Every reporter: Jin Zhe, Xu Libo Every editor: Huang Sheng
By the end of last year, the elderly population aged 60 and above in China had reached 323 million, accounting for 23% of the total population. Forecast data shows that by 2035, the market size of China's silver economy will reach 30 trillion yuan, with its proportion of GDP rising to around 10%. The silver economy has gradually evolved from a livelihood undertaking into a trillion-level major industry.
On this occasion, the Daily Economic News launched the &#34;2026 Cyber Attraction Health Consumption Insight Report,&#34; aiming to accurately capture the era opportunities of the deep integration of the silver economy and health consumption, and to deeply analyze the new demands, new scenarios, and new dynamics of elderly health consumption under the trends of digitalization, intelligence, and &#34;cyberization,&#34; to assist in the high-quality development of the silver economy.
As &#34;elderly care&#34; transitions to &#34;elderly medical care and elderly enjoyment,&#34; the silver economy is no longer just a single concept of &#34;elderly spending.&#34; Hong Yinglan, executive secretary-general of the Guangdong Provincial Aging Industry Association, told the Daily Economic News reporter that &#34;reconstructing old age&#34; is fundamentally about breaking the passive acceptance of aging and injecting positive connotations into the longevity era. What we ultimately hope for is to make the extended life journey a chapter of life that is of higher quality, greater dignity, more connection, and more meaning.
<h2>Multi-level elderly care service system accelerates formation, home-based elderly care is mainstream</h2>
Recently, the JD Consumption and Industry Development Research Institute conducted a survey on elderly care concepts and service needs among 5,000 families. The results show that the elderly care concepts of Chinese residents are undergoing systematic reconstruction, with home-based elderly care still being the mainstream choice, and new models such as mutual assistance elderly care and travel health care are beginning to emerge, accelerating the formation of a multi-level elderly care service system.
&#34;What exactly is the happiness that Chinese elderly people expect in their later years?&#34; In Hong Yinglan's view, the happiness of Chinese elderly people is deeply rooted in the ethics of &#34;home,&#34; constrained or benefited by the &#34;digital&#34; divide, and resonates with the traditional call for &#34;the elderly can contribute.&#34;
Therefore, constructing the happiness that Chinese elderly people long for in their later years is a systematic and hierarchical model. Hong Yinglan further explained to the reporter that this system includes the &#34;basic layer&#34; of physical and mental health, the &#34;de-freezing layer&#34; of financial planning and re-employment value addition, the &#34;connection layer&#34; of interest exploration, social support, and intergenerational harmony, and the &#34;sublimation layer&#34; of social contribution.
She also mentioned that in addition to the above factors, happy elderly care also relies on an important supporting tool—&#34;digital integration.&#34; In a society like China, where mobile internet is highly popular, digital capability has become the &#34;basic entry condition&#34; for travel, medical treatment, social interaction, and financial management.
&#34;It (this model) is a 'compass' that opens the potential of the 'silver economy,' pointing to broad tracks from health management, rehabilitation aids, to cultural leisure, elderly education, and then to smart elderly care and social participation platforms. Enterprises can deeply explore the unmet, high-quality personalized needs of the elderly.&#34; Hong Yinglan believes that this model is an organic whole for understanding and supporting the happy retirement life of Chinese elderly people, allowing every Chinese elderly person to find their own happiness coordinates
Trend 1: The Elderly Care Model Shifts from Disease Treatment to Proactive Health Management
In the context where home-based elderly care dominates, families have an urgent demand for specialized and refined elderly care services. A research report released by the JD Consumption and Industry Development Research Institute shows that 72.4% of surveyed families hope to increase professional elderly care services for seniors, with emotional companionship, basic housekeeping, and age-friendly renovations being the three most concerned areas. Among them, in terms of medical health needs, services such as home visits by family doctors/nurses, accompanying patients to medical appointments, and emergency medical visits have the highest attention, becoming the core guarantee demands for home-based elderly care.
In this model, the traditional &#34;disease treatment&#34; approach is increasingly unable to meet the needs, and &#34;prevention first, proactive health&#34; has become the core strategy to cope with aging and improve national health levels.
