China's 'Shared Children' Hire Themselves Out to Elderly Neighbours
Young people in Xi'an are becoming 'shared children' for elderly neighbours — paid or volunteer help for a 323-million-person generation whose own children live far away. The model has warmth, and the media commentary has one question: where are the rules?
In Xi'an, a growing number of young people are signing up to be 'shared children' (共享儿女) for elderly neighbours — and the service is trending because of the question it answers: when adult children move away, who takes care of the parents?
The Xi'an Evening News ran an explainer on the model this week. The post describes young people in the city's communities who help elderly neighbours with their daily tasks, with their expertise in some cases paid for by the elderly or their children, and in others provided free by community organizations and volunteer groups. The post also notes that personal 'shared children' services are quietly growing on social platforms.
The post then cites the numbers that explain why the model exists. By the end of 2025, China had 323.38 million people aged 60 or older, up 13.07 million from the previous year. The number of empty-nest households is rising, and many young people are studying or working far from where their parents live.
Shanghai's 'time bank' (时间银行) is the older sibling of the model: volunteers bank hours helping elderly neighbours and withdraw them when they themselves age, one hour of service for one time coin. The Xi'an model is a local variant: Xi'an's Lianhu district — the Xiguan Street Jiejia Village community — has launched a volunteer project called 'a meal's companionship' (一顿饭的陪伴), where volunteers share a meal with elderly neighbours who eat alone.
The model has drawn the attention of the media. Shanxi TV's commentary summed up the model's appeal and its risk: the service is warm, but it needs rules — 有温度更要有尺度, 'has warmth but needs measures' — pointing to the questions of liability, privacy, and boundaries that a paid service crossing the threshold of a stranger's home inevitably raises.
The appeal of the model is that it recruits the caregivers the state cannot hire: the numbers behind it are a rising empty-nest population, and a state that has been pushing community-based care as the backbone of the elder-care system.
The open question is whether the model can scale. The Xi'an Evening News explainer ends with the observation that old age in China is no longer a simple matter of the young caring for the old — the structures that care for a 323-million-person generation are being built by neighbourhoods, one meal at a time.