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Title:
Digital Solutions for Elder Care: China's Smart Ageing Policies and Practices
Abstract:
The convergence of digitalisation and demographic ageing presents profound opportunities and challenges for societies worldwide. On the one hand, digital technology has significantly enhanced the lives of older people, bringing numerous conveniences to their daily activities, such as personalised shopping services tailored to individual preferences, remote healthcare that reduces time wastage, and smart homes that facilitate ageing-in-place. Digital technologies are increasingly used as communication platforms, as vehicles of care provision (e.g., care robots), and as monitoring devices. On the other hand, the socio-economic development status of different countries affects the extent to which older people receiving care benefit from these technologies. Expensive use costs, varying levels of digital literacy, cultural resistance, and lack of adequate digital care provision pose challenges to the widespread integration of digital technology in the elder care sector.
Although interdisciplinary ageing research is extensive in developed countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan, such studies are still in their infancy in developing countries like PR China. Due to increased life expectancy and rapidly declining fertility rates, the Chinese government, operating within a special socio-economic context of “growing old before getting rich”, is actively promoting and guiding “Smart Health Elderly Care” initiatives.
Then how does the Chinese government integrate digital technologies into elder care services, which care processes have been digitalised and by whom? How does the use of smart elder care at the local level compare to the policy expectations set by the central government? This study aims to answer these questions by combining a thematic and content analysis of official Chinese documents (policies, laws, press releases, etc.) and semi-structured qualitative interviews. These interviews were conducted in care institutions that involved managers and care workers, and in the government from the central to the local level with government officials. By doing so, this study analyses the practice of digital elder care in China from both policy and practical perspectives, offering insights into industry trends and examining how technological empowerment in the elder care industry potentially exacerbates pre-existing socio-economic imbalances.
