| For thousands of years, with the family-oriented and highly decentralized small-scale farming mode as the major model of agricultural production in China, family is both a basic unit of production and one of living, thus forming the unique family economy of China. This production and life mode have determined the retirement provision model for the aged-family provision, that is, the aged is provided and cared by family members of the next generation, or in a clan even or in the neighborhood.However, with the progress of industrialization in China, the function of family retirement provision system is weakened. In order to adapt for this change, society begins to adopt the role of providing for the aged farmers. Society provision for the aged is practiced through two approaches: the first is community provision, or collective provision to be specific, especially for the "five guaranteed" seniors, and the second is social retirement insurance provision for the aged in the countryside.The development of community provision in the countryside parallels with the development of collective economy: in 1956-1978, the existence of collective economy guaranteed the retirement life of the majority of the senior in the countryside, especially the "five guaranteed" seniors; in 1978, collective economy in China almost faced its end, but the collectives still carried out the responsibility of providing for the "fiveguaranteed" (guaranteeing food, clothing, shelter, funeral, and medicate) seniors and guaranteed the basic life standard of the "three without" (without life means, without care, without working capability) aged through "three collecting and five overall planning" (collect public accumulation fund, public welfare fund, and management fee, and overall plan the priority care fee for the disabled, and the dependents of the martyrs and servicemen, training fee for the civil army, family planning fee, education supplementary fee, and etc.), which, as far as the nature is concerned, was still collective provision; in 1998, with the reform of taxation, the foundation of collective provision didn't exist any more, the provision system for the "five guaranteed" seniors shifted from collectives to state. Though transferred to a higher level of authority, the task becomes harder: more and more qualified seniors are not secured and the level of provision has experienced a decline.Compared with society provision for the senior, collective provision system is one of a lower level, which cannot secure the aged of risks in a larger scale and a deeper level. Therefore, since 1986, China became to experiment on and popularize social retirement insurance provision and has gained some achievements: people have become more aware of this issue and some seniors' life in the countryside are partly supplied by this system. In 1998, more than 80 million farmers adopted this method.Though achievements were obvious, it is not free of problems. In1998, with the management authority of social retirement insurance provision for the aged farmers transferred from Civil Administration Department to Society Security Department, the insurance system for the aged farmers also met a deadlock and some farmers withdrew. By the end of 2003, the policy-holders shrank to 54.28 million.Therefore, both collective provision and society insurance provision have met with troubles even deadlocks in practice. The reason behind this is the lack of responsibility concerning government, which means the lagging behind of system reform and inefficiency of economic support concerning community provision especially the provision of the "five guaranteed" seniors, and is also shown by the shortage of financial subside, the lagging behind in the construction of relative policies and regulations, and the inefficiency of watching so far as society insurance provision system is concerned.With regard to the inefficiency of government responsibility, most researchers either blame the financial power of government or the dual permanent residence system. However, these do not provid...
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