Filial piety by decree(3)

Different strokes

Two years ago, when China was considering making it a legal duty for people to visit their aged parents, it sparked huge debate whether or not strengthening morality through legislation was right.

Many lawyers and professors criticized the amendment, saying turning Confucian values into law would push society backward.

"Admittedly, the lack of filial respect has become an issue in recent years, but the reason behind it is our education," said Zhao. "We focus too much on how to get ahead instead of being respectful to the elderly."

But despite the protests, it is now official. Many adult children said they do not feel comfortable about being forced to visit their parents.

An aging population is not China's problem alone, it is an issue many countries are grappling with various degrees of success. Criticisms that the government is shirking its social welfare responsibilities may ring out, particularly given recent attention on lacking hospices or retirement homes for China's elderly.

"Visiting elderly parents is not just the responsibility of adult children, but of our entire society," said Ma Guilu, a newspaper commentator in Jiangsu Province. "The government should build more nursing homes and ensure workplaces can implement home leave to make it work."

Qiao Xinsheng, director of the Social Development Research Center of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, has different opinion.

"It is easy to blame the government as its healthcare system still has much to improve, or the companies for not respecting their employee's rights, yet each person cannot deny their own responsibility in meeting the needs of the elderly," he wrote.

Overall, a consensus seems forming, outside of a few desperate elderly people and legislators, that this is a risky arena for the government to step into. Despite Confucian values of filial piety being well-engrained in Chinese society, legislating these into forced contact between parents and children may be tricky with enforcement set to be highly problematic.

In Singapore, adult children are encouraged to live with their parents. Those families with three generations living under the same roof can get subsidies from the government.

One drastic example has been provided by Germany, which has seen insurance companies arrange for hundreds, if not thousands, of its old people to be expatriated to retirement homes either in neighboring countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, or further away, in Thailand or the Philippines.

While the initial public reaction was one of fury, German MP Willi Zylajew told the Guardian that "considering the imminent crisis, it would be judicious to at least start thinking about alternative forms of care for the elderly."

Beyond the methods mentioned above, one Chinese old man took truly drastic measures - getting himself put in prison to be taken care of.

Fu Daxin, 73, a farmer from Hunan Province, afraid he was getting too old to make a living, reportedly planned a robbery in a Beijing railway station to get himself into jail in 2008. His plan was successful since he was sentenced to two years in a jail where people aged over 60 do not have to do manual labor.

In the first three months of his term, he put on five kilograms. "They offer you food, they care for you when you get sick and there is no manual labor. This is a very good life," he explained.