It is predicted that around 2035, China's population aged 60 and above will exceed 400 million, accounting for more than 30% of the total population. As China's aging continues to deepen, the living, health, and spiritual needs of older adults are all growing, and the market serving older adults is also flourishing. Recently, the General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Developing the Silver Economy and Enhancing the Well-being of Older Adults (hereinafter referred to as the Opinions), aimed at accelerating the scaled, standardized, clustered, and branded development of the silver economy, so that older adults can share in the fruits of development and enjoy a happy old age.

　　Cultivating new drivers of economic development and improving the quality of life of older adults is imperative, but there remains a gap between the services provided by society and the growing material and spiritual needs of older adults. How to take effective measures to bridge these gaps has sparked discussion among experts and readers.

　　We must squarely face the significant changes taking place in the consumer demand of older adults

　　"The senior meal program actually requires a prepaid card, and the price is quite high, so the older adults in the community are unwilling to eat at the community canteen." Mr. Liu of Guilin, Guangxi, said that the senior meal program implemented in some communities is in fact outsourced operations; in order to make more profit, merchants set high prices and small portions, and problems such as dishes being heavy in oil and salt and unsuitable for older adults' tastes are also prominent. There have even been cases where the senior meal program suddenly ceased operation after thousands of yuan had been prepaid.

　　Reader Mr. He of Shangqiu, Henan, wrote in to report that his mother lives alone in the countryside and has just moved into a rural nursing home this year, but encountered many problems: the infrastructure of rural elderly care institutions is poor, and the rooms where older adults live are crude; the caregivers are all nearby villagers without professional training; and the nursing home is remotely located, some distance from the hospital. "The old person is unhappy living there and says the nursing home is not as good as home," Mr. He said.

　　In cities, some nursing homes focus only on basic life care and material support for older adults, with a single service model and insufficient spiritual care and comfort. "The elderly care institution is nicely decorated and I live stably, and physical examinations and nursing care are arranged at regular intervals, but I always feel empty inside," said Sun Xuhua of Xi'an, Shaanxi. After getting up in the morning, he watches TV and eats alone, at most chatting with old friends. "This kind of life is too monotonous."

　　Seeing a doctor is an unavoidable scenario in the lives of older adults. As smart medical systems gradually become widespread, one-click online registration, self-service multifunctional terminals, and the like have brought much convenience to patients, but because they do not know how to use the internet and smart devices, going to the hospital has become a source of anxiety for some older adults.

　　"Older adults who cannot register by mobile phone can only queue at the window, and when there are many people they have to wait 30 to 40 minutes; sometimes it is even more troublesome when the doctor on duty is not there," said Ms. Song of Chengdu, Sichuan. Many older adults would rather buy medicine themselves at a pharmacy or go to a small clinic than go to a large hospital.

　　As the main front for elderly education, universities for older adults play an important role in meeting the learning needs of older adults and expanding their social participation. However, affected by various factors, universities for older adults have also seen problems such as insufficient course supply. "Even though the admissions brochure says this course is newly enrolling 45 people, in reality it is basically continuing students re-enrolling, and very few places are left for new students like me, because universities for older adults generally give priority to continuing students," said Aunt Liu of Shanghai, pointing to the admissions brochure. She had previously waited a full three years to successfully register for a course.

　　In the traditional sense, the elderly market mainly focused on medical care and elderly care, but in the digital age the consumption structure and consumer demand of older adults are undergoing significant changes, which provides rare opportunities for related product innovation, service innovation, and model innovation.

　　How to promote the healthy development of elderly care institutions and meet the greater elderly care service needs of older adults

　　How to solve the urgent difficulties and anxieties regarding elderly care? Professor Zhang Shengjun of the School of Government at Beijing Normal University suggests that, based on home-based elderly care, community elderly care service capacity should be enhanced through new construction, renovation, and leasing; efforts should focus on developing a two-tier elderly care service network at the subdistrict/township and urban-rural community levels; and diverse home-based elderly care services should be developed relying on communities.

　　"A while ago, my children signed up for a family elderly care bed at the Tiancun Community Elderly Care Station. The station arranges someone every week to help me pick up medicine at the hospital, and also regularly arranges rehabilitation therapists to come to my home for massage, which has solved many difficulties for me," said Reader Ms. Liu of Haidian District, Beijing.

　　Haidian District began implementing the family elderly care bed policy in June 2020. The Tiancun Community Elderly Care Station, as one of the first batch of family elderly care service units, applies for family beds for eligible older adults; through on-site assessment of living ability and living environment, it formulates reasonable care plans and signs service agreements with older adults, carries out age-friendly renovations in the homes of older adults in need, and regularly provides older adults with the elderly care services they need.

　　To further expand home-based elderly care services, the Opinions state that elderly care institutions, domestic service enterprises, and property service enterprises should be encouraged to carry out home-based elderly care door-to-door services; professional elderly companion care institutions should be cultivated and developed, supported in sharing resources with elderly care institutions, and helped to expand companion care scenarios.

