——Interview with Wu Yushao, Vice President of the Institute of Aging of Fudan University and President of the China Association of Social Welfare and Senior Services.
By leveraging the advantages of China's information technology development, "Chinese solutions" and "Chinese wisdom" may be formed in solving the problem of pension in the future.
Outlook Oriental Weekly reporter Wan Honglei editor Gu Jiayun.
Opinions on the Development of the Silver Economy and the Improvement of the Well-being of the Elderly" proposes to accelerate the development of the scale, standardization, clustering and branding of the silver economy, and cultivate high-tech products and high-quality service models.
According to the Research Report on the Development of China's Silver Economy released by the Institute of Aging Research of Fudan University, it is estimated that by 2050, the scale of China's silver economy will be 499 trillion yuan, accounting for 35 percent of total consumption1%, accounting for 125%。
How can smart pension help solve the blockages and pain points of traditional pension? How to grasp the new opportunities for the high-quality development of the silver economy? In response to these problems, "Oriental Outlook Weekly" recently interviewed Wu Yushao, vice president of the Institute of Aging of Fudan University and president of the China Association of Social Welfare and Pension Services.
Wu Yushao. Two-wheel drive.
Oriental Outlook Weekly: Why should we pay attention to the development of the silver economy?
Wu Yushao: On the one hand, this is an inevitable requirement to cope with the aging of the population and realize the people's yearning for a better life. Population aging is the basic national condition of our country for a long period of time in the future, the aging society is a new social form, in the future, almost all industries should be oriented to the aging of the subdivision, through the accurate division of the population, to achieve specialization, chain services and supply and demand docking.
On the other hand, the current expanding elderly population has become an increasingly important consumer group in economic development, and a large number of multi-level, personalized, high-quality, and enjoyable services required for pension life need to be provided by the market and society. The silver economy has ushered in broad development space and new development opportunities. With the further expansion of the scale of China's silver economy, the market scale of the silver industry continues to expand, and it will enter an important opportunity period of "two-wheel drive" of policy and demand.
Oriental Outlook Weekly: How to grasp this period of opportunity?
Wu Yushao: At present, the development of China's silver economy is in its infancy, and it is necessary to make overall plans, treat both the symptoms and the root causes, take multiple measures at the same time, highlight the key points, and strive to promote the high-quality development of the silver economy in the new era.
First of all, there are some misunderstandings that need to be clarified, that is, the elderly are regarded as objects of care, as a burden and burden to society. Aging and functional decline are slow and gradual processes, with only the elderly and sick needing care, and only a small fraction of the elderly population. In the new era, pension should be transformed from survival necessity to enjoyment, development and participation, and realize the transformation from pension to enjoyment.
Therefore, it is necessary to establish new concepts such as a positive outlook on aging and healthy aging. **The first document of the General Office in 2024 states that the silver economy is the sum of a series of economic activities such as providing products or services to the elderly and preparing for the aging stage. The silver economy includes both the "aging economy" in the old age stage and the "preparation economy" in the pre-old stage. Therefore, the service objects of smart pension in the new era are not only a small number of elderly and disabled elderly, but also focus on the beautiful old life of all the elderly.
The development of silver economy should be to promote the all-round development of the elderly as the fundamental goal, the elderly are not only passive to accept the object of services, but also the main body of active services, we can not only consider the "use" of the elderly, but more consideration of how to "use" the elderly. A vibrant aging society will surely stimulate the diversified, personalized and high-quality life consumption needs of hundreds of millions of elderly people, and form a new huge silver consumer market.
Secondly, the silver industry is a general term for an industrial system involving many industries, and it is not an independent industrial sector in the traditional sense, so it is necessary to focus on problems, highlight key points, do a good job in development planning, strengthen policy coordination, and accelerate the improvement and optimization of supporting policies. Especially for those products and services that belong to the basic needs of the elderly and have strong attributes of public goods and social welfare, such as care and nursing, services, education for the elderly, pension institutions, etc., key support in taxes, subsidies, financing and other aspects can be considered.
Third, in the face of a huge group of elderly people, basic pension services themselves are also a big market. We must seize this major opportunity to accelerate the development of modern pension service industry, strengthen the construction of a multi-level pension service system based on home, community-based, supplemented by institutions, and combined with medical care, and actively promote the construction of a modern old-age service system combining medical care and health care.
