On a crisp evening in December 2025, 76-year-old Wang Yulin lay awake in a new bed in Wuhan, Hubei Province, his mind alive with a feeling that had grown rare in his later years: a profound joy. “I was so happy I couldn’t sleep all night,” he told local news portal Hbwh.wenming.cn. Earlier that day, Wang and 19 other vulnerable seniors had received the keys to a newly opened, state-of-the-art senior care center. For them, this was far more than a change of address; it was a transition from uncertainty to security, from isolation to community, marking the start of a chapter defined by dignity.
This modern facility, equipped with medical-grade elevators, fully accessible floors and intelligent emergency systems, represents more than just a comfortable residence. It is a tangible symbol of a significant shift across the country. “We live well, eat well, and receive dedicated care here,” Wang said, summarizing the core promise of China’s evolving approach to social welfare.
In 2025, the Wuhan government channeled 8.5 billion yuan ($1.2 billion) into wide-ranging projects aimed at enhancing public wellbeing, with Wang’s new home being just one example. This investment is part of a pivotal evolution in national policy, which has expanded from merely providing basic necessities to actively fostering a higher quality of life, personal fulfillment and social belonging for all citizens.
The story of Wang and his neighbors offers a compelling glimpse into the new face of people’s living standards initiatives in China, where the ultimate metric of progress is measured not just in economic terms, but in human contentment.
Care for elderly
The newly inaugurated senior care service center Wang lives in, which commenced operations on December 26, 2025, is a cornerstone facility dedicated to providing centralized care for the community’s most vulnerable elderly. It operates under a “publicly built, privately operated” model, a collaborative approach where the government provides the infrastructure and oversight, while a professional care organization manages daily services to ensure both quality and sustainability.
The primary service recipients are economically disadvantaged seniors who have lost the ability to care for themselves, including those under the state’s special support system, such as elderly people without working capacity or a reliable source of income.
The center provides a full spectrum of support designed to foster wellbeing. This includes basic daily care like meal assistance and hygiene support, dedicated medical nursing with regular health monitoring and emergency protocols, and essential emotional wellbeing services through organized recreational activities and psychological counseling. Public spaces such as an audiovisual room, calligraphy and painting studio and rehabilitation training room are being rapidly finalized to meet the residents’ cultural, entertainment and health maintenance needs.
China’s average life expectancy has reached 78.6 years. By the end of 2024, China’s population aged 65 and older had surged to 220 million, accounting for 15.6 percent of the total population—a historic high in both scale and proportion. The government predicts that this number will grow by more than 10 million each year over the next decade. Projections also suggest that by about 2035, the number of people aged 60 or above in China will exceed 400 million, accounting for more than 30 percent of the total population.
With China entering a period of accelerated aging, the needs of more than 300 million elderly people and their families are becoming increasingly diverse, Xiao Weiming, Deputy Secretary General of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a forum in Shanghai in November 2025.
Last January, the Central Government released a set of high-profile guidelines aimed at deepening the country’s elderly care services reforms. Following these guidelines, the country plans to establish a three-tier elderly care network at the county, township and village levels, and to coordinate home-based and community-based care with the professional, supporting role of institutional care.
The government has greatly boosted funding for elderly care, investing more than 560 billion yuan ($80 billion) in pension services and welfare between 2019 and 2024, with an annual growth rate of 11 percent, Ge Zhihao, a senior official from the Ministry of Finance, said at a press conference in January 2025. In addition to financial support, the government has introduced tax incentives for senior care institutions, offering exemptions and reductions on corporate income tax, value-added tax and other levies.
Different regions across China are tailoring their strategies to the national call for better elderly care. A leading example is Shandong Province, which in 2025 introduced a comprehensive financial support package. This package includes modifying private homes with safety features, refining the long-term care insurance system to better cover the costs of in-home, community and institutional care services, and issuing annual care service vouchers to seniors with moderate to severe disabilities to help them afford essential support.
