A pinch of rising labor costs has been felt by Chinese factories, but China’s labor minister said on Tuesday it is good for the nation’s strategic economic restructuring.

China faces a dilemma that underpaid factory workers demand higher wages while many small-sized export-oriented factories could not afford the rising costs of labor and raw materials, Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, told a press conference.

“Rising labor costs, however, could push for the transformation of the economic development pattern,” he said.

The wage increase could be realized through more consultations between employers and employees, he noted.

After decades of economic boom on the back of cheap labor and intensive energy use, China wants to make the economy more technology-depended and vowed to make more ordinary people share the benefits of the growth.

In the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), China aims to increase the disposable income of urban and rural residents by at least seven percent a year, the same rate as the GDP growth target.

The minimum wage should increase by at least 13 percent a year over the next five years.

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Aging population poses a huge challenge to China’s pension system, minister of human resources and social security Yin Weimin said Tuesday.

The country’s population is rapidly aging, and there are 170 million people over the age of 60, who account for 12.8 percent of the total population, Yin said.

“How to increase pension has become a problem to deal with the aging population,” the minister said at a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing parliamentary session.

Last year, a total of 1.3 trillion yuan ($197.9 billion) of pension premium was collected and about 1 trillion yuan was handed out, resulting in a balance of 300 billion yuan, he said.

That added up to a combined pension balance of 1.5 trillion yuan by 2010, he said, adding the country has no difficulty in paying pension.

Yin added that by the end of last year, China’s national social security funds exceeded 700 billion yuan.

The government would improve measures on investment of the national social security funds to maintain and expand its total value along with the country’s economic growth, he said.

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In the first week of March (Feb 28 to March 6), both the trading volume and prices declined in China’s real estate market. The drop was a result of the implementation of the home purchasing limits, the Shanghai Securities News reported Tuesday.

According to statistics from the China Index Research Institute, among the 30 cities monitored by the institute, 70 percent saw a decline in trading volume, the report said.

Trading volume – in terms of area – of newly-built commercial houses in Shanghai decreased by 10 percent compared with the previous week. The average sale price also decreased by 14.1 percent – to 17,737 yuan ($2,637.47) per square meter. That’s back to the levels from early 2010, the report said.

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