Fourth, to promote the high-quality development of the silver economy, it is necessary to create a good market environment. It is recommended to establish a market access system for the silver economy, establish industry standards and norms, encourage innovation, strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, strengthen the quality supervision of products and services, and crack down on violations of the rights and interests of the elderly to the greatest extent.
On February 10, 2023, the elderly settled through visual recognition of the smart food pick-up table at the "smart canteen" for the elderly in Nanyingmen Street, Heping District, Tianjin (photo by Zhao Zishuo).
Rise to the challenge. Outlook Oriental Weekly: What are the difficulties and challenges to further expand the smart pension market?
Wu Yushao: Around 2035, China will enter a stage of severe population aging. Compared with developed countries, China has entered an aging society in a shorter, larger scale and faster time, and faces greater challenges in coping with the aging population.
From the perspective of the specific situation in China, according to statistics, as of the end of 2022, there are 410,000 with 518 beds30,000, the bed occupancy rate is less than 50%, and the number of elderly people living in the country is less than 1% of the total elderly population. At the same time, of the more than 40 million disabled and dementia elderly people, less than 5% are in nursing institutions, and 95% are in home care. According to the Fourth Survey on the Living Conditions of the Elderly conducted by the National Office on Ageing, more than 90% of the elderly are mainly caregivers of families, spouses and children, and the rest are nannies and housekeepers.
These three data show that in China, home care is still the most important pension model.
From the trend point of view, with the miniaturization and weakening of the function of the family, the challenges faced by the family pension are inevitable. The proportion of family members taking care of the elderly will definitely decline, and the proportion of disabled and dementia elderly people admitted to nursing institutions will definitely rise. This pension model faces three major difficulties:
First, the demand is diversified, complex, differentiated, and decentralized. The concept of elderly care services in China has a wide range of connotations, and there are dozens of types of community home-based elderly care services. At the same time, the needs of the elderly vary greatly, and it is difficult to standardize and modularize, which is an important reason why it is difficult to marketize pension services. Some demand frequencies are low, such as night services and downstairs services, which are difficult to form a market scale; Some needs are difficult to market, but the demand is very strong, such as socialization and companionship; Some have a high willingness to demand, but due to the influence of consumption willingness and habits, the elderly have a low willingness to buy.
Second, from the perspective of the supply side, there are many less professional services such as meal assistance and cleaning assistance, and there are few professional first-class nursing and hospice care services. There are few services that can really deliver professional services to the bedside of the homes of the disabled and dementia elderly, and there are many services that "come out" (to centralized places such as elderly care service centers) and few services that can be "sent in" (into the home). **There are many policy-based services supported and few market-oriented services. In some places, more than 90% of the home-based elderly care services are purchased services, and market-oriented services account for a small proportion.
At the same time, home-based elderly care services have the characteristics of proximity, and the cost of services delivered to the families of the elderly is high, and the special supervision of family service places is difficult.
Third, there is no clear nature of home-based elderly care service facilities, which increases the cost of home-based elderly care services. In most areas, it has not yet been clarified that the community pension service facilities in the neighborhood are public service facilities. Therefore, leasing pension service facilities by enterprises is easy to form a "nimby phenomenon" on the one hand, and on the other hand, it will also lead to high operating costs and difficult to sustain services.
Outlook Oriental Weekly: The "Opinions" propose to focus on diversified needs and cultivate potential industries, one of which is to create a new business format of smart and healthy elderly care. How will technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things, big data, and cloud computing empower smart elderly care and help solve the current difficulties and challenges in the field of elderly care?
Wu Yushao: The development of emerging technologies has brought new space and possibilities for optimizing the allocation of health and elderly care resources and improving the quality of health and elderly care services. Taking advantage of the development of China's information technology, the "Chinese plan" and "Chinese wisdom" may be formed in solving the problem of pension in the future.
From the demand side, future technology can play an important role in health management, life assistance, and advanced care through age-appropriate facilities and wearable devices. From the perspective of the supply side, FutureTech can play an important role in personnel management and resource allocation by building the Internet of Things and blockchain. China's late-mover advantage in coping with the aging of the population is mainly reflected in the development of technology, especially the development of Internet digital technology, which has brought many conveniences, making many impossibilities possible.
