2026.04.28
Following UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s official visit to China, during which the leaders of the two countries reached important common understandings on developing a long-term and stable comprehensive strategic partnership, the 2026 China-UK Closed-Door Seminar on Longevity Economy Cooperation was held in Beijing on April 10. The seminar was hosted by the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and organized by Grandview Institution (GVI). At the event, the special report Seizing the Longevity Opportunity: Supporting the UK’s Participation in Cooperation on China’s Silver Economy was released, and in-depth, practical discussions were held on cooperation opportunities and implementation pathways for China and the UK in the field of the longevity economy.
All participants agreed that ageing should be viewed not only as a social issue, but also as a new growth area for bilateral economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchange. China and the UK have strongly complementary advantages in this field. China offers a vast market, rapidly evolving application scenarios for new technologies, and a complete industrial chain, while the UK has accumulated deep strengths in frontier life sciences research and development, the development of health and elderly care service systems, standards-setting, and financial innovation. In order to advance practical cooperation, the seminar focused on building multi-level cooperation mechanisms aimed at bringing together the strengths of government, research, and industry to explore innovative solutions to bottlenecks in cooperation, including standards and regulation.
Industrial integration was a central topic of discussion. Participants explored in depth a number of long-term directions for cooperation, including technological innovation, professional talent development, cooperation on financial products, and deeper market cultivation, with particular attention to such areas as technology-enabled ageing, integrated chronic disease management, and the integration of sports and medicine. The discussions highlighted that differences in standards and regulation remain one of the main challenges to deeper industrial cooperation. To address this issue, both sides are actively exploring pathways such as jointly developing association standards and promoting mutual recognition of standards, with a view to reducing compliance costs and accelerating technological innovation and market application.
The successful convening of the seminar further clarified the vision and implementation pathways for China-UK cooperation in the longevity economy, especially in technology-enabled health and elderly care, and provided important ideas for the implementation of follow-up bilateral cooperation projects.
Dozens of representatives and experts from the governments, academic communities, leading think tanks, industry associations, and business sectors of China and the UK attended the seminar.