Chase Wave News Reporter: Yang Jun Huang Light Source
Correspondent: Zhao Song
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In Baiguo Township, Enshi City, Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hubei Province, after more than 10 years of continuous exploration and practice, a honeycomb-shaped three-level mutual aid pension system has been established, including 1 elderly service center, 5 elderly associations, and 22 elderly homes, benefiting more than 2,000 elderly people in the township. Despite this, this pension model that benefits the villagers is still only in the local township, and has not been promoted in the city, the state and even the province. As the aging population continues to intensify, an inclusive, flexible and low-cost rural pension service model - mutual pension needs to be seen urgently.
Baiguo Township is located in the southwest of Enshi City, Hubei Province, with high mountains and long roads, little land and thin things, and is a typical remote village. The vast majority of young and middle-aged laborers here go out to work, and the elderly have become the main group left behind. In 2010, two days after the death of an elderly man in Tianba Village, he was found at home. Immediately afterwards, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, another elderly man who lived alone died at home alone. The misfortune of the two "empty nest" old people deeply pierced the heart of Zhang Bidou, who was affectionately called "Secretary Dou" by the villagers.
Zhang Bidou: I retired in 2008, and when I came back, I saw the elderly in the countryside, and their children went out to work, and there was no one at home to take care of the elderly, so I initiated the establishment of an association for the elderly.
Baiguo Township covers an area of 334 square kilometers, the mountains are sparsely populated, and the villagers live scattered, so it is difficult for the elderly association to cover all the elderly. Zhang Bidou, who had served as the party secretary of several villages before his retirement, decided to set up a grassroots unit of a mutual aid pension organization - the "Home for the Elderly" in a group or a small geographical area as a unit, and the "parents" were also served by enthusiastic and capable young elderly. In September 2014, the first "Home for the Elderly" was established in the Xiushuitang Group of Lianghekou Village, and Yang Dongmei, an initial member of the Lianghekou Elderly Association, volunteered to serve as a "parent" to help the elderly in pairs, and the members quickly grew to more than 10 people. In 2021, the baton of "parent" was passed to her 53-year-old daughter-in-law, Yang Chuntao, a road maintenance worker.
Yang Chuntao: In 2021, take over my mother-in-law's class, she is old, in her 80s, she has also been engaged in elderly work for more than 10 years, when she can't do it, she recommends me to take her class, and I am happy to accept this job. Whether in terms of life or labor, we will help them one by one, (so that the left-behind elderly people at home can rely on their old age).
From the beginning of the idea of establishing a mutual aid pension organization, Zhang Bidou, the old party secretary, began to mobilize some capable young people to help some disabled elderly people living alone in pairs, and organized old party members, old cadres and township talents with certain economic ability, organizational ability, public welfare enthusiasm and literary and artistic skills to give full play to their residual heat. Zhang Bidou said that grasping this mentality, he successfully mobilized 18 elderly people, including 5 retired teachers and 3 retired cadres, with an average age of only 65 years old, to help more than 30 elderly people in the village.
The young and healthy elderly in rural areas have potential and are a resource, they can take care of the elderly in need and feel "needed" and their own value. Professor Mei Zhigang, director of the Social Welfare Research Center of Central China Normal University, believes that in order to realize the real link between supply and demand, a very important condition is needed, that is, to give the person who implements the help a suitable identity or role, which is "helping the elderly".
Mei Zhigang: "In the process of rural pension, we must make full use of rural resources to do a good job of providing for the elderly, then the young and healthy elderly in the countryside is a resource, because this kind of elderly people also have the ability, if they are allowed to take care of the elderly in need, then these elderly people themselves will get a sense of being needed and be able to realize their value." In this way, the elderly who help others can achieve something for the elderly, and the elderly who are helped can rely on the elderly, so that we can achieve a balance between supply and demand, so that the supply and demand can also be effectively linked.
In fact, it is rooted in the traditional culture and traditional network resources of neighborhood mutual assistance in our traditional Chinese countryside, which makes full use of the idle time and resources of the young and healthy elderly in the countryside to achieve mutual help and mutual assistance at low cost. I think this approach is a low-cost and effective approach to allowing the children, neighbors, friends, and social workers of the elderly living alone in rural areas to enable them to play the role of socialized services, so it should be said that this approach is worthy of recognition. ”
Yao Minghua, a retired cadre of Baiguo Township Veterinary Hospital, is currently the president of the Beekeeping Association of the Association for the Elderly. In 2019, with beekeeping and honey-making skills, he taught a skill to other elderly people free of charge, and the originally self-sufficient farmhouse honey became a well-known Internet celebrity product, and also turned the "empty nest" into a "hive".
