Protests
However, the protestors in Haikou don't see it that way. "We heard that the center will also offer medical services. What if they receive elderly people with serious illness or contagious diseases? Besides, the elderly will die in one day in the center. It's ominous if deaths happen regularly on your doorstep," a protestor surnamed Li told the China Youth Daily.
In June 2013, Fullcheer has signed an agreement with the Haikou Civil Affairs Bureau to build a service system for old people that cannot look after themselves.
In October 2015, the company rented the first five floors of a tower block and started to build a nursing facility that would have room for 100 disabled elderly people and provide in-home care for other seniors in the area.
However, work was stopped by a group of locals in May. According to the China Youth Daily, the protestors even began patrolling the building site to prevent construction.
More than half of the 177 homeowners in the community vetoed the center's request to use public green land, though the developers have argued that they have a right to use it, according to Haikou-based Nanguo Metropolis Daily.
The negotiations have been largely unsuccessful even though Fullcheer offered to compromise, such as building a separate entrance to the home so visitors and the elderly will not have to pass though the community.
In Shanghai's Yangpu district, a State-owned enterprise is turning a disused house into a community nursing home. This project also faced protests in May last year.
"It's just a couple of meters away… we will see the mortuary, we will hear the sad cries of the relatives, we will breathe the air polluted in the wards, we will smell the corpses…" the protestors complained in a joint petition letter, according to news portal thepaper.cn.
They also worried that the center would bring down house prices in the community.
According to a manager at the State-owned firm, the renovation restarted after three months of negotiations.
"We talked to their representatives and invited them to visit the other nursing homes, and convinced them that the center will be quiet, clean and have no mortuary or funeral homes," said a publicity worker at the sub-district office which administers the neighborhood.
But some others are not so lucky. In 2014, a Sino-Japanese joint venture was only able to finish work on a nursing home in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province after it cancelled plans for hospice care facilities.
Fullcheer's Huang Zihan said such protests can turn violent. She claimed a nursing home in Zhuzhou, Hunan Proivnce, had its windows broken and other property damaged by protestors.
"Some projects have had to be canceled due to protests," she said.
Poor policy enforcement
Liu Yaqi, one of the founders of Any Dream Fukushi, a Zhengzhou-based consulting company which specializes in the senior care industry, said that when traveling he noticed that other countries do not have this taboo.
"I went on a trip to Japan. Some even build their houses next to cemeteries. They believe having the ancestors beside will make them more secure. There is no death taboo in Europe either, they believe people are made by God," Liu told the Global Times.
But he thinks that Chinese attitudes will change when they are affected by the aging of society "The public in China has not yet realized the severity of the aging crisis. But when they truly experience it, they will desire a nursing home in the neighborhood," he said.
Tang Jun, a senior care expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes the protestors will come to regret their actions. "The wise people will discover that when the aging peak approaches in 10 years, houses in communities that have senior care centers will sell for a much higher price," Tang said in an article recently posted on his blog.
"The authorities should intervene and take actions when the building of a nursing homes is illegally violently obstructed," Wang noted.
"If the situation gets worse and the government stays inactive, I'm afraid many investors' passion for the senior care industry will be frustrated," Huang said.
The State Council issued a document in 2013, in which they pledged to build a national senior care system based on the concepts of home and community. According to the guideline, senior care facilities should be build in 90 percent of urban communities and 60 percent of rural communities in China by 2020.
The guideline also says local governments must allocate land to senior care facilities.
But the policy is poorly enforced. "Before we didn't design facilities for senior care when building communities. Now, even when we have realized the defects and launch policies to remedy them, many cities choose to ignore this issue," Wang said.
Local governments prefer hotels to nursing homes, as their priority is often the local economy and tax revenues.
Last month, the Beijing government issued a notice, demanding all real estate developers build senior care facilities in residential communities before transferring them to the local civil affairs bureau for free. The notice also said the government will then hand the facility over to private enterprises to manage.
"It is a good start and should be followed nationwide," said Wang.