In the Qingyuan Community Smart Elderly Care Service Center in Dayang Town, Luyang District, Hefei City, the elderly measure their blood pressure, blood sugar, blood oxygen, height, body fat, etc. in the intelligent health check-up machine.
Play a synergy. Outlook Oriental Weekly: With the trend of "one rise and one fall" (the proportion of family care for the elderly has decreased, and the proportion of disabled elderly people admitted to institutions has increased), from the perspective of specific practice, how can smart elderly care implement the "three sides" (around, at home, and around) services for the elderly?
Wu Yushao: We need new ideas.
First of all, building a unified information platform is an important step in solving the problem.
At present, there are problems of non-sharing and non-interconnection between the software and hardware of China's pension services, and between facilities and facilities. ** "Two skins" between manufacturers, technologies and application scenarios, which have not yet been integrated. In the early days, many cities invested heavily in building pension information platforms, some of which were already backward before they were used, and some were not really embedded in the life of the elderly and were reduced to decorations. It is necessary to accelerate the construction of a unified smart pension platform, promote the cooperation of various service facilities, reduce problems such as duplication of work and information islands, and provide more comprehensive and systematic pension services.
The use of the smart pension platform can also realize the remote monitoring and management of the living status of the elderly. Children or caregivers can check the living status of the elderly through the platform, such as movement tracks, life schedules, etc., to understand the needs of the elderly in a timely manner and provide targeted care; Through the platform, the elderly can make appointments for community activities, such as lectures, fitness, etc., to improve the quality of spiritual and cultural life of the elderly.
Secondly, promoting the organic integration of smart elderly care facilities with traditional homes, communities and institutions is an important means to improve the quality and efficiency of elderly care services. For example, through the Internet of Things technology, the home environment of the elderly can be intelligently transformed. Install a smart home system to realize automatic adjustment of indoor temperature, humidity, light, etc., so as to make the living environment of the elderly more comfortable; The smart home system can realize the automatic control of doors, windows, lighting and other equipment, and improve the convenience of life for the elderly.
Third, strengthening scientific and technological innovation and providing more personalized and customized smart pension services is an important way to meet the diverse and personalized needs of the elderly. Smart technology is a means, to truly focus on the elderly, understand the needs of the elderly, and organically integrate with traditional home, community and other elderly care scenarios, the higher the degree of integration, the more valuable the smart technology.
Fourth, it is necessary to find answers from the perspective of social governance and advocate the integration and coordination of various services. Smart elderly care service is not a complete reconstruction of facilities and systems, but should be the upgrading and transformation of existing service systems and service resources to adapt to the aging society. It is necessary to establish the concept of all-age, large integration, large service and large community, promote the effective integration of various resources at the street and community levels, achieve shared development, truly build a community pension community, and use the resources and strength of the street community to solve the problem of pension services in the street community as much as possible.
It is of great significance to effectively reduce the cost of pension services through the qualitative and standardized configuration of public services of street community pension service facilities, which is of great significance for realizing that the elderly can afford to buy, enterprises can make profits, and services can be sustained.
Outlook Oriental Weekly: What are the reminders and suggestions for the current exploration of smart pension in various cities?
Wu Yushao: In addition to technical precision, smart elderly care also needs humanistic temperature. At present, the technical route of some smart pension products and services is a bit deviated, with too much emphasis on pure technology and substitution. For example, a remote control can be designed to control all of the bedridden elderly with special disabilities, but for ordinary elderly people, such remote controls are not necessarily popular. Some manufacturers' all-smart whole-house solutions have weakened the autonomous functions of the elderly. The so-called use of waste and retreat, the old man can do what he can do, to remind the relevant institutions and enterprises, the standard of smart pension products and services is moderate, effective, not "show off".
Therefore, I suggest that the street should be the basic operating unit of home-based elderly care service, radiate the community, develop contiguous areas, and form a scale effect, so as to form a sustainable business model. At the same time, it is necessary to formulate special bidding methods for pension services, focusing on supporting and cultivating the orderly development of specialized, chained and intelligent home-based elderly care service institutions. Only in this way can we effectively solve the problem of home care services.
In short, in the digital and information age, new technologies represented by the Internet, big data, and artificial intelligence are new opportunities to cope with the aging of the population. As an emerging format, smart elderly care is still in its infancy, and it still needs to be explored and innovated to form a stable and sustainable high-quality development model.
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Silver Economy, Wisdom Walking" special series of manuscripts.