New challenges for China's elderly

The elderly traditionally commanded great respect

By Francis Markus BBC Shanghai Correspondent

It is Saturday morning at an internet and English learning club for senior citizens in Shanghai.

As they sit at their computer screens, Mr Zhang, a fit and energetic retired professor, takes his class of elderly students through their repertoire of English songs.

The pupils seem to be enjoying themselves. One woman says learning and singing is the greatest pleasure for her.

"Sickness is the biggest problem," she says. "I have so many diseases."

The economic power has moved towards the younger generation

Mu Guanzong, Beijing's People's University

But overall, rising living standards coupled with the one-child policy have created a rapidly ageing population in Shanghai. The elderly now account for nearly a fifth of the city's inhabitants.

It all adds up to make Shanghai an appropriate venue for a recent United Nations-organised conference on the elderly, at which Xiao Caiwei was one of the officials representing China.

"In the past we used to say it was the responsibility only of the family, then with social development, people say ageing is the responsibility of society," he says.

"Now we say it should be a combination - the responsibility of government, the community, the family and society."

'Marginal' role

But to put that into practice in China, with its vast scale and economic disparities, is a daunting task.

"We have a very special situation in China, with a very wide range of disease patterns and ageing patterns," says Dr Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organisation's representative in China.

The one-child policy has slowed China's growth

"I believe personally it's very important to come up with tools and instruments to get a much clearer idea of what's happening in all the provinces in China."

One thing that is definitely happening is a change in society's attitudes towards the elderly, says Mu Guanzong, a researcher from the Centre for Ageing Research at Beijing's People's University.

"In the past, in the Chinese family, people obeyed their parents, but now the relationship is one of greater equality because the economic power has moved towards the younger generation," he says.

"The elderly no longer control so many resources and their position has become more marginal, especially in rural areas.

"Many of them can't get proper support from their families."

Back at the senior citizens' club, Professor Zhang digresses from song to rhetoric, quoting Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - which happens to be a party piece of President Jiang Zemin as well.

After the class is finished I ask him to reflect on how this society has changed since the era of Mao Zedong and what that has meant for the elderly.

"After the reform of society everything is different," he says. "In Mao's time everything focused on class struggle but now that the emphasis is on money and old people still follow the instruction of Mao which was 'never do business', all the business is controlled by the Communist leaders."

Around us, the class of senior citizens is packing up and getting up from their sleek flat-screen computer terminals. They may be among the privileged few, having such technology at their fingertips, but is it difficult to try to absorb new things?

I ask one woman in her late 70s and get a poetic answer.

"I'm just learning. Because I'll follow the youngest, follow the day," she says.