Yao Minghua: "The age structure of our (members) is 85 years old, and the youngest is 60 years old. By setting up a [beekeeping] association, honey can be sold for money. Through the practice of these years, the income has also increased, with a maximum income of more than 20,000 yuan, and we have also achieved support for the elderly, and also reduced the burden on our children, and we have also driven the surrounding farmers. ”
Hu Guangying, the 60-year-old "parent" of the Jiangjiapo Home for the Elderly in Youzhuping Village, is also the literary and artistic captain of the Youzhuping Village Senior Citizens Association. After the establishment of a local home for the elderly in 2018, she paired up with more than 10 left-behind elderly families, rehearsed shows, sent plays to the countryside, and also bought shoes and washed clothes for the paired elderly.
Hu Guangying: "I am the captain of a dance team, I led them to rehearse a lot of dances together, and we also gave the elderly people in the countryside, they can't walk out to see the excitement, we send the dance to their doorstep, and those old people applaud us and are very happy." ”
At present, Baiguo Township, Enshi, Hubei Province has developed 22 "Homes for the Elderly" in each of the natural bay groups of 6 villages in the area, and has built a three-level mutual aid pension system of "Elderly Service Center + Elderly Association + Elderly Home" at the township, village and group levels.
Even so, this inclusive, flexible and low-cost rural pension model still cannot fully cover the entire region, and has no obvious effect on the city, the whole state and a wider range of rural areas.
Xia Zengmin, deputy director of the Gender Research Center of Huazhong University of Science and Technology and professor of the School of Marxism, said that getting old is not a problem, it is a course of life, and getting old before getting rich is the real problem.
Xia Zengmin: Although the civil affairs department has provided for the elderly who are most in need of support for the 3%, there are still 97% of the elderly groups that have not been covered, among which the left-behind elderly groups in rural areas are even more difficult to obtain public welfare happiness at the community level, and from the perspective of social construction, it is difficult to form a rural society with interpersonal mutual trust and good interaction; Social work stations are in the emerging stage, with many fragmented projects, many projects focusing on children, and a lack of care for the elderly.
So what do the rural areas need? It is a pension service model that is both inclusive and can be adapted to local conditions, and the cost is low. Now, Enshi's "Baiguo model" is essentially a mutual pension system, with the characteristics of flexible form and low cost, and also has the potential to be promoted, but we should also note that in this model, the cultivation and construction of pension talents is the key. Diversified financing is a necessary condition for orderly and sustainable development, and standardization, standardization and evaluation are the guarantee of sustainable development, all of which should be the goal of social construction in our rural society. While inheriting the local culture, mutual aid for the elderly realizes the civilized rural customs of neighborhood watch and mutual help, which makes rural governance more warm, and at the same time effectively stimulates the enthusiasm of villagers to participate in services in public welfare undertakings, and also stimulates the vitality and enthusiasm of rural governance.
From 2022 to 2023, the research team of the School of Sociology of Wuhan University went to Baiguo Township, Enshi, Hubei Province to carry out in-depth field investigations, and completed the research report "Empty Nest into Honeycomb: A Path to Mutual Pension in Actively Responding to the Aging of the Rural Population". The report concludes that the Association for the Elderly is a "low-cost, high-welfare" mutual pension model - each person pays 100-200 yuan per year is not much, but it can meet the emotional and production and life needs of members, enjoy rich spiritual and cultural life, and get multiple "benefits" such as value recognition brought by residual heat, forming a strong internal incentive mechanism, fully reflecting the "endogenous". This "ginkgo experience" of mutual assistance for the elderly in rural areas should be paid more extensive and in-depth attention and promoted. Xia Zhuzhi, a researcher at the China Rural Governance Research Center and associate professor at the School of Sociology, Wuhan University:
Xia Zhuzhi: "Baiguo experience" is a typical Chinese rural pension experience. It develops and takes root in the local society, based on the main body of the village community, and the resources used mainly come from within the village community, which is a typical practice model of "village community pension", and its most valuable feature is that the elderly are regarded as valuable resources rather than the burden of providing for the elderly.
Its initiators are some capable young party members and old cadres, etc., through the establishment of mutual aid organizations, the "empty nest" elderly are woven into the "hive" three-level mutual aid network. This structure rescues the elderly in rural areas from the lonely "empty nest" life, realizes the socialization and collectivization of the pension life, and gives the elderly the space and ability for self-management, self-construction and self-service, fully mobilizes the subjectivity and enthusiasm of the elderly, and stimulates the endogenous power of the mutual aid organization system. At the same time, it meets the self-spiritual and cultural needs of the young and elderly and the daily care needs of the elderly, and truly realizes the goals of learning, dependence, fun and accomplishment for the elderly.
The "Baiguo experience" provides an effective solution for the local response to the aging of the rural population, and combines it with the rural revitalization strategy to form a vivid practice of rural revitalization in the context of population aging, which has important enlightenment significance and promotion value for solving the problem of rural pension in mainland China at this stage.