Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
China's average life expectancy just reached 79 years and achievement decades in the making.
But as we mark this milestone, we ask how did we get here and what comes next?
And Chinese employees and employers are familiar with long work hours.
But this March, companies may be forcing a shift. Overtime bans, weekend shutdowns, and mandatory clockouts.
A step toward work -life balance?
Maybe. It's more complicated than that.
We discuss. Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm Hei Yong. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yushan in the studio, first on today's show.
China's average life expectancy reached 79 years in 2022, a rise of not 0 .4 years from the previous year.
But behind this number lies a bigger story.
What has driven this progress?
How have healthcare reforms, living condition improvements, and perhaps traditional wisdom played a role?
And as people live longer, what challenges, economic, social and personal, will we need to tackle?
So guys, the numbers do tell a story and break down the numbers for us.
I know. I mean, 79 years old, that's incredible as an average life expectancy.
So yes, Huiyang, like you mentioned, China's average life expectancy reached 79 years in 2024, that's citing from a senior health officials speech at a recent press conference.
And this guy, Lei Haichao, the head of the National Health Commission, he was on the lines of an annual national legislative session.
And he told the press that the average life expectancy in China increased by 0 .4 year from 2023, and that's an increase of 1 .7 years in 2024, comparing with that in 2019.
And the number is also expected to continue to climb in the coming years.
and also according to Lei, the same person the number of average life expectancy varies from regions as some of the different areas and regions in China they have exceeded 80 years old instead of 79 and that figure was found in A12 of municipalities such as Beijing, Tianjin in northern China and also Shanghai in eastern China as well as in some provinces like eastern China's Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, and also coastal provinces such as Guangdong and Hainan in the south, and also lay added that disparities in health levels among provincial regions are gradually decreasing, which means
that the health equity is improving steadily.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah, and those are impressive numbers.
That's a significant increase, isn't it?
Between 2019 and 2024, an increase of 1 .7 years.
If we look globally, I went to healthdata .org for the info and the latest findings from the Global Burden of Disease study or the GBD are from 2021.
And they forecast that global life expectancy will increase by 4 .9 years in males and 4 .2 years in females between the years 2022 and 2050.
So that's kind of a global long -term outlook plan.
Increases are expected to be largest in countries where life expectancy is lowered.
that is contributing to a convergence of increased life expectancy across geographies.
And the trend is largely driven by public health measures that have prevented and improved survival rates from cardiovascular diseases.
COVID -19 was cited as well as a range of communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases.
Those are referred to as CMNNs.
OK. That's a very hard conclusion of all the different diseases you just mentioned.
Yeah, right. And if we are to look at the Chinese figures as part of the global ones, the global gatherings, in 2024, China's life expectancy ranked fourth among the 53 upper middle income countries and 10th among the G20 countries and has surpassed the levels of 21 high income countries as well.
And for China, attaining such results certainly has not been easy.
As Lei said that the annual increase is generally only about 0 .1 to 0 .2 year on average in countries and regions where the average life expectancy exceeds 75 years.
So that's a very slow growth for, I think for many countries and it's quite remarkable that we have just hit 79 or even 80 here in China.
Oh, definitely. And if you look at statistical modeling, actually this is just a small fine print in all of this.
I mean, you kind of need to compare where you started off.
Because with some countries, the starting off age, unfortunately, was rather low of life expectancy.
And therefore, as things improve, then you see a big improvement in terms of numbers.
and I mean a lot of it also you know it's just interesting to look into how the numbers are being calculated.
And guys, please help us understand how to calculate life expectancy.
This word have come up so much, but we need a little bit more definition of it.
An average life span.
So the average lifespan refers to the sum of all of the ages of all people who passed away in a given year divided by the number of deaths in that year, it's kind of a difficult thing to calculate, and since that calculated result can be distorted heavily by the age structure of the deceased population and it can't accurately reflect the overall life expectancy level, the concept itself of average lifespan is not commonly used.
There's an example explaining that under other identical conditions.
If the population has an older age structure, there will be more elderly individuals among the annual deaths leading to a higher calculated average age of death.
Now that's a kind of a complicated way of explaining that but here's a simplified version.
Life expectancy is a predictive measure and age structure is a snapshot of the number of people in any particular age group at one particular time.
Life expectancy is calculated using current mortality rates and projects of future lifespans, whereas age structure, it's just a static representation of the current population.
So life expectancy, it's about the average lifespan of a newborn given current death rates and age structure, it's about how many people are currently alive at various ages.
That's the difference between the two.
Yeah, and wow, as society develops, mortality rates at all ages gradually decline leading into an increase in actual lifespan.
And that's also, I would assume jeopardizing the average lifespan here, which means that currently our average life expectancy is 79, but the actual average lifespan of newborns in 2024 may be even longer.
That's why this measure, the average life expectancy, is more widely adopted, because it's based on the current mortality rates of different age groups.
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. And let's also take a step back.
Not just compare the numbers of what, the last five years, and let's compare the numbers of the past 50 years.
So, I mean, if you were born in China in 1961, your life expectancy would have been about 40 years old - 40 years.