Currently, with the continuous promotion of policies such as the &#34;Healthy China 2030&#34; Planning Outline and the &#34;14th Five-Year&#34; National Health Plan, hospitals at all levels in China are actively laying out in the proactive health field, breaking the boundaries of traditional medical services. Leading tertiary hospitals often focus on multidisciplinary collaboration to build a full-cycle health management platform of &#34;screening - assessment - intervention - follow-up,&#34; further reducing patient recurrence and readmission rates.
Taking Foshan Fuxing Chancheng Hospital in Guangdong Province as an example, since the establishment of the proactive health management center in 2025, it has relied on the quality resources of the hospital's 20 specialty centers to construct a complete service chain of &#34;health screening - risk assessment - precise intervention - full-cycle tracking.&#34; Unlike the traditional outpatient model of &#34;treating diseases as they arise,&#34; doctors tailor practical personalized health management plans based on citizens' physical examination data, family medical history, and lifestyle, while establishing exclusive health records and providing long-term follow-up and dynamic adjustment services.
Trend 2: Smart Elderly Care Extends from Hardware Upgrades to Technology Adaptation
Currently, technology is deeply integrated into the daily lives of the elderly, becoming a key support for improving the quality of elderly care services and unleashing the potential of the silver economy. However, this integration process still faces many deep-seated challenges in practice.
Wang Yue, co-founder of Qixin Yinian Intelligent Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., observed that, on one hand, many elderly care products on the market are isolated, such as a fall alarm, a smart watch, and a companionship robot, each operating independently. On the other hand, &#34;technology is easy to use but difficult for the elderly&#34; is a common issue in the industry. The root cause lies in the fact that technology developers are young people, while users are elderly, creating a significant &#34;cognitive gap&#34; in between.
Sun Jie, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and vice dean of the School of Insurance at the University of International Business and Economics, pointed out that the rigid demand for care for the disabled and cognitively impaired is becoming prominent in China, and in the future, it will increasingly rely on social supply. There is a large market demand for elderly care services and long-term care services, and the market demand for elderly products will also increase accordingly.
Combining long-term frontline research observations, Yu Ruifen, president of Shanghai Laiyifen Co., Ltd. and a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, also found that currently, the issue of insufficient adaptability between supply and demand for related products is quite prominent. Some age-friendly products are severely homogenized, and exaggerated product efficacy claims can easily mislead elderly consumers. She stated that most current age-friendly service scenarios are also relatively singular, and the digital divide makes it difficult for many elderly people to conveniently enjoy quality services such as online registration and smart elderly care
At the same time, there is a significant shortage of professional elderly care talent.
Based on the current pain points, Wang Yue's solution is a core product system consisting of six categories: &#34;assistance in walking, cleaning, toileting, living, health, and emergencies,&#34; along with a &#34;network&#34; that allows all device data to interconnect, enabling multiple devices to respond collaboratively to a single scenario. For example, if an elderly person falls, a watch alarm triggers an emergency robot to automatically respond while notifying family members and the community, and the caregiver's large screen displays the elderly person's location and status in real-time. &#34;This is not a single-point innovation; this is a system-level innovation.&#34;
Moreover, these six categories of products are not delivered in a &#34;bulk&#34; manner but are unified on a platform with interconnected data and collaborative responses. Device data is aggregated in the cloud, where AI continuously learns the habits and preferences of the elderly, making the system increasingly attuned to their needs.
Trend Three: Huge Potential in the Elderly Care Robot Market
The third major trend in the silver economy is that elderly care robots are moving from concept to reality. Currently, intelligent turning-over robots, exoskeleton rehabilitation devices, bed bathing devices, transfer aids, and smart toilets are gradually entering major nursing homes, providing comprehensive intelligent support for the lives of the disabled and semi-disabled elderly.
Xiangcai Securities believes that strong policy support for the research and application verification of technological products will directly benefit companies leading in technology in areas such as smart elderly care, rehabilitation robots, and intelligent monitoring as demand is released and scenarios are validated.
