The Privatisation and the Unbalanced Spatial Development of Residential Care for the Elderly: the Case of Beijing, China

Abstract

By focusing on the development of residential care facilities for the elderly (RCFEs) in China’s capital city of Beijing between the 1950s and 2010s, this study examines the policy orientation and local consequences of the 1980s’ marketisation of China’s social welfare system. The data include 362 RCFEs’ GIS data and programme information. Multi-disciplinary issues pertaining to social, policy, urban planning and statutory aspects were also examined. The results showed that, within the broader context of rapid population ageing in China, the growth of residential care in Beijing has shifted from a central-planned pattern to a market-dominated expansion that features a neo-liberalist style of development. Due to the government’s weak role in its new partnership with the private sector, which is reflected by the absence of master planning of and weak legislation for private developments, the trend of RCFE growth in Beijing demonstrates an avoidance of unfavourable market areas, such as the inner urban areas (with a very large elderly population) and the rural areas, and a movement towards the suburbanisation and development of higher-end and over-sized residential care facilities. This is discordant with the government’s newly defined role, which is to retreat from centralised control and advance towards regulating and guiding residential care developments for the elderly population. The study therefore suggests that more ideological policies, regulations and master planning processes are needed to establish supportive residential care facilities, so as to further strengthen the reform of social welfare services and move towards equalising the local provision of residential care beds in the future.