Mm -hmm. And this is quite the dramatic shift. Could you guys go into the numbers and tell us what you find there?
Yeah, totally, because I read about this during my research, and experts said that the general level of people's health in China has markedly improved over the past 50 years.
And as you mentioned, he young China's life expectancy at birth nearly doubled from 40 years in 1961 to 78 years in 2021.
and nowadays it's 79, making it one of the fastest increases globally.
That's according to the World Bank.
And in 1961, it was 13 years below the world average and six years lower than the upper middle income countries.
But by 2021, it has already surpassed both.
So this achievement reflects some improvements in a lot of different sectors in healthcare in living standards and social development.
And when we say that the general level of people's health in China has improved over the past 50 years, what we're really talking about here is that over the past five decades, China has adhered to really a concept of people -centered development as to the constantly reformed medical and health care system that we've all seen, at least in the past few years.
that's quite obvious, there's so many different updates on that.
Many have gone to a roundtable to be discussed as well.
So yeah, and a lot of remarkable changes.
Strategies to prioritize health, including the health of the healthy China initiative, as well as the Chinese people's healthy lifestyles.
The influence of traditional culture could be included in reasons why as well.
Also, China has continuously increased its health funding the total national health expenditure rose from 11 billion yuan that's about a billion and a half dollars in 1978 to seven and a half trillion yuan over a trillion dollars in 2021 and the per capita health expenditure jumped from 11 and a half yuan to over 5300 yuan those are statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics and the National Health Commission.
So you put more money into your health care system and then people become healthier and people live longer.
Yeah. And there's also one thing that's so closely related to everybody's daily life, especially if you have a Chinese ID, that is to strengthening the public health services and providing more equitable health care to just every citizen here.
A 2024 Xinhua Report to indicate that the country here in China has built the world's largest basic medical security network that's covering the insurance that's covering over 95 % of the population here that's over 1 .3 billion people.
And it's already done by the end of 2023.
I was just in the hospital just last week like, you know, booking an appointment booking one for the coming month, and paying for the fee and everything.
It's all done by one simple Social Security card where the My personal medical insurance is kind of in combined with and the system all works out through different machines in the In the hospital where it's like so convenient to pay and book appointments and everything That's just like very practical examples of how big this security net is covering.
Yeah I mean that's that's just the logistical side of things.
But how far away let me ask both of you How far away is the closest hospital from your home, say?
Well, we're very spoiled in that sense when we're living within the fifth ring rose in Beijing, because you're pretty much at the center of the universe when it comes to best resources that one country could offer.
Yeah, that's true. And here, I can't help but just lay one possibly criticism.
No, let's just say line of encouragement for those living in Shenzhen.
One thing has been criticized by some locals about the city of Shenzhen, which is a massive first -tier city, one of the biggest cities in China.
But considering how young it is, it does not have the proportional number of hospitals and schools for its citizens.
So, in that case, I think there's still massive room for growth, but definitely when you look at the medical resources in this country, in the last four or five decades, we've seen a lot of improvement, but Chinese people could definitely do with even better medical services.
Well, this statistic is pretty impressive, the number of medical and health institutions increased from over 260 ,000, 261 ,000 in 1960, that's going back a long way, but fast forward to 2021 and there were over a million.
And the results of the sixth survey of the National Health Services which came out in 2021, this is impressive.
It showed that nearly 90 % of Chinese families were able to reach the nearest medical center within 15 minutes in the year 2018, That's why I asked you how far away is the closest hospital.
That's a pretty impressive number.
So for 90 % of Chinese families, you can get to a hospital within 15 minutes.
And in the case of China, there are more measures that's dedicated to making people living longer.
And I just learned about this very interesting research study that's conducted in 1998.
and this one, this particular research was just focusing on studying elders.
It lasted for a time span of 20 years that's covering 42 ,000 elderly people in over 800 districts and countries in 23 Chinese provinces.
And based on the survey result, the core member of the team and the entire researcher teams in general.
They wrote in a paper that a healthier lifestyle, better healthcare, and higher income are what make elderly people live longer here in China.
And also based on that same survey database, researchers from schools, School of Public Health at Fudan University also found that there is a significant association between not smoking, regular exercise, diverse diet, and living to the age of 100.
I mean, just imagine that, right?
This is going to keep going up, huh?
I think infrastructure too.
I'm not sure if this was mentioned in surveys or studies or not, but I think just having infrastructure in place is a big help as well.
Nearby us, about two blocks away from our studios here, there's this beautiful park.
It's big and it's got a lovely lake inside.
There's ducks, there's places to play ping pong and exercise equipment.
It's really quite fantastic and in the morning it's really heavily populated with members of the senior community and I mean like almost like a tourist attraction during Spring Festival.
It is packed, it's absolutely packed very early in the morning and the elderly are there going for long walks and just enjoying nature and it's a stress -free environment, my point is, having infrastructure like that in place can help elderly people get out of the house, get some exercise, get their bodies moving, get their blood flowing, and that has to help, at least a little bit, I would think.
I would think a lot.
You know, having this kind of robust infrastructure, which gives people a boost in their...
It's a public health infrastructure in a way.
