Li Qiang Chairs State Council Meeting on Aging, Sports, TCM

Chinese Premier Li Qiang presided over a State Council executive meeting in Beijing on September 18, working through a wide-ranging domestic agenda that spanned elderly care, sports events, medical rehabilitation and traditional Chinese medicine legislation, according to the official readout published by Xinhua News. The meeting approved a draft regulation to protect traditional Chinese medicine knowledge and agreed to send a package of amendments to 15 laws—including the Emergency Response Law—to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee for deliberation.

A Five-Part Agenda

The executive meeting is a routine but consequential mechanism through which China’s State Council deliberates and deploys national policy, with readouts distributed by Xinhua and reprinted by state outlets. This session covered five items: a report on aging-related work; measures to promote the healthy development of sports events; deployment of a medical rehabilitation and nursing capacity-expansion project; approval of the draft Regulation on the Protection of Traditional Knowledge of Traditional Chinese Medicine; and discussion of the amendment package to the Emergency Response Law and 14 other laws. People’s Daily carried the readout on the front page of its September 19 print edition.

Confronting an Aging Population

China’s demographic challenge framed much of the meeting. As of the end of 2025, the country’s population aged 60 and above reached 320 million, of whom roughly 35 million are disabled or incapacitated elderly requiring long-term care, according to the Xinhua interpretation article. The meeting called for “comprehensively and objectively” understanding the impact of population aging and deepening the national strategy of proactively responding to it.

The session prioritized improving service guarantees for the elderly across elderly care, health promotion and social security, and building a multi-tiered, multi-pillar pension insurance system. It urged connecting home-, community- and institution-based elderly care services and expanding affordable care. In a nod to the growing “silver economy,” the meeting called for enriching products and services for older consumers and cultivating new consumption scenarios—framing elderly welfare and domestic-demand expansion as mutually reinforcing goals. The agenda builds on a February 24, 2026 executive meeting that similarly focused on the silver economy and elderly care services.

Elevating Sport Into an Economic Engine

The meeting turned to sports events as a driver of both public welfare and economic activity. It called for expanding the supply of high-quality events, revitalizing sports venues and event resources, and coordinating competitive, professional and mass-participation events. Officials also urged integrating sports with culture, tourism and commerce, accelerating the adoption of new technology, and improving the spectator experience.

The emphasis reflects a broader push behind China’s “event economy.” The 2026 Government Work Report highlighted developing the event economy, the ice-and-snow economy and outdoor sports. Cited successes include the Jiangsu Super League, which drew 2.43 million on-site spectators and 2.2 billion online views and generated 37.96 billion yuan in service revenue across five scenarios in its first six rounds, as well as the 15th National Games co-hosted by Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao.

Building Grassroots Rehabilitation and Nursing Capacity

A centerpiece of the meeting was the deployment of the medical rehabilitation and nursing capacity-expansion project. The meeting said the system should be strengthened with a focus on the grassroots level, extending rehabilitation and nursing resources to communities and households and improving accessibility for urban and rural residents.

Technology is central to the plan. The meeting called for developing more intelligent rehabilitation technologies and devices and streamlining the review and approval of new products. It also emphasized support mechanisms: dynamically adjusting the catalogue of rehabilitation and long-term care service items, deepening price reform for these services, and improving talent-training policies to make careers in the field more attractive.

Hao Xiaoning, a researcher at the Health Development Research Center of the National Health Commission, said the project should “build a solid grassroots service net” and adopt a demand-oriented approach, constructing a diversified service system encompassing rehabilitation medicine, long-term care, community and home-based rehabilitation, intelligent rehabilitation equipment and remote guidance. Zhang Rui, secretary-general of the Pharmaceutical Industry AI Innovation Alliance, said the key to raising care standards through technology is to “deeply match intelligent rehabilitation technology with grassroots service needs,” while strengthening price, payment and talent safeguards.

China has made steady progress in this area. The share of general hospitals with rehabilitation medicine departments has risen, long-term care insurance now covers about 320 million people, more than 50,000 workers hold long-term care certification, and 17 provinces—including Hebei and Shanxi—have issued provincial implementation plans, according to Xinhua.

Protecting Traditional Chinese Medicine Knowledge

The meeting reviewed and approved the draft Regulation on the Protection of Traditional Knowledge of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Officials described the theories, techniques and prescriptions of TCM as “important resources for our country’s independent innovation,” calling for comprehensively strengthening the protection and management of traditional knowledge and guarding the foundation for TCM’s survival and development. The meeting also urged deepening research into TCM’s basic theory and mechanisms of action, expanding its application, and strengthening international exchanges and cooperation.

The regulation had been pre-announced as a legislative priority. In May 2026, the State Council General Office issued its 2026 legislative work plan, which explicitly proposed formulating the TCM traditional knowledge protection regulation and preparing to revise the Regulations on the Protection of Traditional Chinese Medicine Varieties, as reported by China News of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Legal and Forward Look

On the legislative front, the meeting discussed and approved in principle the draft amendment package to the Emergency Response Law and 14 other laws, deciding to submit it to the NPC Standing Committee—moving the proposals into the formal legislative process. The meeting also “studied other matters,” a standard closing formula that leaves room for undisclosed deliberations.

Taken together, the session signals a government balancing long-horizon social challenges with nearer-term economic levers. The aging and rehabilitation initiatives respond to a demographic reality that will shape public finances and family life for decades, while the sports-events push seeks to convert consumer enthusiasm into measurable economic activity. The TCM regulation, meanwhile, advances a cultural and industrial priority with an eye toward international influence.

What to watch next: whether the NPC Standing Committee takes up the 15-law amendment package in its coming session, how quickly the rehabilitation and nursing project reaches communities and households, and whether the TCM regulation’s implementing rules translate broad protective language into concrete enforcement.