Principal Investigator/Program Director (Last, First, Middle): Strauss, John DESCRIPTION: See instructions. State the application's broad, long-term objectives and specific aims, making reference to the health relatedness of the project (i.e., relevance to the mission of the agency). Describe concisely the research design and methods for achieving these goals. Describe the rationale and techniques you will use to pursue these goals. In addition, in two or three sentences, describe in plain, lay language the relevance of this research to public health. If the application is funded, this description, as is, will become public information. Therefore, do not include proprietary/confidential information. A group of researchers at CCER, RAND and the University of Michigan are planning for a HRS-type data collection effort in China utilizing the R21 mechanism for a pilot survey, which we intend to lead to a R01 application for a full HRS study. To prepare for this major data collection effort, careful planning is necessary. We want to coordinate with existing aging surveys, HRS, SHARE, ELSA, KLoSA (all of which are partially funded by NIA in the BSR Unit), and to benefit from the rich international experience that already exists. This U-13 Meeting grant is requested to set the groundwork for future international collaborations and set up the details of an HRS-type data collection effort in China which will produce results comparable to other existing datasets on retirement. The proposed meeting will bring established international experts to China to learn about the Chinese situation, share their experience, review draft questionnaires and detailed survey plans and offer advice on how to conduct and organize the survey with Chinese colleagues. As an additional benefit, hopefully this meeting will lead to future interactions between the invited international experts and Chinese scholars doing research on aging. We propose the meeting to be held in Beijing, China from February 26 to 27, 2007. The Center for Chinese Economic Research (CCER) is located in Beijing at Peking University, the leading university in China. Specific aims include bringing researchers and administrators from established and emerging HRS-type studies to Beijing to meet with Chinese counterparts for a two-day workshop. The first half-day of the workshop will be devoted to introducing the importance of aging research in China and to present a detailed overview of field plans for the China Health and Retirement Survey, both the proposed pilot survey and the proposed main survey. The second day and one-half of the workshop will involve detailed discussion of specifics of the proposed China HRS. We will have draft questionnaires available for discussion and will discuss institutional details of circumstances facing the elderly in China. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]