Macao’s business sector has warned that the city’s rapidly ageing population and collapsing birth rate are becoming a structural threat to its long-term development, calling for deeper cross-border cooperation with Zhuhai to relieve pressure on elderly care and childcare services.
According to the Macau Daily Times, the Macao Chamber of Commerce said the SAR lacked the space and capacity to meet rising demand for elderly care as residents aged 60 and above now account for more than 15 percent of the population, while places in care homes continue to fall short.
Chan Yat Peng, a member of the chamber’s Strategy Research Committee, noted that the demographic imbalance was undermining both social sustainability and efforts to diversify the economy. He argued that relying solely on local solutions was no longer viable.
[See more: Macao’s 2025 birth rate fell by just over 20 percent year-on-year]
Chan said Zhuhai offered established elderly care networks and scalable childcare services that partnered well with Macao’s funding strength, service standards and professional expertise. He proposed constructing a “Macao-Hengqin Dual-Age Group Industrial Integration Park” that merged eldercare and childcare in a cross-jurisdiction model that could help jumpstart the so-called “silver economy.”
Chan pointed to the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin as an existing platform for integration, noting that more than 17,000 elderly Macao residents had used Hengqin-based services by 2025.
“There is an urgent need to overcome setbacks such as policy coordination and mutual recognition of standards to advance elderly and young children policies from merely ensuring livelihoods to empowering the economy,” he said.
