The number of elderly in China, including Shanghai, is rising rapidly and the life span of the people has risen to an average 70 years, even higher in major cities such as Shanghai. The rapid ageing in China will soon outpace the ageing population of other countries’. China may be the first major country to grow old before it grows rich, as China’s age wave threatens to overwhelm the government budgets and family support networks.
Shanghai seem to have more old folks than young people these years as it is a major city, mentioned above. It is estimated that by 2025, one out of every three Shanghainese will be over 60 years of age. To worsen the situation, the Shanghainese born during the population boom from 1950 to early 1980s are now entering the age of retirement, causing a huge demand for elderly-focused health care, pensions and welfare.
Health welfare and services is especially essential for elderly who do not have families that take care of them. This will result in them being always helpless and having difficulty in providing themselves, and this might increase the possibility of medical emergency. The largest problem they face is loneliness, and this could increase the risk of them having health problems as their mood would be gradually affected by their mood.
Before 1978, the government provided normal services for elderly in Shanghai. There was no policy and few resources were given for the elderly. There were few welfare homes set up and they were mainly for the “three-nos”, which refers to elderly with no family support, no work ability and no means of livelihood.
In order to solve this problem caused by an ageing population, the government implemented a change in policy in 1978. Serving the three-nos elderly was still the priority, a change occurred in the financing and provisioning of welfare services, from closed-door policy to open-door policy in terms of financing, service provision, and from a care orientation to a care-and-rehabilitation orientation. Services for the elderly grew with the support and leadership of civil affairs administrative units at different levels of government.
The nationwide welfare scheme for the country’s huge elderly population was also suggested in 2001 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and it has resulted in a rapid improvement in local welfare facilities. An extra 350,000m2 of activity centres have been built, along with the renovation and expansion of about 185 old people’s home, and 83 more day care centres have been established in the past three years. “Welfare houses are now available in every community, village and town,” said Xu Ling, director of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau.
Also, the government had paid for more than 140,000 senior citizens to get home services. According to Xu Ling, these free home services have provided employment for many local unemployed people. A personal alarm system had also been installed in the homes of 24,000 elderly people. The machines installed in their homes are connected to Shanghai Home Care services, so the elderly can get help by just pushing a button on the machine. The home care system team would then answer calls and coordinate assistance and services. The charge for the installations of the machine and services is reduced, even zero in certain cases. Ever since the nationwide welfare scheme was introduced in May 2001, the Shanghai Home Care services have handled more than 80,000 service calls and settled more than 1,000 calls for medical aid, fire alarm or emergencies.
Chapter 3: Limitations of research analysis/Justification of research method
There are many limitations to this research that we chose to do on. Firstly, we couldn’t decide on a welfare topic as China is a very big country and different regions have different sorts of welfare, some better than the others. In a country, there are many different aspects of welfare such as social, health and even animal welfare. Also, especially for China, each welfare topic has a very broad coverage. For example, China’s health welfare includes elderly health welfare, medical welfare, animal health welfare, and many others. Hence we had to decide 2 very important topics for our research project, both which could affect the results of this assigment if not chosen wisely.
Secondly, we do not know much about Shanghai’s welfare system. This was a very big obstacle for us in both the project and the initial step where we chose our research topic. As we did not learn about China’s welfare in school, we have little knowledge of it and the only way we can learn about it through external sources. This slowed us down at the start of the research as we have to spend a large amount of time learning and understand their welfare system ourselves before we can actually start on the assignment.
Thirdly, as we have to research online for our SIA topic, we do not know if the sources we read are reliable, and needed to use our comparison and reliability skills to cross reference to make sure that our resources are not biased. Also, we had difficulty looking for sources from books as many libraries do not have books with updated information about the welfare in China, let alone Shanghai.
Fourthly, as we are doing on welfare in Shanghai, most of the information would be written in Chinese. We had to Google for resources in Chinese, read through, understand and then translate in our own words into English for the report. To make things worse, this was not easy as most of the information were written in traditional Chinese characters which we are not familiar with. Also, the information were written in very deep and complicated Chinese which we had trouble understanding. Hence, we had to seek help from family, friend and constantly look up the dictionary. This not only tests our researching skills but also ability to make the best out of things when things are not as smooth sailing as we hoped.
Lastly, for our interview, we had difficulty finding interviewees from Singapore. As one of our group member’s parents are from China, we are very lucky to be able to have them to help us with the interview with their extensive knowledge of the Shanghai’s senior health welfare system. However, most of our parents are typical Singaporeans who do not know much about Shanghai’s senior health welfare system and hence are unable to help us with the interview. We had to ask around and find out who has at least some knowledge on the welfare system to help us with the interview, which took quite a while. Also, many of them are busy with work and hence do not have the time to help us in either the interview or looking for friends who can help us with the interview.
