Zheng Gongcheng
Member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress
President of the Chinese Social Security Association
He is a researcher at the National Institute of Development and Strategy, Renmin University of Chinese
Professor, College of Labor and Human Resources
On April 12, the "New Quality and Symbiosis - 2024 Beijing Think Tank Spring Summit", hosted by the Beijing News and hosted by Xinjing Think Tank and Beike Finance, opened in Beijing. At the opening ceremony, Zheng Gongcheng, member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, president of the Chinese Society of Social Security and professor of Chinese People's University, said that because Chinese modernization is facing the problem of huge population size, it needs to create more advanced productive forces to provide inexhaustible power and support for high-quality and sustainable economic and social development.
The huge elderly population determines the future of the pension industry
Zheng Gongcheng said that since the beginning of reform and opening up, especially in the past 20 years or so, the mainland's population structure has undergone profound changes, and the aging of the population has objectively added complexity to the basic national conditions of a huge population, and has also added challenges and difficulties to the Chinese-style modernization drive. This is because the aging of the mainland's population is not only super-large and fast-paced, but also accompanied by a declining birthrate and an aging population. Therefore, "the pension industry with the goal of relieving the worries of the elderly and promoting the common prosperity of the elderly should become an important direction for the development of new quality productivity".
Zheng Gongcheng suggested that the pension industry should be positioned as an emerging strategic pillar industry of Chinese-style modernization. It depends mainly on four basic facts:
First of all, the increasingly large scale of the elderly population determines that to protect and improve people's livelihood and promote common prosperity, it is necessary to continue to increase the attention and attention to the elderly, and meeting the needs of the elderly constitutes an extremely important part of meeting the people's needs for a better life. Because the quality of life of the elderly is not only about the elderly themselves, but also about the quality of life of their family members.
Secondly, the scale of the elderly population is increasingly huge, which determines the segmentation of China's giant market and the relationship between supply and demand will inevitably undergo profound changes, and the pension industry should be a new growth point with huge potential for the people's livelihood economy and a sunrise industry that can last.
Thirdly, the development of the pension industry requires new technologies with revolutionary breakthroughs. This includes biomedical technologies to promote the health and longevity of the elderly, intelligent assistive devices to compensate for the disability of old age, and digital and intelligent facilities and services to improve the quality of life of the elderly. It not only has broad development prospects, but also will bring a new life experience to the elderly.
Finally, "the development of the pension industry requires innovative allocation of production factors," Zheng Gongcheng said. Taking the pension service industry as an example, although the mainland can also be organized by the government, it is absolutely impossible for the government to provide pension services. The development orientation of the pension service industry that is truly suitable for the national conditions of the mainland should be a new road for public construction and private management.
It is necessary to achieve the comprehensive and rapid development of the pension industry
Zheng Gongcheng introduced that the elderly have needs for clothing, food, housing, transportation, use, maintenance and other related services. This demand is different from that of children and adults, which determines that the pension industry is a comprehensive industrial cluster that spans multiple industries and vertically spans the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Therefore, the mainland's pension industry should achieve comprehensive and rapid development as soon as possible under the guidance of new quality productivity.
The pension industry mainly includes six types of businesses, namely the elderly health and medical industry, the pension service industry, the elderly assistive appliances industry, the elderly daily necessities industry, the pension finance industry, and other pension industries - including elderly culture, sports, tourism, entertainment and other related services.
"The above-mentioned industries are connected to people's livelihood and the economy on the other, constituting a huge industrial cluster." In order to truly realize the high-quality development of the pension industry, Zheng Gongcheng believes that it is necessary to grasp four points: first, we must adhere to the people-oriented, start from maintaining, ensuring and improving the quality of life of the elderly, and inject humanistic care while adhering to scientific and technological innovation.
Secondly, it is necessary to develop the pension industry according to local conditions. This is mainly based on the vast territory of the mainland, the unbalanced development of the region, the degree of aging in various places, and the differences in the pension culture, and the need for the development of the pension industry is both consistent and different.
Thirdly, the development of the pension industry according to industry conditions. The pension industry spans multiple industries horizontally and vertically spans the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Different business formats should pursue high-quality development, but this is not the case in terms of innovation. Therefore, "we need to pursue technological breakthroughs and innovative allocation of production factors according to the development requirements of different pension formats," Zheng Gongcheng said.
Finally, it is necessary to develop the pension industry according to the time and conditions. From the perspective of people's livelihood, the needs of the elderly are multifaceted and escalating, and it is impossible to achieve comprehensive and simultaneous satisfaction under the realistic conditions. "The reasonable choice is to give priority to solving the problems of the elderly, and at the same time provide stable pension security expectations for the elderly and even the whole people through clear institutional arrangements," Zheng said.
Zheng Gongcheng said that the mainland has entered the era of longevity, and the development of the pension industry is not only related to the quality of people's livelihood, but also has become an increasingly important pole of economic and social development. We should use the theory of new quality productivity to actively promote the high-quality development of the pension industry in an all-round way, so as to provide strong support for the realization of the goal of Chinese-style modernization as scheduled.
Article source: Beijing News
WeChat editor: Zhang Jingjing
The National Development Institute of the People's Republic of China is a new type of university think tank with Chinese characteristics that the Chinese University focuses on building with the efforts of the whole university, and the current chairman is Zhang Donggang, secretary of the party committee of the university, and the current president is Lin Shangli, the current president. In 2015, it was selected as one of the first batch of pilot units for the construction of "National High-end Think Tanks" in China, and was selected as one of the top 100 think tanks in the world, and ranked first in the "Top 100 Think Tanks of Chinese Universities" in early 2018. In 2019, it was selected as the first echelon in the comprehensive evaluation of national high-end think tanks, and was the only university think tank selected for the first echelon.
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