Life of the Elderly in China

China has introduced a new law requiring young people to communicate with their elderly parents who spend their life in nursing homes. Recently the problem of care for the elderly in China has become particularly acute.

These amendments aren’t unprecedented. In China there were many cases when parents sued their adult children addressing the lack of financial and moral support. However, this new law doesn’t include the terms of how often people have to visit their parents and what kind of penalties are set for those who don’t fulfill these commitments.

Wang, a 57-year-old retiree from nursing home Shanghai https://kaijiancare.com/Front/Index/kjFront/kjType/2/category/16?l=us, believes that this law is better than nothing. Two of her sons are working and living hundreds of kilometers away, and she sees them only once a year when the whole family gets together.

The law says that once parents reach the age of 60, children need to keep on monitoring the state of their parents, in both financial and spiritual needs. Despite the fact that respect for parents lies at the heart of the Chinese culture, three decades of market reforms have led to the tradition of the "big family" to fade away.

On the other hand, Hongkou District in Shanghai has built a virtual nursing home to provide services for the elderly. All the pensioners will be able to go to the website or call the hotline and be able to hire a hairdresser, food delivery or rehabilitation specialist.

A similar program has been tested in the district Quyang, resulting in 2,000 Chinese pensioners benefitting from its services. But in order to use the services of a virtual nursing home Shanghai, they need to have access to the Internet - this is the task that falls on the shoulders of local officials.

According to official data, in 2053 China’s numbers of elderly people will be over 35% of the total population (from 185 million today to 487 million just in 40 years). This growth is associated with an increase in life expectancy from 41 to 73 years and the family planning policy, which allows most urban families to have only one child.