CPPCC National Committee Member and Fuyao Glass Chairman Cao Hui: Addressing the Challenges of Elderly Care and Promoting the Coordinated Development of the Silver Economy

News Securities Times Reporter Yu Shengliang

This year’s National Two Sessions, National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference member, Honorary Director of the Economic Committee of the Fujian Provincial Committee of the China Democratic National Construction Association, and Fuyao Glass Chairman Cao Hui focused on China’s aging society, offering suggestions on building a core elderly care service system. He proposed specific plans to develop a multi-layered, intelligent, and inclusive elderly care service system to address the challenges of aging and provide practical solutions.

As of March 2025, over 310 million people in China are aged 60 and above, accounting for more than 22% of the total population. The country faces three major issues: insufficient wealth reserves, underdeveloped infrastructure, and inadequate service supply.

Currently, China’s elderly care development faces four practical problems: weak elderly care reserves and payment capacity; mismatched supply and demand for elderly care facilities—over 90% of seniors prefer home and community-based care, but community care facilities coverage is less than 50%, and a three-tier service network has not yet formed; a shortage of 7 million elderly care workers—low-age healthy seniors, the “silver workforce,” have not been effectively activated, and mutual aid elderly care lacks nationwide standards; smart elderly care products are disconnected from aging needs—practical products are expensive and unreliable.

Cao Hui believes that a coordinated elderly care service system integrating home, community, and institutional care, combined with medical, health, and wellness services, is necessary. This approach can achieve the strategic goal of providing basic elderly care services to all seniors with limited resources and promote high-quality development of the silver economy. He put forward three specific suggestions.

To improve the elderly care network, he recommends incorporating embedded elderly care facilities into urban renewal projects and new residential developments, promoting models like “property + elderly care” to build comprehensive elderly service centers, expanding “home-based elderly care beds,” and creating a “15-minute” elderly care service circle to resolve conflicts between land resource scarcity and urgent elderly care needs.

To activate elderly care human resources, he suggests establishing a nationwide unified “Time Bank” mutual aid elderly care standard, issuing special guidance policies, building cross-regional interoperable information platforms, integrating blockchain technology to ensure service record security, and encouraging low-age healthy seniors and volunteers to participate in elderly care. A multi-incentive model of “service for points” can help alleviate the shortage of professional caregivers.

To enhance technological empowerment in elderly care, he proposes setting up a dedicated fund for inclusive elderly care technology, focusing on developing low-cost, high-reliability smart care products such as millimeter-wave radar fall detection devices and intelligent toileting robots. Based on pilot experiences, eligible smart assistive devices should be included in long-term care insurance reimbursement and aging-friendly renovation subsidies. Through centralized procurement and subsidies, product costs can be reduced, enabling widespread adoption of smart elderly care solutions.

(Edited by: Wen Jing)

Keywords: