'Silver economy' boom: China transforms kindergartens into senior care homes as demographic crisis deepens

Plagued by shrinking birth rates and a rapidly aging population, tens of thousands of Chinese kindergartens have scaled back operations, closed down entirely or pivoted industries to survive.

One preschool in the eastern province of Zhejiang still operates as a daycare, but instead of serving children, they're now catering to senior citizens.

Last year, Zhuang Yanfang, 56, repurposed her kindergarten in the city of Jinhua, Zhejiang, into a senior nursing center. She told local media that she came up with the idea after she struggled to get enough babies and toddlers to fill her classroom.

Barely any remnants of a kindergarten could be seen in photos of the renovated quadrangle-shaped building. Its once-colorful walls were repainted milky white, and the chalkboard was replaced with a bulletin board, littered with information about health care and nutritional meals for the elderly.

Births in China have been on a drastic downward trend since the government implemented the harsh "one-child policy" nationwide in 1980. Even though the country eased the policy in 2016, the birth rate has continued to plummet.

Between 2021 and 2023, the number of children in preschool education dropped almost 15% to just under 41 million.

It's no surprise then, that preschools — including public and private — also closed down over those two years, dropping by 20,000 across the country, according to CNBC's analysis of data from China's Ministry of Education. That coincided with an effort by the government to shutdown private-owned kindergartens while attempting to open more state-backed ones to lower costs for families.

Conversely, as preschools suffer, the senior care industry is thriving in China's aging population crisis. The number of elderly care