Taking elderly care robots in smart elderly care as an example, the elderly care robot industry in China is in the early exploration stage, with huge market potential. According to data released by IFR, the market size of elderly care robots in China is expected to be around 7.9 billion yuan in 2024, with a market potential of approximately 93 billion yuan. Tech giants like Huawei, Xiaomi, and Tencent are crossing over to invest in elderly care robots.
However, there are still issues such as insufficient scenario adaptation and low usage rates for elderly care robots.
National People's Congress representative and President of Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital, Ge Minghua, stated that the elderly care robot industry is not only a strategic need to address population aging but also an important lever to cultivate new growth points in the silver economy. He suggested strengthening top-level design, accelerating the introduction of the &#34;National Action Plan for the Development of the Elderly Care Robot Industry,&#34; establishing a cross-departmental coordination mechanism to comprehensively address issues such as product access and standard formulation; and setting up a national-level guiding fund for the elderly care robot industry, including elderly care robots in the first set policy scope, providing fixed subsidies for the purchase of compliant products.
Trend Four: Silver Consumption Moving Towards &#34;Personalization&#34;
As the new generation of elderly people gradually becomes the main force in silver consumption, the consumption profile of the elderly is also changing. Today's elderly are no longer just a group that emphasizes frugality and passively accepts services, but are increasingly showing a pursuit of quality of life, spiritual satisfaction, and self-realization.
According to research from JD.com's Consumption and Industry Development Research Institute, three typical changes are occurring in the elderly's views on life: from being reluctant to spend money to being willing to spend on health, services, and interests (49.4%); from focusing on basic needs like good food and warm clothing to valuing spiritual life, social interactions, and the development of hobbies (49.4%); and from resisting smart products to actively learning to use them (48.7%)
This change means that the silver-haired consumer market can no longer rely on &#34;low price&#34; and &#34;generic&#34; as the main logic, but needs to focus on more detailed segmentation based on different age groups, health status, income levels, lifestyles, and interests. For example, younger active seniors are more concerned with cultural tourism, leisure, sports health, interest learning, and social participation; older seniors and their families place greater emphasis on safety monitoring, rehabilitation care, medical convenience, and emergency response; while seniors with disabilities or dementia require more specialized and continuous long-term care services. Different groups correspond to different product designs, service standards, and business models.
In December 2025, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and eight other departments issued &#34;Several Measures to Cultivate the Main Bodies of Elderly Care Services and Promote the Development of the Silver Economy,&#34; clearly stating the need to better meet the &#34;multi-level and diversified&#34; elderly care service needs of seniors. In terms of specific measures, relevant departments encourage the promotion of a batch of fashionable elderly care consumption products around categories such as smart rehabilitation aids and daily care. They encourage the development of cosmetics suitable for seniors and the processing of low-sugar, high-protein, and easy-to-chew foods suitable for the elderly...
In addition, the consumption channels and service delivery methods of the silver economy are also undergoing significant changes. Sun Jie pointed out that with the gradual popularization of smartphones and terminal devices among seniors, some large internet e-commerce platforms have begun to cooperate with offline elderly care institutions and communities to enter the market for online and offline combined elderly care services and medical care scenarios. The application scenarios of internet elderly care services are becoming increasingly rich, and seniors' ability to use new technologies to access elderly care services is continuously improving, with habits of using the internet for elderly care consumption slowly being cultivated.
Daily Economic News

The 2026 "Cyber Gravity" Health Consumption Insight Report points out that the population of elderly individuals aged 60 and above in China has reached 323 million, and it is expected that by 2035, the market size of the silver economy will reach 30 trillion yuan. The report analyzes the new demands and new scenarios of elderly health consumption, emphasizes that home-based elderly care is the mainstream choice, and explores the formation of a multi-level elderly care service system. The Guangdong Provincial Aging Industry Association states that the core of reconstructing late life is to actively respond to aging and enhance the quality of life and happiness of the elderly

2026 "Cyber Gravity" Health Consumption Insight Report: The Silver Economy Moves Towards a New Stage of Quality and Technological Development