Editor’s Note: In April 2025, we published in the Made in China Journal a longer commentary on the Decision that digs deeper into the history of retirement-age legislation and demographic changes in China, the national legislature’s post–Cultural Revolution lawmaking reforms, as well as its procedural failings in adopting the Decision.

On Friday, September 13, China’s national legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) approved the Decision on Gradually Raising the Statutory Retirement Ages (Decision) [关于实施渐进式延迟法定退休年龄的决定]. Upon taking effect next year, the Decision will finally implement a reform that has been on the Chinese government’s agenda since at least 2013.

The Decision has three visually distinct components. It begins with a short main text with five articles covering only the essentials of the reform. What follows is a set of measures, attributed to the State Council, that describe the specific steps to implement the reform. The Decision ends with four charts (technically, annexes to the State Council’s measures) that allow citizens to easily look up their new retirement ages and see how much longer they may need to contribute to the pension fund to qualify for pension payments. As a legislative official made clear, all three are integral parts of the Decision and thus have statutory force.

News outlets worldwide have extensively covered the demographic challenges driving the reform, the initial public reaction to the plan, and its details. We won’t belabor the same points here. Nor will we delve into the Decision’s substance, a task we leave to subject matter experts.

Instead, we will provide a translation of the Decision (sans the charts) and discuss three issues related to the Decision: the NPCSC’s involvement in this major policy decision; the swift and secretive way in which the Decision was adopted; and the Decision’s unusual makeup—i.e., its inclusion of the State Council’s measures.