Chapter 4: Findings & Analysis
From our research, we have managed to find the statistics of Shanghai’s number of elderly, and this will be able to help us in finding more information about Shanghai’s elderly health welfare as we would know the number of elderly in Shanghai and hence find out whether the medical and health services are accommodating all the elderly.
TABLE 1 TOTAL POPULATION, OLDER POPULATION AND
OLDEST OLD POPULATION1 SHANGHAI, 2000 TO 2040
Source: Poston, Dudley, Baochang Gu and Hua Luo. 2009. “The Effects of the Fertility and
Mortality Transitions on the Elderly and Eldercare in China, and in Shanghai, Beijing and
Tianjin.” Unpublished paper.
1 The “old population” refers to population aged 65-79 and the “oldest old population” refers to
population aged 80 and over.
From the above Table 1, we can tell that from 2000 to 2020, the population of Shanghai will increase at an increasing rate, the number of ‘older’ and ‘oldest old’ are also increasing along with the increasing population. However, from 2030 onwards, the population will start to decline, but the number of ‘older’ and ‘oldest old’ are still increasing rapidly.
Shanghai government has adopted a number of strategies which include building a pension system for both urban and rural dwellers to ease the rapid ageing population process. Institutionalized old-age care and services are established as alternatives to community and family based old-age care systems. The city is also constructing facilities for elderly care and encouraging people to be involved in voluntary services for the elderly. (Shanghai Coming to Grips with its Ageing Population, April 2010, Zhang Li: )
Our research has shown that Shanghai is most likely to become the first city in China with ageing population. As a result, investments have been increased in taking care of the elderly. According to statistics found, 2.5 million elderly people in Shanghai have benefited from a welfare scheme, known as the Starlight Program, launched 3 years ago. More than 1.5 billion Yuan was invested in this welfare scheme.
The welfare scheme was one of the biggest and covered largest proportions. It had achieved best results. This nation-wide welfare scheme for the shanghai elderly was initiated in 2001 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. It has resulted in an overall improvement in local welfare facilities.
Government has also paid for more than 140,000 elderly to get home services such as personal alarm system, a help machine installed in their homes that is connected to the Shanghai Home Care Services’ platform. If the elderly need help, they will just have to push a button on the machine and there would be a team who will answer their calls and coordinate assistance and services. There are charges for the installation but in certain families who needed financial assistance and other special cases; the charges will be reduced to zero.
Since established in May 2001, the system handled more than 80,000 service calls and settled more than 1000 calls for medical aid, fire alarm or emergencies. This showed to us that the system has been very efficient in helping the elderly in Shanghai. (Welfare Plans Benefit Elderly in Shanghai - , China Daily, October 12, 2004)
There are common issues between these 2 researches. As seen in the Table above, the elderly in Shanghai is increasing rapidly. In year 2000, the older population had 2,458,000 elderly aged from 65-79. The numbers increased rapidly throughout the years that in 2010, there were 3,273,000 elderly aged from 65-79. The table also showed that in year 2040, the number of elderly in the older population would shoot up to 7,327,000. This increase is also the same in the oldest old population. From the table, it showed that the oldest old population in year 2000 will increase from 299,000 in year 2000, to 551,000 in 2010. The number would increase rapidly to 1,616,000 in year 2040. From this statistic shown, we can clearly see the rise in numbers of the older population in shanghai. This statistics shown above tally with our research article where it states that that Shanghai would be the first city in China to face the problem of ageing population. Therefore we can see that these 2 researches have a common point among them.
From the above to research information, the Shanghai government has established services which are required by the elderly, as seen from “Institutionalized old-age care and services are established as alternatives to community and family based old-age care systems. The city is also constructing facilities for elderly care” and “Government has also paid for more than 140,000 elderly to get home services such as personal alarm system”. The government has also set up services to cater to the needs for the elderly such as during emergencies, they can look for professional help provided by the government as seen from, “the system handled more than 80,000 service calls and settled more than 1000 calls for medical aid, fire alarm or emergencies.” “the system” refers to the Home Care Services, and it is proved as an efficient service as the number of cases it has handled is a large one.
We can tell the Shanghai government has been putting in effort to provide essential medical and home services for the elderly and these services have greatly helped the elderly. The government has also came up with different services to meet the different needs of the elderly, also increasing the number of services to accommodate all the elderly as the number of elderly is increasing rapidly.
Based on the information we have found, we can thus match it with our hypothesis, and that the Shanghai government has been providing sufficient and efficient medical and home services for the elderly.
