In July this year, the State Council approved and issued the "15th Five-Year Plan" for Expanding Consumption, which explicitly proposes expanding elderly care consumption and requires "expanding the effective supply of silver-economy products" and "expanding high-quality silver-economy consumption service modes" in developing the silver economy.
Today, various regions are expanding into new tracks for silver-age services and continuously unleashing the vitality of the silver economy.
On the shores of Nanbeihu Lake in Haiyan, Zhejiang, a group of elderly tourists are enjoying a wellness and recuperation retreat. Tourist Zhang Yunjue told reporters that the scenery here is great, making it suitable for hiking and chatting, and practicing yoga with good friends is even more relaxing.
Scenic area staff introduced that the lakeside walking trail is 7.8 kilometers long in total, suitable for the elderly to walk slowly. Wheelchairs and crutches at the tourist center are available for free rental. Located within the Yangtze River Delta one-hour traffic circle, the local area has in recent years used "wellness + tourism" as a bond to enhance tourism reception capacity and cultural-tourism quality. From January to August this year, Haiyan received 2.1479 million tourist visits; the wellness vacation and slow-travel overnight tourist groups have continued to expand, with elderly people willing to stay and stroll leisurely, driving the local silver-age tourism to gradually heat up.
Beyond tourism, professional wellness services are also keeping pace. "The facilities and conditions are good, ideally with doctors and nurses taking care of them around the clock, and in case of sudden illness, they are sent to the hospital"—this is what citizen Zhou Senkang described to reporters as the wellness service he looks forward to. In June this year, the largest wellness center in northern Zhejiang officially opened in Tongxiang, Zhejiang. As a major "thousand projects and ten billion yuan" project in Zhejiang Province, it radiates to the Yangtze River Delta. Xu Bin, director of the Tongxiang Elderly Care Service Guidance Center, introduced that the wellness center has formed a tiered rehabilitation and nursing service, which can well meet wellness needs, giving the elderly a stronger sense of fulfillment.
Technology-assisted elderly care is also entering communities. Exoskeleton robots, electric wheelchairs, and rehabilitation gloves are on centralized display, and residents coming to experience them stream in endlessly... At the rehabilitation assistive device service center in Taiyan Community, Cangqian Street, Yuhang District, Hangzhou, resident Ye Menggang told reporters that rehabilitation activities are becoming increasingly advanced today, and intelligent equipment is particularly helpful for the elderly. The local area has opened up elderly care scenarios, allowing local sci-tech innovation enterprises to directly obtain front-line usage feedback from the elderly, promoting equipment to iterate from professional rehabilitation equipment in medical institutions to consumer-grade mobility-assistance products entering communities and facing ordinary elderly people. A corporate executive introduced that a single year sees shipments of about 30,000 to 40,000 sets of equipment, helping 30,000 to 40,000 families solve elderly-assistance problems every year.
The silver-haired demographic not only brings demands for elderly care and nursing, but is also reshaping the consumption structure. Accelerating the transformation and implementation of innovative achievements in elderly care robots, researching and processing foods suitable for the elderly such as low-sugar and high-protein options, and researching and applying clothing and apparel with specific functions such as safety protection and heat storage and warmth retention... Aiming at the multi-level and diversified consumption demands of the elderly, enterprises are constantly optimizing elderly care services, enriching the supply of age-appropriate products, and expanding new business growth points. Data shows that by the end of 2025, the elderly population aged 60 and above nationwide has reached 320 million. According to estimates, by 2035, the scale of China's silver economy is expected to break through 30 trillion yuan, and the quality upgrading of elderly care services is ushering in a precious period of opportunity.
Industry insiders said that developing the silver economy requires breaking down barriers in the fields of culture and tourism, elderly care, and sci-tech innovation, and promoting the interconnection of service scenarios; product supply should simultaneously take into account leisure and wellness for active seniors and professional care for disabled seniors; technology-assisted elderly care focuses on being easy to use and inclusive, doing a good job in operation simplification and offline guidance and companionship, so that the development of the silver-age industry fits the needs of the elderly.
