was that this asshole was passing the buck in advance for future livelihood system failures. Let's talk about the speech at the reception first. That speech was very short from beginning to end. Hey, speaking of the economy, it was just one sentence. That fucking idiot said that our country's economy is moving forward under pressure, moving toward quality and excellence, showing great resilience and vitality. But there wasn't a single number, and this sentence wasn't even anything fresh. When I looked at this sentence at the time, fuck, why is it so familiar? As a result, when I checked, I found out where the original source of this was. It was said at the Central Economic Work Conference last December, and it was also used to summarize the economic evaluation of the whole year of 2025. It used these eight characters: moving forward under pressure, moving toward quality and excellence. Almost a year has passed, and not a single thing has changed. So what kind of pressure was it moving forward under? Hey, that fucking idiot didn't mention it in his speech, so let me talk about it on his behalf. Hey, actually there's no need to talk about it; basically, aside from exports, there is pressure everywhere—real estate, finance, employment, investment, consumption, nothing works, and everything is that pressure in Xi Jinping's mouth. The focus is still on his self-comforting forward movement. And then who is moving forward? I'll put my words right here: I bet very few people believe the economic growth rate reported by the CCP. We've specifically calculated these accounts before. Today, we won't argue with the CCP's National Bureau of Statistics. Today, let's just use the Bureau's own figures to see if these data match each other. Hey, now let's look at the data, starting with production and exports; this one is moving. In August, the value-added of industrial enterprises above designated size grew by 5.2 percent, the value-added of high-tech industries grew by 10.7 percent, and export volume grew by 18..6 percent. Let's continue to look at domestic buying and selling in China; this completely can't move an inch, and these are all the CCP's own data. In August, total retail sales of consumer goods grew by only 0.4 percent, while the retail sales of large-scale stores like big malls and supermarkets dropped by 3.7 percent. Following that, from January to August, fixed asset investment dropped by another 7.2 percent, and private investment dropped by 10.1 percent. Looking back at the money in the ordinary people's hands, in the first half of this year, after deducting price inflation, according to the CCP, the national per capita disposable income actually grew by 4.2 percent. Here we can make a comparison; the growth rate of gross domestic product is 4.7 percent. Everyone knows how this GDP growth rate came about, and everyone also knows how much water the CCP injected into this data. But even with such a state, the resident income growth rate was still 0.5 percentage points lower than the CCP's GDP. If we embed the real GDP, could there still be growth in resident income? The funniest thing is that the CCP is now starting to comfort itself, saying what? Saying that the per capita net property income of urban residents only dropped by 0.1 percent. What does this item correspond to? It corresponds to housing and interest. Everyone can check the national real estate data themselves; compared to the peak in 2021, the median decline in housing has already turned to about 34 percent. So how much is it after calculating? You can just calculate it using the CCP's own data, right? How much has the second-hand housing dropped since this year? 7.2 percent, right? Dividing the shrunk total by the number of people, doesn't that give you the result? How much should the per capita drop be? 3.84 percent. You CCP dropping by 0.1 percent is fucking too embarrassing. And then in August, the youth unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 hit a new high again, reaching 18.9 percent, and the average weekly working hours of enterprise employees actually shrank from over 49 hours last year to 48.2 hours this year. I would like to ask these magical statisticians of the CCP to tell me, I won't even bother with the data you fabricated, nor the amount of water in it, but at least employment and working hours are deteriorating. Macro-wise you fucking can't find a job, and micro-wise hourly wages are also shrinking, plus working hours are shortening—how the hell did your resident income manage to rise against the trend? Or did the CCP fucking secretly change the definition of residents again? Really, with this kind of data combination, besides changing the definition of residents, I really fucking can't think of how this thing could have risen. And it fucking says resident income grew against the trend by 4.2 percent, fuck your mother.

