China's population has been in the process of aging for over 16 years. Recently, a report shows that the process is still going on.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs released a statistic report about development of social services on July 11, which indicated that there were 222 million people, 16.1% of the total population, aged 60 or above in China at the end of 2015. As other statistic shows that China's population is expecting to meet the maximum of 1.45 billion in 2030.
The figure marked an increase of 0.6 percentage points compared with the previous year, when China reported 212.4 million people aged 60 or above. Among the 222 million, 143.86 million were 65 or above, or 10.5% of the total population, also up from the 10.1% in 2014, according to the report.
China's aging population increases every year. Image: chinadaily
Based on international standards, a country or region is considered to be an "aging society" when the number of people aged 60 or above reaches 10% or more. China has had over 10% of people aged 60 since 1999.
There are 116,000 nursing homes holding about 6.727 million beds, with a year-on-year increase of 23.4% and 16.4% respectively. However, there is still only an average of 30.3 beds for every 1,000 senior citizens. The report also tallied up key figures in philanthropy, social welfare, disaster relief and other areas.