Chapter 5: Conclusion
In conclusion, Shanghai has put in much effort in providing care for elderly in comparison with the other cities. They provide many services which other cities do not have, including both community care and institutional care are provided or financed by the government, collective units, enterprises and individuals. The government made sure to upgrade all medical facilities and that each and every elderly in different parts of Shanghai gets the same up-to-date treatment and services. The elderly are treated equally regardless of status, class nor income, hence every single elderly have access to these services. We can also conclude that the Shanghai’s government is not corrupted as all their people are treated fairly.
Shanghai’s welfare for the elderly has improved a lot over the years and we can tell from the research that Shanghai’s government has spent a huge sum of money on these improvements. Hence we can also conclude that Shanghai’s economy is flourishing in order for the government to carry out such a large scale upgrades in every single part of the country. As such welfare is a heavy burden for the country to have, having to pay for medical and other services for all its elderly.
Hence, our hypothesis is proven correct by our researches that Shanghai has indeed been managing their ageing population in a very effective method. We can see that the government view this as a serious matter and has been treating the matter of their ageing population and caring for their elderly promptly.
Chapter 6: Bibliography
Ezine Articles (2010) General Medical Care in Shanghai [on-line]
URL: (22 July 2010)
Biz trade shows (2009-2010) China Aid [on-line]
URL: (22 July 2010)
Facts and details (2008-2010) China (Shanghai) Healthcare [on-line]
URL: (22 July 2010)
Health Research Policy and Systems (2009-2010) Healthcare systems in Sweden and China
: Legal [on-line]
URL: (22 July 2010)
MSU (2005) Elder Parent Health [on-line]
URL: (23 July 2010)
JBIC (2010) Population, Healthcare, Pension and Welfare Systems [on-line]
URL: (23 July 2010)
Archie R. Crouch (Year of Publication : unknown) Christianity In China. Shanghai.
(2001) WHO Kobe Centre International Meeting on Community Health Care in Ageing Societies. Shanghai, China.
, (1996) Death by default: a policy of fatal neglect in China's state orphanages. Shanghai, China.
Chapter 7: Sample of interviews
1) Are you aware of the aging population in Shanghai?
SG: Yes
SH: Yes
2) What do you know about the welfare benefits for seniors in Shanghai?
SG:
SH: You get money even though you don't work, it is very fair for all. There is an average of $2000 for every senior plus a health insurance.
3) Do you think the Shanghai’s senior welfare is efficient?
SG:
SH: Yes
4) What suggestions do you have to improve Shanghai’s welfare system?
SG:
SH:
5) Would you want to implement Shanghai’s senior welfare system in Singapore?
SG:
SH: Yes
6) What kind of home services do you like the most? Why?
SG:
SH: Elderly have car services that drive them to destinations when they need to go out of house.
7) What do you look for in a good welfare system?
SG:
SH: Good medical care
8) What do you think is the best part of shanghai’s welfare system?
SG:
SH: Everyone gets money regardless of whether they are working of not and this provides them with a secure health
Call people to book car to send them to see doctor
Send food to the old and elderly everyday and charge them at a cheaper price
Because of this the government is facing a heavy burden because it is giving money to a large number of elderly every year
Capitalism
Chapter 10: Justification of research means
We chose to do interview because we have family and friends who are from Shanghai and have a very good understanding of Shanghai’s senior welfare system. Hence, through interviewing them, we can have a better understanding and also a broader views on the welfare system of Shanghai ourselves. Also, interviews are done face-to-face so we know that they are giving their sensible answers and telling us whatever they know instead of having surveys which provides options for them to choose from without even thinking about the question. So we will get accurate and honest view on our questions instead of faked knowledge on what the people actually know.
We chose to interview both a Singaporean and a person from Shanghai because it gives us a fairer view towards the Shanghai senior welfare. Also, Singaporeans might not know much details or their views towards the senior welfare in Shanghai might be biased due to the source they learn it from. Hence a person from Shanghai might provide us with a very detailed information on Shanghai’s welfare and also an accurate view towards it as they have experienced the effects of the system while they are still in Shanghai. On the contrary, the people from Shanghai might be biased towards their own country and support their welfare system regardless of whether it is actually good or not. Hence, this is not accurate for our interview as they do not look into the real matter but simply support their own country. However with the additional Singaporean, they might provide us with a more fair and honest view as they have a very general view towards the Shanghai’s senior welfare system and will speak solely on knowledge and not opinion. With information from both ways, we will be able to analyse the results and determine which information are reliable, and which are not, and will hence get a more or less balanced interview result.