Let's look at that article in "Qiushi". This article isn't newly written; it's a compilation, using a "Sayings of Confucius" style, picking out quotes from that fucking idiot Xi Jinping from 2012 all the way to this year. There are 16 segments in total, arranged by year. The title is 15 characters long: "Strengthening inclusive, basic, and bottom-line livelihood construction." This is word-for-word the same as the opening of the livelihood section in this year's Government Work Report. There are 16 segments, and I checked the original text for every single one. The most critical parts are the 8th and 9th segments; these pieces of bullshit were spoken by him in 2021. The 8th segment is a remark that fucking idiot made in February 2021 about social security. How did he put it? He said economic development and social security have a relationship where "as the water rises, the boat floats higher"; if the water is shallow, you sail a small boat, and if the water is deep, you sail a big boat. Let me translate that fucking idiot's words into human language: it means there isn't enough money now, so social security cannot be increased. The 9th segment is from August 2021, where that fucking idiot talked about "common prosperity," saying we shouldn't raise expectations too high and the government can't cover everything. It was followed by a sentence saying that even if the level of development is higher and financial resources are more abundant in the future, we still cannot have excessive social security, and we must persist in preventing the trap of "welfarism" that raises "lazy people." Everyone, think about these two segments together. The first one says there's no money, so you can't give more. The second one says even if you have money in the future, you still can't give it. This isn't just talk to cope with a tight budget; this is his fucking stance. What does it mean? When there's little money, he uses that as an excuse; when there's plenty of money, he has the "raising lazy people" excuse waiting. Releasing these two segments during the National Day holiday this year—what the fuck does that mean? It's worth pondering. There's a detail here: in the original 2021 text, the 9th segment actually had three sentences before it. What did they say? They said we need to distribute the cake well and use greater efforts to give the common people a sense of gain. It also said that China's current level of development still has a large gap compared to developed countries. But this time, in the compilation, they didn't include any of those first three sentences; they started directly from the sentence about "coordinating needs," keeping only the second half. What is this guy trying to do? Probably continue to squeeze social security expenditures. So, let's calculate what this fucking idiot calls "excessive social security" and "raising lazy people." Let's see if it's actually excessive right now. What is the largest group of people receiving pensions in China? It's not the employee pension; it's the basic pension insurance for urban and rural residents—the one that farmers and people in cities without a work unit participate in. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's statistical bulletin from last year clearly states it. The annual fund expenditure for this insurance was 622.3 billion yuan, with 188 million people actually receiving money. We can do the math: 622.3 billion divided by 188 million is just over 3,300 yuan per person per year. Divide that by 12 months, and it's 276 yuan per person per month. This is calculated using the CCP's own data. Furthermore, this expenditure doesn't just include pension payments; it also includes things like funeral subsidies, so the actual amount received is even lower. What is the concept of 276 yuan? Let me tell you. At the end of March this year, the Ministry of Civil Affairs announced that the national average standard for rural subsistence allowances (dibao) was 623 yuan per person per month. What is a subsistence allowance? People outside China might not know; it's the minimum livelihood guarantee, and even that is the minimum in rural areas—the absolute bottom line for survival as defined by the CCP itself. The per capita level of urban and rural resident pensions isn't even half of the rural subsistence allowance. After the national unified minimum basic pension was raised by 20 yuan in 2026, it became 163 yuan per month. 180 million-plus elderly people getting 270-something yuan a month—is this what you call "excessive social security"? What kind of "lazy people" does this fucking thing raise? I think that fucking idiot Xi Jinping is the biggest lazy person in all of China, plus the biggest parasite. Let's look at the bigger picture: last year, the total expenditure for the three social security funds—pension, unemployment, and work-related injury—was 8.0895 trillion yuan, and the basic medical insurance fund expenditure was 3 trillion yuan. Together, that's 11.1 trillion yuan a year. Last year, the CCP reported a GDP of 140 trillion yuan. Dividing it, that's only 7.9% of GDP. The average for OECD member countries is 20% to 22%. China is at 7.9%. People can't even fucking afford to eat, and Xi Jinping is already thinking about the "lazy people" problem. This is a conceptual god; his logic is that the reason Chinese people are starving is that they are too lazy. How much more can Chinese people be "involutioned" until they are whipped to death? Now this fucking idiot Xi Jinping is starting to worry about things that have nothing to do with him. What do you think this asshole is trying to do?

