The aging of the mainland is rapidly increasing, and the digital economy is making it difficult for the elderly.
The digital economy has emerged in recent years on the mainland, especially during the Chinese Communist Party‘s virus (Wuhan pneumonia), which closed off neighborhoods so that people can only buy vegetables and other necessities at Home through their cell phones, but this is very difficult for the elderly who are not familiar with cell phone payments, and now they have to use self-service registration machines to register for medical appointments, and many of them do not know how to use …… The omnipresence of digital technology in their lives is making it difficult for them.
According to the mainland financial magazine, some Time ago, the incidents of “an old man being refused to pay medical insurance in cash in the rain” and “a 94-year-old man being picked up for face recognition” sparked heated debates in the society. According to the person in charge of the outpatient office of a hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, the hospital encounters more than 30 elderly patients every day who use old people’s machines or do not use cell phones, and can only be guided by the hospital’s front desk nurse to issue health certificates in the community because they cannot show their health codes.
A Beijing hospital has set up many self-service registration machines in the lobby, but there is no manual registration window. According to the staff at the hospital’s information desk, registration must be done through the self-registration machines, and nucleic acid testing must be booked through the self-registration machines or through the public number of the Beijing Medical Pass WeChat.
The use of self-registration is very difficult for many elderly people, because they are not familiar with the operation of the machine, the operation is also slow, resulting in a stagnant queue.
The same goes for paying utility bills. Many elderly people are unable to deliver utility bills and other services by cell phone because they do not know how to use smartphones, so they have to come to banks, which now also handle business on self-service machines, and banks can only assign special people to serve the elderly.
Especially when the plague is raging and the Chinese Communist Party is closing off neighborhoods, people can only use their cell phones to place orders for household goods, and those elderly people who do not have their children around to help them are in a difficult situation.
In this regard, Du Peng, director of the Institute of Gerontology at Renmin University of China, believes that the popularity of the Internet to basic Life, such as going out to buy groceries, taking the bus, etc., especially to see a doctor, this time creates a huge pressure on the elderly.
According to the latest Statistical Report on the Development of China’s Internet, as of June 2020, the number of Chinese Internet users reached 940 million, but the number of Internet users over 60 years old accounted for only 10.3%.
The China Development Report 2020: Development Trends and Policies for China’s Aging Population, released by the China Development Foundation, predicts that by around 2022, the mainland’s population over 65 will account for 14% of the total population, achieving a shift to an aging society. Population aging will be the basic national condition of China for a long period of time in the future. However, the proportion of “Internet users” among the elderly is not large.
According to a survey, only 51% of people over 60 years old use electronic payment, i.e. half of the elderly do not know how to use electronic payment, and the elderly are already marginalized by the digital economy.
Although the Chinese Communist Party authorities have formulated some policies to facilitate the elderly, they are not enough for the elderly, and the implementation also contains a lot of water, so how to crack the “digital divide” has become an increasingly prominent problem in mainland society.
Commentator Wen Xiaogang said that the so-called “digital divide” of the elderly is entirely caused by the society under the Chinese Communist Party. In Western societies, digital development is earlier than in the mainland, but the digitalization in the West is to serve people, for example, like the detection of viruses in the Communist Party of China, you can use cell phones to make appointments, you can also make appointments online, and you can also call to make appointments, all of these are for the convenience of people, once you find that these things have brought inconvenience to people, the business will take the initiative to correct, if not to serve people will slowly be eliminated by society. However, in the mainland it is mandatory for people to use data technology, or only this one, so that you have no choice, behind which is the tacit approval or promotion of the Chinese Communist authorities to use digital more convenient to monitor the people.
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