As the elderly "open their wallets", China's "silver economy" will thrive.

The Chinese government has been promoting a “silver economy ” policy, which is aimed at the elderly and is developing very strongly, promising to become one of the new growth engines, accompanied by high quality of the world's second largest economy.

Đà phát triển kinh tế của Trung Quốc sẽ bị đình trệ khi dân số trở nên già hóa. Điều này cũng gây ảnh hưởng đáng kể đến nền kinh tế thế giới. (Nguồn: AFP)

China's economic growth will stagnate as its population ages. (Source: AFP)

According to the February 26 issue of China Commentary Network, there are two main reasons why the country's "silver economy" is thriving, not only in the current period, but also in the next few decades.

First is the huge demand and potential of the market. According to statistics, China now has the largest elderly population in the world , with more than 280 million people over the age of 60, accounting for 21.1% of the population. Moreover, the country's birth rate has dropped sharply, reducing the total population to 1.412 billion last year.

Not only that, according to many different analysis results, the prolonged demographic crisis may cause the population in the world's second largest economy to age and increase to more than 500 million people by 2050.

This will be a large and potential market for China's "silver economy" both now and in the future.

Second , the elderly have their own needs and consumption capacity. With the development of science and technology and the increasing trend of focusing on improving the quality of life, the elderly in China have gradually changed their consumption concept, from "tightening their wallets" to "opening their wallets" to enjoy the joy, satisfaction and comfort in life.

Accordingly, the total consumption of the elderly in the country is forecast to increase from 4,300 billion yuan (CNY) in 2020 to about 40,600 billion yuan in 2050.

In that context, it is forecasted that the size of China's "silver economy" will likely grow from the current 7,000 billion yuan to about 30,000 billion yuan and account for about 10% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035.

According to Professor Liu Fan of Wuhan University (China), the development of the "silver economy" industry is of great significance and is frequently mentioned in the guiding documents of the Chinese government.

He cited that in November 2021, the Chinese government issued the “Guiding Opinions on Strengthening Work for the Elderly in the New Era”, which required focusing on cultivating, orienting and leading the “silver economy”.

In February 2022, Beijing continued to issue the "Plan for the Development of the Nursing System and the Career of the Elderly", emphasizing the need to focus on developing the "silver economy".

Most recently, on January 15, the Chinese government continued to issue "Opinions on Developing the 'Silver Economy'" to enhance welfare for the elderly, which pointed out 26 specific contents to accelerate the process of scaling, standardization, massification and branding of this economic sector.

This shows that the “silver economy” – an emerging economic sector in China – focusing on providing products and services to meet the needs of the elderly has gone from “nothing” to “something” and is continuing to be promoted to develop more and more excellently.

Source