So everyone must be asking, why was this old talk from 2021 republished today, just one day before the October 1st National Day? Here is the interesting part: to understand this, we first need to clarify the process of how employee pensions are increased every year. There are about 150 million retirees from enterprises and government-affiliated institutions nationwide. Pensions are adjusted once a year. How are they adjusted? First, the Government Work Report in March includes a sentence about increasing them, then the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Ministry of Finance jointly issue a notice. This notice sets the overall national increase rate for that year, and then each province issues detailed rules and distributes the pension funds. Where does the money come from now? One end comes from the social security contributions paid by active employees and their employers, and the other end comes from fiscal subsidies. Last year, the national social security fund account looked like this: revenue was 9.1 trillion, an increase of 3.3%; how much were the fiscal subsidies? 2.9 trillion, an increase of 10.8%. In other words, the growth rate of fiscal subsidies is more than three times that of insurance premiums. It is very obvious, right? The contribution side is no longer growing, and the gap is not only getting bigger, but it is also becoming increasingly dependent on the treasury. Where does the fiscal money come from? From January to August this year, local government revenue from land sales fell by 28.6%, as I mentioned before. At the same time, local general public budget expenditures only grew by 0.3%. What kind of shitty state is the treasury in now? I guess everyone has an idea. What do the five words "fiscal sustainability" in the article actually refer to? It refers to this account. Now that the process is clear, let's look down the timeline. What has the CCP been doing in recent years? On May 22, 2023, the CCP issued a notice stating that pensions would increase by 3.8% overall. The year before last, in 2024, the notice was issued on June 17, with a 3% increase. Last year, the notice wasn't issued until July 10, with a 2% increase. Do you see it? The notices are issued later each year, and the pension increases are getting smaller each year. Look at that sentence in the Government Work Report again: the 2024 report wrote "continue to increase basic pensions for retirees," while the 2025 report changed it to "appropriately increase." By this year's March report, I read the whole thing from beginning to end, and the section on social security only mentioned increasing the monthly minimum standard for basic pensions for urban and rural residents by 20 yuan; other than that, there was nothing. The phrase "increase basic pensions for retirees" is gone. Many self-media outlets inside the Great Firewall are still fucking making things up, saying that the 2026 report clearly states that it should be "appropriately increased." That's just fucking copying last year's words. You can check the original text yourselves. Similarly, in the 15th Five-Year Plan outline released this March, two different phrasings were used for the two types of pensions: for urban and rural residents' basic pensions, it wrote "gradually increase," while for retirees' basic pensions, it wrote "adjust, tilting towards groups with lower benefits." One is "increase," the other is "adjust." Following that is the notice. Hey, it's already early October, and the latest news I can find is from September 21 this year. The 2026 adjustment notice from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Ministry of Finance still hasn't been issued, which is a full three months later than last year's July 10. So, as you can see, on the eve of October 1st, even the "China Witness" isn't as important as this groundwork. Therefore, on September 30th, "Qiushi" republished the article stating that the government cannot provide guarantees beyond its financial capacity, nor can it provide excessive guarantees.

Let me make sure my words are precise here! Up to now, not a single official document from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) states that this article is prepared for pensions. None of the 16 paragraphs directly discusses the question of whether employee pensions will increase or not. However, the timing of this report, the delay in issuing the notice until now, and the republication of these fucking old clichés—when these three things collide, was it specially arranged? I have no evidence, and we don't need to jump to that conclusion. But the effect is plain as day: regardless of whether the notice is issued at the end of the year, whether pensions increase, or by how much, the narrative of "guaranteeing only the basics and acting according to our capabilities" has already been prepared in advance. Who is this fucking *Qiushi* magazine meant for? It's meant for party thugs at all levels of the CCP. But the same phrasing in the notice released by Xinhua News Agency for the common people is, well, completely different. How is the Xinhua notice written? It says that promises must be fulfilled; that sentence was quoted. But sentences like "the government cannot cover everything" and supporting the elderly—well, not a single one of those phrases was written or excerpted. Let's all savor this division of labor. To the common people, they say people's livelihood is paramount and promises must be fulfilled; to the cadres, they say don't fucking raise expectations too high, the government cannot cover everything. Which one represents the true thought of the CCP? I don't need to spell it out, do I? Now, if pensions are indeed not adjusted this year, what will happen? From January to August of this year, the CCP's own data states that the consumer price index rose by 0.9%. That means the purchasing power of the pensions for 150 million retired employees has effectively decreased by about 0.9%. The number isn't big, but the symbolic significance is extremely strong. This time it's the first time since 2005 that the annual adjustment has not taken place. Not only that, a new deduction is already on the way. Just this March, the General Office of the CCP Central Committee and the State Council issued a document regarding what? Promoting a nationwide long-term care insurance, which is a new insurance type that pays for nursing care expenses when elderly people become disabled and bedridden. The rate is around 0.3%, with active employees and their employers each paying half. For retirees, the document states that individuals must pay the contribution, with the contribution base tied to their pension level. Their former employers won't pay a single penny. Even before pensions have increased, there's already an additional item of money that has to come out of the pension.

