Articles

The Future of Ageing and Long-Term Care in China: What the System Could Look Like by 2040

By 2040, China’s ageing challenge will be defined less by whether elderly-care systems exist and more by whether they can support a much larger population living longer with diverse levels...

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan and Older People’s Care: Turning National Ambition Into Local Delivery

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan places ageing, elderly-care capacity, rehabilitation, Long-Term Care Insurance, workforce development, digital services and the silver economy within a wider programme of social and economic reform. This...

Connecting Hospitals, Community Health and Long-Term Care in China: Building Better Care Transitions

China’s ageing population increasingly needs care that continues beyond the hospital door. This article examines how hospitals, community health institutions, rehabilitation, elderly-care providers, Long-Term Care Insurance and families can work...

Closing China’s Regional and Urban–Rural Gaps in Older People’s Care

China’s elderly-care system is expanding nationally, but older people still experience very different practical access depending on where they live. This article examines how fiscal capacity, provider supply, workforce distribution,...

Expanding Long-Term Care Insurance in China: From Local Pilots to a More Coherent National System

China has moved Long-Term Care Insurance from a decade of local experimentation into a national institution-building phase. This article examines the emerging framework for coverage, contributions, eligibility, benefits, service purchasing...

China’s Silver Economy and the Future Elderly Care Market: Public Responsibility, Private Provision and Consumer Choice

China’s silver economy is expanding far beyond traditional residential care, bringing together home support, rehabilitation, technology, housing, health management, finance, consumer products and new service models. This article examines how...

Artificial Intelligence in Chinese Elderly Care: From Prediction to Responsible Practice

Artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape Chinese elderly care through risk prediction, rehabilitation, monitoring, intelligent service allocation, robotics and administrative automation. This article examines where AI can improve care quality...

Assistive Technology and Smart Homes in China: Extending Independence in Later Life

China’s ageing-at-home ambitions increasingly depend on the design of the home itself. This article examines how age-friendly renovation, assistive technology, sensors, emergency response, rehabilitation equipment and emerging smart-home systems can...

Telemedicine and Remote Care for Older People Across Urban and Rural China

Telemedicine is becoming an increasingly important part of China’s effort to bring healthcare closer to older people, particularly those living with chronic illness, mobility limitations or long distances from specialist...

Digital Health and Connected Care for Older People in China

China’s digital-health infrastructure is becoming increasingly important to the way older people access healthcare, manage chronic conditions and connect with long-term support. This article examines how internet hospitals, electronic health...

Governing Long-Term Care in China: Accountability Across National, Provincial and Local Systems

China’s long-term care system depends on several layers of government and several policy systems working together. This article examines how national direction, provincial adaptation, municipal and county administration, long-term care...

Measuring Outcomes in Chinese Long-Term Care: Moving Beyond Beds, Visits and Service Volume

China’s long-term care system is becoming larger, more formalised and more measurable, but counting beds, visits and funded services does not show whether older people are actually living better. This...

Quality and Safety in China’s Elderly Care Services: Regulation, Standards and Provider Accountability

As China expands elderly-care provision, the policy challenge is shifting from increasing capacity to ensuring that services are consistently safe, reliable and centred on older people’s needs. This article examines...

Professionalising China’s Home, Community and Institutional Care Workforce

China’s elderly-care workforce is expanding, but professionalisation requires more than increasing worker numbers or issuing training certificates. This article examines how clearer roles, competency standards, supervision, specialist practice, career progression,...

Building China’s Elderly Care Workforce for a Rapidly Ageing Population

China’s elderly-care expansion will depend as much on people as on beds, facilities or insurance reform. This article examines how China can build a larger, more skilled and more sustainable...

Age-Friendly Communities in China: Housing, Accessibility and Neighbourhood Support for Later Life

Ageing in place depends on more than home-care services. For many older people in China, independence is shaped by whether housing is accessible, lifts work, neighbourhoods are walkable, transport remains...

Rehabilitation and Reablement in China: Restoring Function and Preventing Long-Term Dependency

Rehabilitation is becoming a critical part of China’s ageing and long-term care transition because many older people lose function after illness, injury or hospital admission without necessarily needing permanent high-intensity...

Supporting Older People With Multiple Long-Term Conditions in China: From Disease Management to Whole-Person Care

As China’s population ages, more older people are living not with one condition but with several interacting chronic diseases alongside frailty, disability or cognitive change. This article examines how primary-level...

Functional Assessment and Care Eligibility in China: Building a Consistent Gateway to Long-Term Support

China’s expanding long-term care system increasingly depends on a deceptively difficult question: how should functional need be assessed consistently enough to determine who receives support and what level of care...

Dementia Care in China: Building Diagnosis, Community Support and Long-Term Care Capacity

Dementia is becoming an increasingly important test of China’s ageing and long-term care system because diagnosis alone does not create a sustainable care pathway. This article examines how primary-level healthcare,...

Residential and Nursing Care in China: Capacity, Quality and the Changing Role of Institutions

China’s elderly-care institutions are moving from a model centred mainly on beds towards a more differentiated role supporting people with higher dependency, nursing needs, dementia and limited family support. This...

Rural Ageing in China: Building Sustainable Care Across Counties, Townships and Villages

Rural China faces a distinctive ageing challenge as older populations grow in communities where younger adults have often moved elsewhere for work and formal care markets remain thinner. This article...

Family Caregiving in China: Supporting the Hidden Workforce Behind Long-Term Care

Family members remain the foundation of much long-term support for older people in China, but demographic change, migration, smaller households and rising care complexity are placing that model under increasing...

Integrating Medical Care and Elderly Care in China: Making Yiyang Jiehe Work in Practice

China has made medical–eldercare integration, or yiyang jiehe, a central response to the growing number of older people living with both chronic illness and long-term support needs. This article examines...

Home and Community-Based Elderly Care in China: Building Support Around Where Older People Live

China is making home and community-based elderly care a central part of its response to rapid population ageing, with neighbourhood facilities, county–township–village networks, home-based services and new subsidies intended to...

Healthy Ageing in China: Prevention, Public Health and Extending Independent Life

China’s ageing strategy increasingly depends on helping people remain healthy, functional and independent for longer rather than responding only after substantial care needs develop. This article examines how public health,...

Financing Long-Term Care in China: From Family Spending to Long-Term Care Insurance

China is gradually shifting the financing of long-term care from heavy reliance on household spending and unpaid family care towards a broader mix of public support, targeted subsidies and social...

Who Is Responsible for Older People’s Care in China? National Policy, Provincial Government and Local Delivery

Responsibility for older people’s care in China is distributed across central ministries, provincial and local governments, healthcare security administrations, community structures, providers and families. This article examines how national policy...

How Long-Term Care Works in China: Families, Government, Social Insurance and a Changing Care Market

China’s long-term care system is developing through a distinctive combination of family responsibility, government-supported basic services, social insurance, local administration and an expanding provider market. This article explains how those...

China’s Ageing Population: Preparing for a Demographic Transformation on an Unprecedented Scale

China’s population is ageing at extraordinary scale while family structures, internal migration and longer lives are changing how support in later life can be organised. This article examines how demographic...