A sweet home
Housing, a cornerstone of people’s living standards, remains a top priority for improvement in China. While initiatives like the three-tier elderly care network address the needs of a rapidly aging population, parallel efforts are transforming the living conditions for millions of people in cities, demonstrating a commitment to better quality of life across all age groups.
In March 2025, the phrase “quality homes” was featured in the annual government work report for the first time. On May 1, 2025, new national standards for residential projects took effect—putting the improvement of housing quality in China on a faster track.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee released its recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) in October 2025, calling for optimizing government-subsidized housing supply to meet the basic needs of urban salaried workers and families in need.
The recommendations said city-specific policies should be adopted to increase supply to meet people’s needs for better housing. They call for building more houses that are safe, comfortable, eco-friendly and smart, and for carrying out projects to improve housing quality and initiatives to enhance property services.
Initiatives are in place to meet the diverse needs of citizens. For example, the public rental housing program offers apartments at below-market rents primarily to lower-middle-income urban families, new graduates and long-term migrant workers.
Affordable rental housing addresses the temporary housing challenges faced by young professionals and new urban residents in major cities. It’s specifically designed to solve the urgent housing problems of new city residents and young people in large cities struggling with high market rents.
Moreover, the renovation of shantytowns, old residential communities, urban villages and dilapidated houses are also fundamental to China’s comprehensive approach to upgrading urban living standards. These projects, which collectively fall under the national campaign of urban renewal, aim to address deep-seated issues in areas that modernization has left behind, transforming not just buildings but also quality of life for residents.
Taking Shanghai as an example, many historic alley buildings, mostly constructed before the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, lack sanitary facilities. Often, only one public toilet is available for an entire alleyway, which can be home to dozens of households. Some houses accommodated populations far exceeding their designed capacity during specific historical periods, with multiple generations living under the same roof.
“Carrying the chamber pot at dawn” was the grim daily reality for countless families in Shanghai’s historic alleyways. It meant starting each day by hauling a full overnight waste bucket through the narrow lanes to a distant communal disposal point—a vivid symbol of homes lacking the most basic private sanitation. This practice has now been relegated to history. Through a sustained citywide campaign to renovate old neighborhoods, retrofit outdated apartments, and redevelop urban villages, Shanghai has all but eradicated the need for this morning ritual, bringing about a huge leap in living standards for residents.
Wang Congchun, Vice President of Shanghai University and head of the university’s Shanghai Institute of Urban Regeneration and Sustainability, noted that in the early 1990s, the per-capita living space in Shanghai was only about 6.6 square meters. By the end of 2024, that figure had increased to 37.57 square meters.
“We will promote the building of quality homes that are safe, comfortable, eco-friendly and smart, continuously meeting the basic and improved housing needs of the people,” Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ni Hong pledged at a press conference in October 2025.
An inclusive future
The drive to build a “sweet home” in China extends to its over 85 million citizens with disabilities, making inclusion an important part of progress. During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, compulsory education enrollment for disabled children reached 97 percent, and over 400,000 persons with disabilities found new jobs annually, with family incomes rising in step with GDP, according to the China Disabled Persons’ Federation (CDPF).
Beyond opportunity, daily life is being reshaped. A nationwide campaign completed barrier-free home renovations for 1.28 million households, while innovations like smart bionic hands and AI are being harnessed to enhance independence.
Looking ahead, the focus for the 15th Five-Year Plan is on high-quality development: refining social protections, expanding long-term care and strengthening legal rights.
Zhou Changkui, Chairperson of the Board of Executive Directors of the CDPF, said that to safeguard equal rights, China will revise and step up enforcement of key disability-related laws. Enhanced legal services and stronger judicial protections will help ensure that persons with disabilities can enjoy greater fairness and justice.
The country will continue to promote the application of AI and other cutting-edge technologies to serve persons with disabilities, and ensure that advanced technologies better meet their needs. –The Daily Mail-Beijing Review news exchange item
