China offers more choices to boost contributions to pension system

With the expansion of its personal pension program in December, China is trying to encourage savers to increase their thus-far paltry contributions and put more of their money into investments that better match their tolerance for risk.

Policymakers have been pushing personal pension accounts as a way to shore up China’s state-run basic pension funds. The major part of those funds, which is contributed by urban employees, is expected to run dry in the middle of the next decade -- one of the consequences of the country’s rapidly aging population, which has left a smaller workforce to support a growing number of pensioners.