China's youngest city looks after its aged

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 ◆ China's youngest city looks after its aged

Shenzhen City in south China's Guangdong Province will spend 100 million yuan (about 12.1 millionUS dollars) to complete 287 new centers for the aged.

Part of the funding will come from revenue from the sale of Shenzhen City's welfare lottery. Construction is due to be finished by late 2003, said a local official.

In an experimental step, the city has built another 60 neighborhood centers for the old, where elderly people receive services ranging from day care, entertainment, convalescence care and body-building, to a range of training classes, according to the official.

Across a river from Hong Kong, Shenzhen is one of the country's five special economic zones and a paradise for young job seekers.

It used to be a small town with a population of 20,000, but now has grown into a boomtown with the average age of its workforce the youngest in China.

The number of registered retirees was quite small, as most elderly people were the parents of young people who had settled down in Shenzhen after migrating from elsewhere in the country to work there, said the local official.