NPR｜China's economy adapts to serve older people

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

One person's aging is another's opportunity. In China, companies and services are adapting to serve what demographers call the silver economy - hundreds of millions of people over the age of 60. NPR's Emily Feng has this report.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

EMILY FENG, BYLINE: This is a drumming club in southwestern China for people over 65 years of age only. They've occupied a large warehouse base and filled it with rows of drums and disco lights.

ZHU NANFEI: (Speaking Mandarin).

FENG: Zhu Nanfei, 81 years of age, is a regular student.

ZHU: (Speaking Mandarin).

FENG: Zhu states the obvious - she is old and says she wants to keep active with other people. She is among China's nearly 300 million people above the age of 60. For the first time in modern China, 60-plus people comprise more than a fifth of its population, putting it on track to be a super-age society by the next decade, according to the World Bank. This is a total contrast to the China of 40 years ago, when a predominantly young population created a cheap and prolific labor force that powered the country's economic rise.

ZHU: (Speaking Mandarin).

FENG: Zhu says during her working life, time was a constant constraint. So it's only now that she has decided to try making music. And it is adventurous retirees like her that are emblematic of what Chinese economists call the silver economy - the silver-haired consumers who may become one of the driving forces for demand in China's slowing economy in the decades ahead. This fall, China's policymakers even released an action plan on what they call aging development, highlighting sectors like health care, mobility aids, even matchmaking services for widowers as new opportunities for growth.

MERRIL SILVERSTEIN: Better health, you know, is a function of greater economic well-being, for one thing.

FENG: This is Merril Silverstein, a sociologist at Syracuse University who has been studying aging societies. He has observed market improvements in China as people's purchasing power shot up.

SILVERSTEIN: Improvements in physical well-being, mental well-being, cognitive well-being, economic well-being.

FENG: And now Silverstein is studying how infrastructure development is increasingly geared towards an older society in China.

SILVERSTEIN: Those in more developed villages have less aging anxiety about whether their needs will be met, whether they'll be, you know, happy or not as they get older.

(SOUNDBITE OF DRUMMING)

FENG: Back at the drumming circle in China, 75-year-old Pu Lilin is case in point. Her idea of aging is different than the elderly people she saw growing up in China who hid themselves away.

PU LILIN: (Speaking Mandarin).

FENG: Pu says she started working at age 13, so now her four adult children support her to just have fun.

ZHANG JIAMING: (Speaking Mandarin).

FENG: Seventy-eight-year-old Zhang Jiaming says she still feels young at heart. She felt aimless when she was forced to retire from her job at a state firm 13 years ago. And new classes like these drumming circles make her feel society still needs her.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

LI YONGHUA: (Speaking Mandarin).

FENG: Zhang is among a gaggle of hardcore drummers who've signed up for two back-to-back classes today. They expertly twirled drumsticks between their fingers. Their smiling faces all turned towards the man in the center of their drumming circle - teacher Li Yonghua.

LI: (Speaking Mandarin).

FENG: Teacher Li's voice is hoarse from yelling over the drums. His classes are this popular, he says, because today's retirees in China have changed. Before, they had money, but they could not bear to spend it. In fact, Li is so popular, he's in demand to train other teachers. He says a few weeks ago, a group of elementary school teachers came to one of his trainings. With China's birth rate dropping and fewer children being born, the teachers were pivoting to a new student base - the growing share of elderly residents.

Emily Feng, NPR News.

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