Protection and Realization of Universal Human Rights for the Elderly in the Process of Common Prosperity: A Human Rights Perspective on Socialized Elderly Care Services

ZHAO Qinghang*

Abstract: Against the backdrop of solidly promoting common prosperity, ensuring universal human rights for the elderly and transforming elderly care services from a "basic safeguard" model to a model accessible to all have become key issues in addressing population aging. Common prosperity and the protection of elderly care rights share intrinsic value consistency, and the socialization of elderly care services is an important pathway for sharing development outcomes. China’s elderly care services currently feature a tripartite supply structure consisting of government provision as a basic safeguard, for-profit market provision, and universal social provision. Government provision is prone to inadequacy, and the market finds it difficult to balance efficiency with equity. With their non-profit and public-interest nature, social actors have become a key vehicle for ensuring universal human rights for the elderly. From a jurisprudential perspective, the state has a constitutional obligation to safeguard the right to elderly care, while society also bears corresponding responsibilities. The two should establish a coordinated governance mechanism based on the principle of subsidiarity. Socialized elderly care services can be improved in quality and expanded in coverage through such privatization pathways as the private operation of publicly built facilities, government support for privately run facilities, and government procurement of services. Meanwhile, the rule of law should be strengthened to improve systems for market access, support, regulation, and performance evaluation, reinforce the government’s regulatory responsibilities and the functions of social actors, facilitate the transformation of the right to elderly care from a statutory right into a right enjoyed in practice, and provide solid support for the free and all-round development of older persons.

Keywords: universal human rights ·  socialized elderly care ·  common prosperity ·  tripartite supply structure ·  privatization