Nanfang Metropolis Daily:

This March, the plan on reforming of Party and state institutions specified efforts to improve the elderly care work mechanism, and strengthened the MCA's responsibilities for promoting elderly care programs. My question is, as the problem of population aging becomes more serious, what are the MCA's considerations for the next step for promoting the development of both elderly care programs and elderly care services? Thank you.

Tang Dengjie:

Thanks for your question. Population aging is a problem facing most countries in the world, and also a major issue we must tackle in advancing Chinese modernization. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has attached great importance to the work related to population aging. It profoundly expounded the importance of addressing population aging from a strategic perspective, systematically clarified the principles and approaches to tackle this problem, and fully deployed the tasks and measures to promote related work, thereby providing sound guidance and strong guarantee for improving our response to population aging in the new era. The 20th CPC National Congress stressed that "we will pursue a proactive national strategy in response to population aging, develop elderly care programs and services, and provide better services for elderly people who live alone. By doing so, we can ensure that basic elderly care is accessible to the entire elderly population." These remarks pointed out the direction and tasks of our efforts in the new era. This year, China released a plan on reforming Party and state institutions, and efforts were specified to improve the elderly-care work mechanism, with such functions as formulating and coordinating the implementation of policies and measures to address population aging transferred to the MCA. This is a major decision made by the CPC Central Committee to pursue a proactive national strategy in response to population aging. The MCA has earnestly implemented the task of institutional reform, and deepened understanding of its mission. We will make good use of the important window of opportunity during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), and make efforts to boost elderly care programs and services in the following three aspects. In doing so, we will blaze a new path for responding to population aging in a way that is suited to the realities of China and features Chinese characteristics.

First, the MCA will strengthen the Party's overall leadership over the work on population aging and further improve the related work mechanism. We must ensure that the Party fully exert its core role in providing overall leadership and coordinating the efforts of all sides. We will improve the work mechanism on addressing populating aging to form a strong synergy, featuring the Party committees' leadership, law-based government administration, close coordination among departments, and active participation of people's organizations. The General Office of the China National Committee on Aging will strengthen its functions of coordinating, supervising, guiding, organizing, and advancing the development of elderly care programs. A multi-faceted framework will be formed to guarantee the work to tackle population aging at all levels will be done, elderly people's issues will be managed, and their difficulties will be resolved. The elderly-care work will be included in the economic and social development plans at all levels, on the agenda of local Party committees and governments, in the performance evaluation system of relevant departments at all levels, and in the working list to address the people's practical concerns. All of these will provide a strong guarantee for the development of elderly care programs.

Second, the MCA will fully implement the decisions and deployments on addressing population aging made by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council and work continuously to make new progress to ensure care, medical services, social participation, education, and recreation for the elderly. We will continuously improve the social security system and basic old-age insurance system, develop a multi-tiered and multi-pillar old-age insurance system, and institute an insurance system to support long-term care. The health support system will be optimized to constantly improve health management and services for elderly people. We will work faster to build a system of domestic, community, and institutional elderly care services to meet different medical and health care needs. Basic, domestic, and community elderly care services will be promoted, including catering and age-friendly home renovation for elderly people. We will also improve county-level, township-level, and village-level elderly care service networks in rural areas and optimize the comprehensive regulatory system for elderly care services.

Third, the MCA will continuously guide and mobilize the whole of society to join our efforts and promote the concept of healthy and active aging throughout economic and social development. More aging-related education initiatives will be carried out to guide the whole of society to take a positive view of population aging, the elderly, and aging lives so as to pool broad consensus and joint efforts to address population aging. Policies will be improved and implemented to encourage elderly people to participate in social activities, and support them to play an active role in society. Thank you.