Chinese government newspaper Global Times The minister on Sunday highlighted a growing trend in the country of converting kindergarten facilities into retirement homes and adding senior citizen facilities to children's play areas and the education sector as ways of participating in the “thriving silver economy”.
A state-run newspaper described the trend as an “advanced” and “creative” way to address the growing unpopularity of “private” kindergartens – which in reality do not exist under the communist system – and attributed it to the improved quality of public kindergartens. But China is facing a dramatic drop in its birth rate, a shrinking population and a forecast to become a “seriously aging society” by 2035.
The falling birth rate is also a result of the decades-long “one-child policy” that led to the deaths of 400 million children before the government allowed couples to have two in 2016. The Communist Party has since expansion Although the government has abolished the limit on permitted births of up to three children and relaxed enforcement of child policies to encourage the formation of larger families, the country's birth rate remains at record lows, especially since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan.
According to the latest birth rate statistics through 2023, released in January by the National Bureau of Statistics, China's population fell by more than 2 million that year. The government recorded a birth rate of 6.39 births per 1,000 women, far below the number of births needed to maintain the current population. Conversely, demographic experts predict that China will see an increase of more than 400 million people over the age of 60 by 2035, posing a major challenge to keeping the country's workforce, social programs and economy expanding.
of Global Times nevertheless Explained The report touts the hastily constructed nursing home on the site of a former kindergarten as a success of the Communist regime, highlighting a former kindergarten in Zhejiang province that was converted into a nursing home with a large amount of government funding. The facility's owner, Zhuang Yanfang, reportedly “had been struggling for a long time to enroll enough children” when he sought government assistance to convert the school into a nursing home.
“The renovation work began in July 2023 after the last batch of pupils graduated and lasted for four months, converting former classrooms into bedrooms for the elderly and installing elevators, armchairs, boat and galley tiles and an alarm system,” the state-run newspaper reported. “For those with mobility issues, Zhuang has installed portable seats in all bathrooms and added emergency buttons at bedsides.”
The Global Times identified four other locations across the country that have stopped accepting kindergarten students, and noted that the government recorded “some 5.35 million fewer kindergarten students in 2023 than the previous year.”
The state newspaper appears to be encouraging preschool and early childhood teachers, facing the prospect of fewer job opportunities due to falling birth rates, to consider elderly care, with one teacher who has switched jobs saying she treats older people “like encouraging a small child.”
“When the children are persuaded to take part in an activity or eat healthy food that they don't like, I use verbal encouragement and praise,” the teacher said. “I gently say, 'If you finish this meal, if you exercise well today, I'll give you a chocolate bar.'”
China faces a dual social problem of encouraging couples to have more children while caring for a rapidly growing elderly population that has recently become a source of social unrest. As the Communist Party struggles to generate enough funds to pay pensions and provide adequate medical care, the “gray hair” protest movement has become increasingly popular. One of the largest protests occurred in early 2023 in Wuhan, the epicenter of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, when thousands of people, mostly elderly people, took to the streets to demand that the government halt plans to cut medical benefits. Several protesters began disappearing without explanation shortly thereafter.
While protests have become increasingly common among the elderly, Chinese millennials are embracing a cultural trend of “flat-lining,” abandoning all ambition in their personal, professional and financial lives. Bound to their homes by the need to care for aging parents, many millennials are abandoning dating and work altogether. Become “Full-time children” are in the care of their parents. The widespread popularity of the “Lying Down” movement on social media has led to widespread government censorship of regime-controlled media. In July, Chinese censors began targeting trends derived from the “Lying Down” movement, a reference to “garbage time,” a term typically used to describe the end of a basketball game when one team is too far ahead to meaningfully compete. Chinese youth began using the phrase “garbage time in history” to describe China as the inevitable losing team, and its citizens watching their economy slowly and inevitably sink in a race against the United States.
The Chinese Communist Party has proposed a variety of programs to encourage child-rearing, from subsidies for couples with newborns to subsidies for IVF and other fertility treatments, but as of this writing, these have not brought about any significant change in the country's demographic trends.
