Visit your parents, orders China

Visit your parents. That's an order, says China, where the law was today amended to require that adults visit their aged parents "often" - or risk being sued by them.

The law does not specify how frequently such visits should occur.

The new clause will allow elderly parents who feel neglected by their children to take them to court and comes as reports abound of elderly parents being abandoned or ignored by their children.

A rapidly developing China is facing increasing difficulty in caring for its ageing population.

Three decades of market reforms have accelerated the break-up of the traditional extended family in China, and there are few affordable alternatives, such as retirement or care homes, for the elderly or others unable to live on their own.

Earlier this month, media reported that a grandmother in her 90s in the prosperous eastern province of Jiangsu had been forced by her son to live in a pig pen for two years.

News outlets frequently carry stories about other parents being abused or neglected, or of children seeking control of their elderly parents' assets without their knowledge.

The expansion of China's elderly population is being fuelled both by an increase in life expectancy - from 41 to 73 over five decades - and by family planning policies that limit most families to a single child.

Rapid ageing poses serious threats to the country's social and economic stability, as the burden of supporting the growing number of elderly passes to a proportionately shrinking working population and the social safety net remains weak.