Speaking of this, someone might ask, why is money so tight? Actually, the fiscal and economic situation is one aspect, but mainly because in those years the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) squandered things so recklessly, and this goes back to those three years of the Wuhan pneumonia pandemic. The National Healthcare Security Administration of the CCP once announced that the total settlement cost for COVID-19 vaccination from 2021 to 2022 was over 150 billion, with the government budget paying 30% according to regulations, and the rest entirely covered by the medical insurance fund. As for expenses like nationwide PCR testing, they were funded by local government budgets. According to Reuters' statistics, how much was spent nationwide on throat swab testing in the single year of 2022? 352 billion, and Guangdong province alone spent 71.1 billion in a year. Once this money was spent, it was gone. Calculating the three years, it's at least 1.5 trillion as a baseline, and then the CCP started to claw back this money from the medicines used by ordinary people. Let's take a look at just how ruthless this clawback is! In 2024, the average price reduction of centralized procurement drugs exceeded 70%, and not a single pharmaceutical factory in Yunnan and Guizhou won the bid. Now, if you want to get Yunnan and Guizhou medicines in the hospital, you have to pay out of your own pocket. I remember a doctor last year put it most bluntly: the anesthesia doesn't knock you out, the blood pressure doesn't drop, and the laxatives don't work. The CCP even changed the rules for hospitalization; medical insurance now gives hospitals a lump sum per disease category, and if it exceeds the budget, the hospital has to pay out of pocket. Oh, and then hospitals use the medical insurance quota as an excuse to urge patients to be discharged, so the conclusion is that the reimbursement ratio doesn't seem to have been cut, but whether your illness can be treated and what kind of state it can be treated to has completely become a metaphysical question. Let's look at enterprise employee medical insurance again. People with a unit participate in employee medical insurance. A portion of the money paid by the unit into the personal account of employee medical insurance used to be transferred into the personal card, but now it is no longer transferred at all, and has been replaced by direct outpatient reimbursement. People who rarely get sick in the first place got the short end of the stick. Actually, people who do get sick also got the short end of the stick; basically, those necessary expenses are almost like demanding you pay three thousand. Well, what did this lead to? The amount directly credited to the card decreased. In February 2023, retired elderly people in Wuhan took to the streets for this. Ha, people without a unit and farmers participate in resident medical insurance. But starting last year, this thing has a new regulation. What regulation? That is, if resident medical insurance payments are interrupted and you want to rejoin, you have to wait three months to get reimbursements, and for every additional year of interruption, you have to wait an additional month. Last year, the number of participants in resident medical insurance was 942 million. Back-calculating based on the total population announced by the CCP and the number of employee medical insurance participants, it is about 5 million fewer than in 2024, and the safety net end is still shrinking. Let's look at the number of urban minimum living guarantee recipients. In January 2023, this number was 6.79 million, and in 2024 it was 6.25 million, a decrease of about 8%. Putting these pieces together, everyone can see clearly. The lowest tier only increases by twenty yuan each year, just increasing on the surface every year to save face. Meanwhile, the employee tier that pays the most is seeing slower increases, later retirement ages, and longer contribution periods. At this point, the CCP is directly playing hooligan tactics, directly changing the rules. It's a very simple issue. The CCP is playing tricks here. What tricks? If it directly cuts benefits, ordinary people would notice on the spot and discover it immediately. But if the rules are changed, ordinary people have to spend several years figuring out this account. Actually, it's still just to scam you.

