The number of senior citizens above the age of 60 has reached 130 million in China, or more than one tenth of the country's total population.

And China's gray-haired population has kept an annual growth rate of three percent, according to information from a recent forum on the country's old-age care trends and countermeasures held in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The birth rate has kept falling, while the average life span has continued to rise in China, thanks to social, economic and scientific progress and improvement in medical and health conditions.

It is estimated that by the year of 2015, the population of senior citizens above the age of 60 will exceed 200 million in the country and the figure will rise to 280 million by 2025.

(Xinhua News Agency September 26, 2005)