And also, if you look at the 50 plus year time span, you can see that the increase of life expectancy may be closely related to the reduction of infant and child mortality rates and the effectiveness of infectious disease prevention and control.
And these are some of the fundamental factors.
When you close that gap and then it really gives the average life expectancy a boost. And guys, what do you see as, you know, with these increasing life expectancy numbers, does it impact the society as well as individual lives?
Well, starting from a general, like a bigger scope, it certainly affects the governmental toll decisions on as to just how much pension funds are to be prepared each year and also which diseases the hospital should focus on in preventing and treating say at this current era or the next few years.
And of course, nowadays we always talk about silver economy.
That's because we are facing and entering into this aging China period where well, according to recent People's Daily reports, the Chinese population aged 60 and above had already surpassed 310 million by the end of 2024.
And that's taking up over 20 % of the total population.
Also, China already entered the moderate aging period.
Those aged 60 plus surpasses 20 % of the total population.
And then there's the official 2021 survey on living conditions of elderly people in urban and rural areas in China, that's showing that 4 .5 % of elderly people age to 60 and above in China, that's about 12 million, were actually unable to take care of themselves.
And 77 .1 % or 19 million had difficulty taking care of themselves, and in total, about 31 million elderly people requires just care services in the house for them.
And by 2023, this group further increased to approximately 35 million people.
And my family is a living proof for that figure.
I'm very blessed with four of my grandparents from both sides of my parents still live and happy, happily nowadays and they're all about their 85 years old and there are sometimes when I just feel so sad that they have to constantly hire and switch their hired personnels in helping them in order to maintain daily lives as to you know, cleaning themselves or cooking because nowadays people above 85, it's hard for them to go out and buy groceries and get back and cook for themselves.
So that all needs to be done.
And when the relatives and their children are not around, you have to hire someone to do that.
And sometimes the service is not that cater to the details that they have to keep on switching persons to to do that.
And yeah, that's in a way the real issue that we're facing for the aging China period.
Yeah, but you made the point before that when the government has access to these numbers about average life expectancy, it can help them make decisions, and it can help them become aware of services that are not just a luxury but become necessary.
We talked about those numbers before how much the average life expectancy has increased here in China.
So, yeah, there's gonna be growing pains, I guess, if you can put it that way, because the government needs time to respond, right?
To put services in place, to help take care of people like your grandparents, for example.
What I mean is it can't just happen like overnight.
Things need to be planned accordingly, and then, you know, be put in place.
I suppose our friends in the US might be scratching their heads or maybe nodding along as well because you know with the baby boomer generation retiring then you've got so many people suddenly need to collect pension funds and they'll probably need more healthcare services and is the pension fund going to be ample enough to provide for so many people when you don't have so many new births or people contributing to the pension fund, it's plain and easy a math problem.
And this is a big issue that many countries, including China, is facing.
It's a math problem without a simple solution.
And there are other things at play here as well because when people live longer, it means that they might survive after life -threatening diseases but in the aftermath may suffer from chronic health issues.
so the health system needs to be further developed in order to adequately take care of an aging population too.
Yeah and there's an interesting well let me just say notable shift in the types of diseases that have been bothering the population from the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic to China to now.
And could you help us?
Okay, well basically we've seen that in the the past. Initially it was more like the infectious diseases that have been the major issue that significantly shortened the lifespan of people.
Yeah, from 1990 to 2017 the burden of infectious diseases, maternal and infant diseases, also nutrition -related diseases, those significantly decreased, but the burden of chronic non -communicable diseases increased.
So China's disease control experts said in a paper published that the primary goal of China's healthcare system should be to prevent and control chronic diseases, especially among the elderly population.
And when I was talking about the findings from healthdata .org and from the findings of the Global Burden of Disease Study from 2021, that's exactly what they referenced as well.
It's just a shift, isn't it, in the types of things that affect people.
Yes. And what do you see as the possible solutions?
I know this is above our pay grade to come up with a whole set of solutions to all these problems, but what can you after some research suggest here?
Well, like I said before, seeing that infrastructure in place and witnessing those elderly people in the park, having the time of their lives in the morning out early exercising I mentioned there's exercise equipment in there on that exercise equipment using that, having that type of infrastructure in place close to people's homes so that it's really accessible not having to take the bus for four stops or the subway for three stops or something like that those are those are deterrents that would stop people from using a beautiful park like that having more of these green spaces around I think
would help help a whole lot because it keeps people active and not to mention just the active part but the social advantages as well they're out there with their friends having conversations so they're mentally stimulated too those are all great benefits.
And also there's this supportive societal environment for a whole bunch of things like weight loss how we talked about it previously and you know just to improve awareness in chronic disease management a lot of People don't realize how important it is.
But nowadays, people are getting to realize the importantness of that.
Oh, yes. Living longer is a triumph of modern society.
But it also brings new questions we cannot ignore.
As China's life expectancy rises, so do concerns about elderly care, financial security, and the changing role of family and community.
More years don't automatically mean better years.
So how can policies, industries, and individuals work together to create a future where aging isn't just about living longer but about dignity, purpose, and the quality of life.
