{"id":463,"date":"2012-09-10T17:19:51","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T21:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/?p=463"},"modified":"2012-11-15T17:32:32","modified_gmt":"2012-11-15T22:32:32","slug":"rise-in-chinas-aging-poses-challenge-to-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/2012\/09\/10\/rise-in-chinas-aging-poses-challenge-to-beijing\/","title":{"rendered":"Rise in China’s Aging Poses Challenge to Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"

NYT DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW September 10, 2012<\/a><\/p>\n

Forty minutes\u2019 drive east of Beijing in Yanjiao, a town just inside the border of neighboring Hebei Province, a vast care facility for the elderly is rising in green fields, part of a solution to one of\u00a0China<\/a>\u2019s most pressing challenges: fast-growing numbers of elderly people.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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A retirement home on the outskirts of Shanghai. Official planners assume that the vast majority of the elderly will continue to be cared for at home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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By about 2015, 12,000 places will be available at the facility, the private Yanda Golden Age Health Nursing Center, and a further 3,000 beds will be available in its affiliated, state-of-the-art hospital, both part of the sprawling Yanda International Health City.<\/p>\n

The places will be needed. By 2015 there will be 220 million people more than 60 years old in China, compared with about 180 million today. Encouraged by Mao Zedong, who believed more was better, China\u2019s population boomed in the middle of the past century. Rapid growth was cut short in 1979 when the state introduced the one-child policy.<\/p>\n

Within 40 years, China will have nearly 500 million elderly people, according to current projections, or about one-third of its future population of nearly 1.5 billion, which will put a huge strain on its financial and human resources, experts say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no country in the world that is facing such a big aging population problem,\u201d said Yuan Xin, a professor and director of the Aging Development Strategy Research Center at Nankai University in Tianjin and a member of a government committee drawing up new policies, to be announced at the end of the year. The state sees the problem and is preparing, Mr. Yuan said. But it cannot solve it alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most difficult thing for China is that it will face the problem within the next 40 years,\u201d he said by phone. \u201cThat\u2019s a short time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government cannot take on this whole burden,\u201d he said \u201cIt has to be shared by the government, by society, families and by individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, neither the state nor the private sector is sure how to cope, said Xue Shan, general manager at the Yanda facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a new road for us, and we are \u2018feeling the stones as we cross the river,\u201d\u2019 he said, quoting a Chinese proverb during an interview in his office.<\/p>\n

This much is certain, experts say: The crunch is coming, and it will be an enormous business opportunity.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s new policies are likely to continue a basic concept already in place, called Nine-Seven-Three: 90 percent of old people will remain at home; 7 percent will enter affordable, government-sponsored care, and 3 percent will live in private, expensive facilities like Yanda.<\/p>\n

Mr. Yuan predicted that over time, the proportions would shift slightly, with about 80 percent of the elderly aging at home. He pointed out the considerable social shame attached in China to sending parents to old-age homes, considered by many an unfilial act.<\/p>\n

Those family ties, though, are fraying. A recent poll by CCTV, the state broadcaster, drew widespread attention for its findings that about 33 percent of people surveyed visited their parents just once a year, and nearly 12 percent said they had not been home \u201cin many years.\u201d More than 16 percent of grown children saw their parents once a week, CCTV reported. And for many young people living far from home, working in the big cities, it is difficult to get home to care for aging parents. \u201cChina is becoming an empty-nest society,\u201d Mr. Xue said.<\/p>\n

But a richer one: Mr. Xue predicted that eventually, more than 3 percent of all Chinese would be able to afford private facilities like Yanda, where a bed in a two-bedroom apartment costs about 5,500 to 13,700 renminbi a month, or $880 to $2,150, depending on the level of nursing care. That is peanuts compared with the $4,000 to $6,000 monthly fees at assisted-living facilities in the United States, but still far above the means of most Chinese families.<\/p>\n

Mr. Xue acknowledged that his facility was only a small part of the picture. \u201cSolutions to the issue will vary,\u201d he said. \u201cThe state does what we call Stage 1, the lower end. We do the top end.\u201d<\/p>\n

