DgcityThe financial pressure and sheer fatigue of looking after an aging parent while raising a young child has moved to the center of China’s social policy planning. On November 10, the country’s top economic planner called solving the worries over elderly care and childcare the most pressing task in its work to improve livelihoods.
Money is already moving. This year the central government has directed 140 billion yuan into building and renovating care facilities, adding more than 100,000 nursing beds and over 30,000 childcare places. Ultra-long-term special treasury bonds have paid for roughly 110,000 pieces of equipment in publicly run elderly homes.
The next phase targets specific shortages. Aging care homes will be renovated so that nursing-style beds make up 73 percent of the total, and services combining medical care with elderly care will expand, especially for people who are bedridden or have dementia. For toddlers, the goal is a comprehensive childcare center in every prefecture-level city, more kindergartens that take infants, and encouragement for employers to run nurseries at work.
Much of the plan is built around keeping people at home. Communities are being told to convert idle buildings into centers offering daytime care and short stays, with home visits for meals, cleaning, bathing and early-childhood guidance. Mobile elderly services will reach mountain, pastureland and rural areas where fixed facilities make no economic sense.
The numbers behind the policy are stark. Around 323 million Chinese are 60 or older, while the birth rate has fallen to record lows, leaving smaller families to support more grandparents. Officials also promised rules to certify affordable care providers and tax breaks aimed at keeping prices within reach of ordinary households.
The phrase officials used, one old and one small, names the squeeze felt by the so-called sandwich generation, couples in their thirties and forties who manage school runs, hospital visits and care schedules at the same time as demanding jobs. In cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, full-time nannies and private care homes can cost more than a white-collar salary, pushing the burden back onto grandparents themselves.
Rural families face an even sharper version. Working-age adults have migrated to coastal cities, leaving children with grandparents who, as they age, have no younger generation left to care for them. The mobile services and community facilities outlined in the plan are designed for precisely these villages, where fixed institutions would sit half empty.
Officials also want employers to play a bigger part, echoing older factory-run nurseries that largely disappeared in the 1990s. Workplaces that provide childcare or reserve places for staff reduce absenteeism among young parents and, the government hopes, remove one of the reasons couples give for not having a second child.
