China has launched a national program for long-term care, expanding its social security net to include a "sixth insurance" plan to ease the burden on families caring for aging individuals.

The program was unveiled on Wednesday in a joint guideline issued by the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, China's Cabinet. It has set a target of building a unified system covering the entire population, regardless of employment status, by the end of 2028.

The initiative is described as the "sixth insurance" because it complements five existing national programs for pension, healthcare, work-related injuries, unemployment and maternity, which together form the core of China's social security net.

The launch follows a 2016 pilot program and its 2020 revision that together covered more than 3.3 million aging individuals with disabilities and reduced caregiving costs by over 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion).

The new program is designed to provide services and financial support for the daily needs and medical care of aging individuals with sustained disabilities, which typically last for six months or more. The rollout will begin with severely disabled individuals and gradually expand to cover those with less severe conditions.

Officials said that the primary objective of the program is to address the fundamental caregiving needs of the nation's rapidly aging population efficiently.

"Through professional care, we can dramatically improve the quality of life of such individuals," said Wang Wenjun, deputy head of the National Healthcare Security Administration, at a news conference on Thursday in Beijing. "Their regular routine, including bathing, eating and getting dressed, will not be hampered even if they are bedridden."

According to the guideline, funding for the program will come from employers, individuals and government subsidies. The insurance premium rate will be uniformly controlled at around 0.3 percent.

Wang noted that a key feature of the new insurance program is urban-rural integration. The beneficiaries will receive the same benefits in terms of financial support and services, regardless of whether they come from cities, towns or villages, she said.

Long-term care insurance also serves as an economic driver for related industries, Wang said. "The establishment of such a system gives rise to new business models and nurtures new economic growth drivers," she said, citing as examples the development and leasing of assistive devices and private-sector participation in program administration.

Wang added that since the pilot program was launched a decade ago, long-term care initiatives have drawn more than 60 billion yuan in private capital into related sectors.

Zhang Xifan, an official at the National Healthcare Security Administration who oversees long-term care insurance policies, said that reimbursable services will be available in home-based, community or institutional settings.

The terms of such policies will favor home-based and community care to support elderly people who prefer to spend their twilight years in familiar surroundings, he said.

According to the guideline, the new insurance program will have zero deductibles, which means it will cover care-related expenses immediately without requiring the policyholder to meet a minimum out-of-pocket threshold.

Zhang said that to ensure the sustainability of the fund, an annual reimbursement cap has been set at no more than 50 percent of the previous year's local per capita disposable income. Advanced technologies will be deployed, including millimeter-wave radar sensing and thermal imaging, to prevent fraud, he said.

Millimeter-wave radar sensors can detect movements through walls and in lowlight conditions, while thermal imaging can track heat signatures to monitor human activity.

Zhang said that such technologies will allow authorities to verify both the presence of caregivers and the actual delivery of services without invading the privacy of patients.

He added that such measures aim to crack down on "false assessments, false services and false disabilities" — ranging from inflated disability ratings to fabricated care records and identity fraud — and facilitate stricter oversight of assessments and service providers.

The new insurance program is part of China's broader effort to address emerging demographic challenges through a nationwide safety net.

As of the end of 2025, the nation's population age 60 and above stood at 323.38 million, about 23 percent of the total, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The Ministry of Civil Affairs noted that among these elderly individuals, about 35 million have disabilities that require long-term care.