Each year, usually in early March, China holds the Two Sessions, the country’s largest annual legislative meeting. During this time, thousands of political representatives gather in Beijing to pass the annual budget, review near-term and long-term policy plans, and hear policy proposals from various experts in industry and throughout the bureaucracy. In many cases, those proposals are published in the newspaper. The Two Sessions will officially end tomorrow on March 12, and China’s newspapers have been stacked full of hundreds of policy recommendations. I like reading these, because they shine a light on what China perceives as its largest social issues, and illuminates how the country might try to solve those issues.
Today, we’re reviewing one of those proposals, which was published in Xinhua news. This particular proposal was tabled by Wu Xiangjun (吴相君), chairman of drug company Yiling Pharmaceutical. Wu’s proposals are about how to boost consumption for the Silver Economy. Put more simply, China’s population is aging rapidly, but older people don’t buy as much as younger people. That could threaten China’s domestic consumption in the next 5-10 years. So, Wu is making some suggestions about how the state should incentivize older folks to buy more stuff by expanding access to medical care, and increasing the supply of goods ands services they want to buy.
Key vocab
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银发经济 – yínfà jīngjì – silver economy (elderly-focused economy)
内需 – nèixū – domestic demand
医养融合 – yīyǎng rónghé – integration of medical and elderly care
失能失智 – shīnéng shīzhì – disabled and cognitively impaired
适老化 – shìlǎohuà – age-friendly (adaptation)
长护险 – chánghùxiǎn – long-term care insurance
康复辅具 – kāngfù fǔjù – rehabilitation assistive devices
抗衰老 – kàngshuāilǎo – anti-aging
孤寡 – gūguǎ – solitary/widowed elderly
全国人大代表吴相君：在提升养老体验中拓展消费空间
2026年全国两会期间，全国人大代表、以岭药业董事长吴相君接受新华网采访时表示，随着老龄化加速，养老服务需求呈现全方位、多层次、个性化特征，银发经济已成为拉动内需的重要引擎。发展养老产业，需要系统性地解决养老服务中的痛点、堵点。
为此，吴相君提出四点建议。一是健全体系，实现“老有所养”。 推动医养深度融合，提升护理型床位占比，加强失能失智老人照护中心建设；将适老化改造纳入城市更新，对特殊困难家庭给予补贴；加快长护险全民覆盖并逐步扩大服务保障目录范围；推广“物业+养老”“家政+养老”模式，支持社区增设助餐、日间照料设施；加快补齐农村短板，推动县、乡、村养老服务机构扩容提质。
二是优化供给，实现“老有所助”。鼓励开发功能服饰、适配食品，推广适老代步车、助行器等出行产品的研发应用；推动康复辅具产业升级，深化智能轮椅、健康监测设备等产品的功能开发；支持企业开发操作简便、功能实用的智能护理机器人、家庭服务机器人、智能防走失终端等产品，加快智能设备在居家、社区、机构养老场景的应用；推动各类展会设立银发经济专属展区，在线上线下消费场景设银发专区便捷窗口。
三是激活产业，实现“老有所美”。鼓励升级保健品、轻医美等传统抗衰老品类，提供全流程健康管理；加速前沿抗衰老技术临床转化；推动中西医协同抗衰老发展，加大中医药抗衰老科研与成果转化，推广中医药康养服务；推动抗衰老与慢病管理融合。
四是升级服务，实现“老有所乐”。增加大字本、有声读物供给，社区增设文娱场所，发挥老年大学、养老服务中心的社交功能；扶持文化团体，举办文体活动；完善心理服务体系，将老年心理健康评估纳入老年人健康体检范围，建立省、市、县三级平台开展常态化心理咨询、心理疏导服务；针对孤寡、失独等特殊群体加强情感关怀；鼓励开发融合康养、文化、医疗的复合型旅游产品。
NPC Representative Wu Xiangjun: Expanding Consumer Space While Enhancing the Elderly Care Experience
During the 2026 National Two Sessions, Wu Xiangjun, National People’s Congress representative and chairman of Yiling Pharmaceutical, told Xinhua News that as aging accelerates, elderly care service demands are showing comprehensive, multi-level, and personalized characteristics. The silver economy has become an important engine for driving domestic demand. Developing the elderly care industry requires systematically addressing pain points and bottlenecks in elderly care services.
To this end, Wu Xiangjun proposed four suggestions. First, improve the system to achieve ‘providing for the aged.’ Promote deep integration of medical care and elderly care, increase the proportion of nursing beds, and strengthen construction of care centers for disabled and dementia-afflicted elderly; incorporate age-friendly renovations into urban renewal and provide subsidies for families with special difficulties; accelerate universal coverage of long-term care insurance and gradually expand the service guarantee catalog; promote ‘property management + elderly care’ and ‘domestic service + elderly care’ models, supporting communities in adding meal assistance and daytime care facilities; quickly address rural shortcomings and promote expansion and quality improvement of county, township, and village elderly care service institutions.
Second, optimize supply to achieve ‘assistance for the aged.’ Encourage development of functional clothing and suitable foods, promote R&D and application of mobility products like elderly scooters and walking aids; drive upgrading of the rehabilitation assistive device industry, deepening functional development of products like smart wheelchairs and health monitoring equipment; support enterprises in developing easy-to-operate, practical smart nursing robots, home service robots, and smart anti-wandering terminals, accelerating application of smart devices in home, community, and institutional elderly care settings; promote establishment of silver economy exclusive exhibition areas at various expos, and set up convenient silver-specific zones in online and offline consumer scenarios.
Third, activate the industry to achieve ‘beauty for the aged.’ Encourage upgrading of traditional anti-aging categories like health supplements and light medical aesthetics, providing whole-process health management; accelerate clinical translation of cutting-edge anti-aging technologies; promote coordinated development of Chinese and Western medicine in anti-aging, increase traditional Chinese medicine anti-aging research and achievement transformation, and promote TCM health preservation services; promote integration of anti-aging and chronic disease management.
Fourth, upgrade services to achieve ‘happiness for the aged.’ Increase supply of large-print books and audiobooks, add entertainment venues in communities, and leverage the social functions of senior universities and elderly care service centers; support cultural groups and hold cultural and sports activities; improve the psychological service system by including elderly mental health assessments in elderly health checkups, establishing provincial, municipal, and county-level platforms to conduct regular psychological counseling and guidance services; strengthen emotional care for special groups such as solitary elderly and those who have lost their only child; encourage development of compound tourism products integrating health preservation, culture, and medical care.