Mountainous Area Of ​​south Clan Inhabited Rural Communities, Family Pension Mode Changes

The statistic data from the fifth population census of China show that the proportion of the aged (over 60) to the total population in China is 10.2%, which means that China has become an aged society. The aged society confronts a series of social problems about the aged. For an agricultural developing country like China, the support of such a large population of the aged, especially the aged living in rural communities, has aroused more and more interest from both overseas and domestic scholars in studying the issue.Most researchers concerned about the issue, however, did not pay special attention to the family support pattern of the aged in rural communities where people sprung from the same clan live closely together. This kind of rural communities once had tightly-organized clan structure, which had developed and greatly strengthened the tradition of supporting old members of the family and the whole clan. With the smashing of clan's tight structure, its unique standards of filial obedience and family-supporting tradition have been changing despite people there still comparatively live closely together today. This kind of rural communities' family support pattern of the aged takes on much stronger changing trends than ordinary rural communities when faced with the weakening of traditional moralities within the communities and the influences coming from social changes outside the communities.The author of this article thinks it significant to choose to investigate into the rural family aged supporting pattern in southern mountain areas of Anhui province as a sample to get detailed revealment of China's current aged security in rural communities where people once lived closely around their clan. Most southern part of Anhui once belonged to Huizhou, a historical area with tight clan domination and a strong tradition to support old family members. Taking the mountain village Zhaitan located in Jixi,one southern county of Anhui, as a specific research example, the author tries to give a detailed analysis and description of the changing process of thefamily support pattern accompanied by conflicts and current possible policies to choose in rural communities of similar traditional background.In the investigation, the author has observed and analyzed family's daily life as well as some typical conflicts in the process of family supporting. Based upon findings of specific field research and upon some previous research achievements, this article also offers some actual advice to integrate and build a new multi-level rural aged security system in southern Anhui's rural communities of above-mentioned distinctive background. The system includes family security, social security and community-based security measures. The support of old aged in the system, however, still mainly comes from family members, which, as a result, determines we still use family support (security) to call current support for the aged in southern Anhui's rural communities despite its present socializing trend.