The real need, he added, is in the affordable range, which is subsidized by the state. Mr. Yuan said there were between seven million and eight million beds in the country. In July, China Economic Weekly magazine reported the government-run Beijing No. 1 Social Welfare Home, where a bed costs $110 to $570 a month, had a waiting list of more than 9,000.<\/p>\n

Costs for government-financed places will be covered by a mixture of national and local government spending, with individuals\u2019 pensions also contributing, Mr. Yuan said. He pointed out that the pension system was undergoing an overhaul, in part to cope with the challenge.<\/p>\n

Whatever income group new old-age homes are designed to serve, the number of beds across China will have to rise fast, experts agree. That means more business \u2014 for somebody. Mr. Yuan did a quick calculation: 500 million old people paying 1,000 renminbi a month, comes to half a trillion renminbi a month.<\/p>\n

How much foreign companies will be allowed to take part in that boom is unclear. Under the law, foreign providers of care for the elderly cannot run centers in China on their own but must find Chinese partners \u2014 a policy Mr. Yuan described as one of many that were \u201coutdated\u201d and \u201cunreasonable.\u201d Yanda is exploring cooperation deals with providers in the United States, Japan and Europe. Consulting contracts are also being signed with foreign businesses, from which Chinese companies can learn how to operate.<\/p>\n

How to pay for this is equally unclear. By 2050, just 52 percent of the population will be of working age, Mr. Yuan said. Its members will need to support the 34 percent who are elderly and the 16 percent who are children. \u201cHow can China maintain its economic growth?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, governments are working on the infrastructure. In Beijing, the municipal government has decided it must earmark large areas of land for care for the elderly, in the same way land is designated for food markets or schools, The Beijing News reported in July.<\/p>\n

The newspaper cited Chen Gang, the Communist Party secretary of the Chaoyang district of Beijing, as saying the city planned to allocate land along a highway circling the city\u2019s suburbs for such facilities. \u201cWe\u2019ll take that green, empty space and solve the problem of how to group old people together,\u201d Mr. Chen said, according to the report.<\/p>\n

At Yanda, they are already doing that. High-rise buildings rise in three long lines, each representing a stage in care: independent living, semi-assisted living and assisted living, Guo Pengfei, general manager of the facility\u2019s marketing center, said during a recent tour of the site.<\/p>\n

Lower buildings house the facilities found in any high-level care center for the elderly: a community center, restaurant, an \u201cold people\u2019s university,\u201d a swimming pool, a reading room and, because this is China, a calligraphy room. At the front of the facility is a hospital, a state-of-the-art facility that is also open to the public.<\/p>\n

So far, some 200 people live in the apartments, mostly retired government workers on generous pensions, Mr. Xue said. \u201cWe do also have some people from the private economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Yanda also offers something unusual for an old-age home in\u00a0atheist<\/a>\u00a0China: religious facilities. The complex houses a traditional red and yellow Buddhist temple, a Protestant church, a Catholic church and a mosque. Their presence points to one of Yanda\u2019s major ambitions: attracting wealthy overseas Chinese back home to grow old. \u201cWe know that overseas Chinese are often quite religious, so we built these,\u201d said Mr. Guo, gesturing at the modest buildings. \u201cWe had to get special permission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside the Protestant Immanuel Church, Li Ruqi, 87, and his 85-year-old wife, who gave her name only as Ms. Yan (Chinese women do not change their names when they marry) said they were \u201cempty-nesters.\u201d Their five children all live in the United States and Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very nice here,\u201d Ms. Yan said, smiling happily as her husband nodded agreement. \u201cThe food is great. You can order what you want, though we cook at home, too. There\u2019s a lot to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYT DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW September 10, 2012 Forty minutes\u2019 drive east of Beijing in Yanjiao, a town just inside the border of neighboring Hebei Province, a vast care facility for the elderly is rising in green fields, part of a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,74301,40877,74317],"tags":[43295,41262,74323],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":471,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}