Following the old routine, let's look at the historical comparison. There is actually a quite interesting thing: whenever the CCP wants to cut social security, or hint that the common people should be considerate of the CCP's difficulties, this kind of bullshit and these actions are things the CCP has been doing for decades. But while saying the same things and doing the same things, hey, many of their policies are still different. Let's look at 1961 to 1963 first. After the Great Leap Forward, wasn't it left with no money and no food after being messed up? The CCP, on one hand, shouted for building the country through thrift, and on the other hand, cut the livelihoods of 18 million workers, while also sending more than 26 million urban residents back to the countryside. The total number of employees nationwide dropped from 59.69 million in 1960 to 43.72 million in 1963. The CCP simply crossed off the names of the people it didn't want to support from the list. Who did they hand them over to? They handed them over to rural families to support. Then there was the wave of layoffs from 1998 to 2002. By the first half of 2002, the cumulative number of laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises was conservatively estimated at over 26 million. But there is one thing everyone should note: during those years, while people were being laid off, the urban minimum living allowance (dibao) was significantly expanded. Hey, the number expanded; the number of urban dibao recipients grew from 2.66 million in 1999 to 19.63 million in 2002, more than a sevenfold increase. Is the CCP being kind? Not at all, it's still because they are afraid of shit hitting the fan. The security for laid-off workers was either forcibly breached by the CCP or never reached their hands at all; people were just pushed into society in batches like that. Under these circumstances, the central government's fiscal funds were used to open up the dibao to catch these people, and the money spent was very, very little—so little that the per capita amount was only thirty-something yuan per month. From 2003 to 2012, it was the opposite decade. At that time, the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme was established, the agricultural tax was abolished, rural dibao and pension insurance began to spread, and the pensions of enterprise retirees increased by about 10% annually starting in 2005. Why? Because there was money in the treasury during those ten years. So, the words are about the same, but whether to tighten or loosen depends on whether there is money in the account. What is the situation with the account today? As mentioned earlier, revenue from land sales has dropped by a full 28.6%, and investment is also sliding significantly. Local governments now derive a large proportion of their fiscal revenue from fines and confiscations. What is even more glaring is that bottom-line safety net. In that round in 1998, you could say it was low, but at least it existed, right? The urban dibao expanded sevenfold in three years to catch people. Today, the number of urban dibao recipients is 6.25 million, which is 13 million less than the 19.63 million in 2002. Back then, when your rice bowl was smashed, at least there was a straw mat or something to cushion the fall. Now, this cushion is just a piece of paper, thinner than a straw mat.

The most fundamental point is: who the fuck gets to decide this bottom line? The CCP has a Social Insurance Law, and its Article 10 states that the state shall timely increase the level of basic pension benefits based on the growth of the average wage of employees and the rise in prices. Hey, just those two words 'timely'—no formula, no deadline, and no procedure that allows people who have paid into it for decades to demand the initiation of this adjustment. What can the common people sue over? Only whether the already verified money has been paid or whether the expenses that should be reimbursed have been reimbursed. As for whether it increases every year, by how much, how much residents have to pay for medical insurance annually, and what illnesses are covered—it's all decided by the facts of that specific year. But this document has no detailed rules at all, and when it comes to execution, it all depends on those fucking idiots in the CCP making decisions on a whim. So, these two things combined before National Day represent a complete meaning. The speech at the October 1st meeting was to tell the common people that the economy is moving forward under pressure. But is it moving forward? Still 'moving forward under pressure,' my ass. There are two words in those four that are just bragging, holy shit. And "Qiushi" is telling the CCP party hacks that livelihood security cannot support lazy people, and that just giving them the basics as defined by the CCP is enough. What counts as basic, what counts as the bottom line, and what counts as going too far—there is absolutely no clear standard; it is entirely in the hands of the CCP, you can say whatever the fuck you want. Now let's look at one thing: there are not many months left between now and the end of the year, less than three months. Let's see if the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Ministry of Finance will actually issue the notice on pension increases. If they do, what should we look for? See if the overall national increase exceeds the 2% level. Then look at whether the pension issue for retirees is mentioned in the draft of the Central Economic Work Conference in December this year. If these things all lean toward no increase, small increases, or more deductions, then the 16 paragraphs of old talk published on September 30th this year were not old talk, but a warning. Alright, I'll stop here for today. If you like the program, please join the membership tier; if you want to support me, you can join the membership tier. There are in-depth programs for members every time, welcome to join the 'Hardcore Window.' See you in the next episode.