Although government financial support has been steady over the past few years, the vice minister acknowledged that more private funding is needed to ensure seniors "live happy, long lives and gracefully grow old."

The migration of tens of millions of farmers to the cities has exacerbated the problem, leaving many elderly people without the usual family-support structure. The predicament these farmers face is that once they become too old to work the land, they lose their only source of income.

In Qingdao in Shandong Province, east China, residents have begun to transfer their land rights to a village cooperative in return for elderly care.

The investor, Huang Duwei said he planned to use the land to grow vegetables and rear livestock on a large scale. "The money we make will be invested into a nursing home for the people that once worked the land."

Gao Liping, a researcher with Shandong Academy of Social Sciences, said this project would help many of the countryside's left-behind people, who have no pension to support them in old age.

The city is also offering insurance to farmers that will provide a financial cushion should their health deteriorate.