Showing posts with label Old age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Old age. Show all posts

Monday, October 27, 2014

How to deal with China´s aging population - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia
+Lijia Zhang 
Taking care of her aging father, author Zhang Lijia realized China is not ready to deal with its rapidly aging population. On for 1.6 percent care facilities are available. China became old before it got rich, unlike its neighbor Japan. From her weblog.

Zhang Lijia:
Traditionally, Chinese parents relied on their children for old-age care. My beloved grandmother, a courtesan turned concubine, suffered war, famine and other hardships in life. By the time she neared the end of her life, however, she regarded herself as a very fortunate woman as she was well cared for by her daughter’s family. For someone of her generation, having "three generations of the family under one roof" was the ultimate happiness. 
Today, rapid development, urbanisation, smaller families, a more mobile population and an ever more individualistic society have loosened family ties and broken the traditional elderly care system. 
According to research released last year by Peking University’s China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, only 38 per cent of old people live with their offspring. Those who live away from their parents usually cannot manage frequent visits home due to work and other demands. Many of the millions of migrants labouring in the cities only have the time and money to visit home once a year – during the Lunar New Year
Those who can’t rely on their family to provide care may be dismayed to discover the appalling social provisions for the elderly. 
China’s care facilities can accommodate only around 1.6 per cent of its old people. It’s unrealistic to expect a sudden or massive investment by the government on the provisions. China, after all, is still a developing country. 
Here is another challenge: China became old before it got rich, unlike its neighbor Japan. Even if you are safely inside a care facility, it doesn’t mean you are home and dry. In my father’s hospice, caregivers are supposed to provide a 24-hour service, from changing nappies to feeding people and cleaning rooms. Weighed down with too many tasks, however, they cannot respond to each patient’s every need instantly. 
Once, my father’s roommate, a semi-paralysed, childless 80-year-old, was left in the corridor to do his business – his wheelchair also functions as a toilet. For hours, he sat in the grilling sun, clutching his trousers and grunting for attention whenever he saw a caregiver passing by. When you have so little control over your life, dignity shatters all too easily. 
My father is much luckier. His wife and three children take turns to be at his bedside. At one point, when my sister and her grown son were visiting, my sister half-joked: "Son, one day, you’ll have to treat me the same way I am treating my father." Her son scratched his head and smiled politely. 
The truth is that he may not be able to, even if he is willing. He and his wife, also a single child, will have to look after her parents as well. By 2053, some 35 per cent of the total population will enter the so-called "grey tide", compared with the world average of 20 per cent. 
This issue will have to be jointly dealt with by the government, society, family and individuals. In fact, an all-out war is needed. The government should build more affordable old people’s homes; communities should build leisure centres and other facilities for the elderly and train community nurses to provide basic medical care. 
Volunteers should be encouraged to visit the elderly. One of my father’s neighbours, a bed-bound old woman, told me that she hates the loneliness more than the physical suffering. In Nanjing, the local government is considering a new policy: to pay a family member to care for the old person at home, provided some criteria are met. Different levels of the government will all have to come up with more, similarly creative, ideas.
More at Zhang Lijia´s weblog. 

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you interested in more female speakers at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this recent list.  

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Action needed for elderly parents - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia
Zhang Lijia
Earlier this month China's government took the extraordinary step of forcing children to visits their parents regularly by law. Author Zhang Lijia looks in The Guardian back on how filial relations in China have been changing dramatically over the past two decades. Action is needed, she writes.

+Lijia Zhang:
When I called my mother and asked for her take on this mental need of elderly people, she said: "Old people often feel lonely and empty in their empty nests and sometimes feel abandoned if they hear nothing from their children." She added that if her children can visit her when they can, call a couple of times every month and send her postcards when they travel – anything that makes her feel that they care – then her emotional needs are fulfilled. 
My parents live alone in my hometown Nanjing. I myself have long migrated to the capital. Every year, I make the 1000km journey home (actually only four hours by the speed train) about half a dozen times, dutifully and slightly grudgingly (given half a chance, mother would nag me to find a husband and a proper job). Luckily, my sister and brother live nearby and pop over frequently. 
In the next 10 to 15 years, people reaching old age will have fewer children as the family planning policy bears its fruit. The demographic trends will cause increasing constraints to the family-centreed old age support system. The government will have to invest vigorously to improve its poor social provisions for the elderly, building affordable retirement homes, expanding the rural pension programme and offering subsidised, if not free, medical care for the old. To combat China's grave task of caring for the grey population, a joint effort by the government, society, family and individuals is needed. Otherwise, millions of old people will face a bleak future of poverty and loneliness.
More in The Guardian.

 Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

China Weekly Hangout Chinese have traditionally kept a close relationship with their hometown and their relatives, even when they moved away. But China's labor force is changing very fast, as the +China Weekly Hangout discussed on May 24, making visiting parents harder and harder. In this installment +Dee Lee (Inno), of the NGO Inno in Guangzhou, who is running a workers' hotline, mainly funded by big brands who want to keep an eye on working conditions, discusses those changes. Economist +Heleen Mees, in New York, entrepreneur +Sam Xu and +Fons Tuinstra, of the China Speakers Bureau, ask him questions.

The +China Weekly Hangout will hold on Thursday 18 July an open office where you can drop in to discuss upcoming subjects, panelists and current affairs in China. Here is our announcement, or you can register for participation right away on our event page. 
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