　　"Relevant departments should abandon the past management system and operating mechanism of taking everything into their own hands and managing everything, which is high-cost and low-efficiency. Following the development approach of separating management from operation, the government should provide funding and entrust social organizations or service groups with operation and management, while the government is responsible for management and supervision. Fresh blood should be injected into publicly run elderly care institutions already in operation to stimulate their development vitality," Zhang Shengjun suggested, exploring the public-build, private-operation model for elderly care institutions.

　　"Public-build, private-operation elderly care institutions should be both public-welfare-oriented and commercial. Relevant departments should allow public-build, private-operation elderly care institutions to maintain modest profits while granting policy preferences to enhance institutional service capacity, promote the healthy and rapid development of public-build, private-operation elderly care institutions, and meet the elderly care service needs of more older adults," Zhang Shengjun said.

　　In addition to improving the construction and services of elderly care institutions, Professor Huan Pingqing of the School of Sociology and Population Studies at Renmin University of China proposed that elderly care service standards and evaluation systems should be established and improved. "Elderly care service standards and evaluation systems in various places urgently need to be improved. At present, some communities and elderly care institutions focus only on material aspects while neglecting psychological comfort; in particular, services such as companionship and psychological counseling are relatively lacking, so they can only achieve 'care for the aged' but not 'happiness for the aged,'" Huan Pingqing said.

　　How to increase the supply of products and services that match the needs of older adults

　　Regarding elderly education, Zhang Shengjun believes that elderly education should not be equated with universities for older adults, and attending a university for older adults is not the only pathway to elderly education. To alleviate the supply-demand gap in courses at universities for older adults in a short period, online course resources and teaching platforms should be actively developed, using the "Internet Plus" model to leverage the radiating effect of offline course resources.

　　The 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of National Undertakings for Older Adults and the Elderly Care Service System proposes relying on the Open University of China to prepare for the establishment of the National University for Older Adults and to build a national platform for sharing elderly education resources and public services; promoting universities for older adults run by departments, industry enterprises, and higher education institutions to open their operations to society; and supporting all kinds of qualified schools to establish universities (schools) for older adults and participate in elderly education.

　　"Support should also be given to extending elderly education into communities, and by supporting various social forces in establishing universities for older adults, the supply of elderly education resources should be expanded. At the same time, the construction of community education and elderly education institutions at all levels and of all types should be strengthened, and the development of elderly education frontlines should be reinforced," Zhang Shengjun said.

　　Huan Pingqing believes that, from the demand side, older adults increasingly pursue personalized and convenient social interaction and increasingly care about the quality and diversity of consumption; the consumption structure is beginning to shift from daily necessities to developmental and enjoyment-oriented consumer goods, and from product consumption to service consumption. From the supply side, with the help of digital technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, and smart manufacturing, the industrial digitalization of the silver economy is continuously improving, and many segmented fields are increasing the supply of products and services that match the needs of older adults.

　　The spread of mobile smart terminals has also made older adults promoters of innovative consumption scenarios, further amplifying the positive role of the silver economy in supporting consumption upgrading. For example, the "Happy Tour Shanghai" mini-program has designed a senior version interface to solve the obstacle that small icons and small fonts pose to older adults in obtaining cultural and tourism information; the "Water Rhyme Jiangsu" digital tourism card loads online-purchased and booked tourism products and services onto the individual's third-generation social security card, solving problems such as older adults needing to carry multiple cards when going out and easily forgetting, carrying too few, or carrying the wrong ones.

　　In April 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued relevant documents requiring domestic websites and apps to accelerate age-friendly adaptation and solve the obstacles that make older adults "unwilling to use and unable to use" digital technology. As of July 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had cumulatively guided and promoted 1,735 websites and apps to complete age-friendly adaptation. "In the future, we must closely follow the characteristics of older adults' needs, with multi-dimensional collaboration among all parties, continuously upgrade intelligent software and hardware systems, and build more convenient and comfortable digital platforms for the silver economy, focusing on resolving older adults' concerns that products are hard to use and that they dare not use them, so that older adults can use digital products and services more equally and safely," Huan Pingqing said.

　　The Research on the Development of China's Aging Industry and Indicator System, released by the China Research Center on Aging, predicts that by 2030 the total consumption of the national elderly population will be 12 trillion to 15.5 trillion yuan.

　　Looking ahead to the development trend of the silver economy, it is currently necessary to comply with the consumption upgrading trend of older adults, expand product supply, improve quality levels, focus on diverse needs, and cultivate potential industries, especially accelerating the scaled, standardized, clustered, and branded development of the silver economy and cultivating high-end, precision, and advanced products and high-quality service models.

　　Huan Pingqing suggests that as population aging continues to deepen, the fields of high-quality health care, smart elderly care, and other high-tech products and services will usher in precious development opportunities. The development potential of the elderly care service market should be fully tapped, and the enthusiasm of various business entities and social organizations for participation and creation should be stimulated, which will better meet the multi-level and diverse needs of older adults and jointly promote the growth and expansion of the silver economy.