Elderly residents participate in a craft-making session at a local nursing home's day care program in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, on August 28, 2024. Photo: VCG

China has made remarkable achievements in population aging-related work over the past five years, an official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs said on Monday, vowing to deepen the reform of elderly care services. An aging population will remain a basic national condition and major issue for a long period that China faces while advancing Chinese modernization. 

China's policy and legal systems for aging population have been continuously improved along with the adoption of Civil Code and laws and regulations in terms of culture, basic medical care and public health as well as provisions benefiting the aging population and securing their rights and interests, said Liao Ming, a deputy director of the Aging Work Department at China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, at the Monday press conference.

The basic pension system has now covered over 1.06 billion people, with the minimum standards having been raised several times, Liao said. Furthermore, the pilot program of long-term care insurance has been steadily advanced. And full coverage has been achieved for the subsidies for senior citizens, economically disadvantaged elderly and the disabled elderly. 

In addition, Liao said that Chinese elderly people have been increasingly more active when it comes to social activities. Education for the elderly has been vigorously promoted, and public cultural facilities, tourist attractions and sports venues have become more accessible for senior citizens. 

Moreover, China has made significant progress in building an elderly-friendly society, Liao said, noting that legal assistance and policies beneficial to the elderly have been constantly improving to combat violations against the rights and interests of the elderly, and all kinds of public facilities have been modified for their convenience. 

The ministry also revealed that China's diversified supply system of elderly services have been continuously optimized and the development of home and community elderly services accelerated. With this improvement, there were 410,000 nursing homes and facilities for the elderly across China as of the end of the second quarter of 2024, of which 369,000 were community-based, approximately a 100 percent increase for both figures compared with 2019. 

The Ministry of Civil Affairs and China National Committee on Ageing vow to deepen the reform of elderly care services by improving the assistance and social welfare systems for the elderly, shifting the population aging-related work toward the preparation for elder care while focusing on comprehensively improving the quality of life of the elderly. 

Peng Xizhe, director of the Center for Population and Development Policy Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Monday that as China's aging population has rapidly increased, the pressure on elderly-related work also continues to increase. 

There is still a long way to go for China to achieve the high-quality care service and the high-quality social security systems needed to assure the well-being of the elderly, as the reform and improvement of the newly established pension system, medical security system and long-term care insurance system deepen, Peng said.