When old is gold for the unscrupulous: how China’s lonely elderly are being exploited

A 60-year-old Shandong man committed suicide by drowning himself in the sea after discovering he had been swindled out of 60,000 yuan (HK$69,092) by buying health-enhancement products. Gone was almost all of the money he and his wife had been putting away for decades.

Three years ago, an 87-year-old retired psychology professor published a book in which she shared the experience of spending 400,000 yuan over the years buying various kinds of food and equipment claimed to be good for her health. In the book, which caught the public’s attention, Huang Xiulan questioned the effectiveness of those products and their exorbitant prices.

But the publication has not stopped countless senior citizens on the mainland from becoming smitten with products that tout magical ways to improve their health.

Recently, the daughter of an 85-year-old retired professor in Shaanxi called police because of her father’s keen desire for health-enhancement goods. She told them she could not stop him from spending hundreds of thousands of yuan on these products over the last eight years. Now his house was full of them. The police later helped retrieve some of the money the father spent.

Most advanced-age buyers are not as lucky in getting their money back, after realising they were conned into buying things that turned out to be not at all useful.

What the government can do is to urge the public to be wary of these tactics, which can include small free gifts, free trips and free lunches aimed at convincing senior citizens to take big chunks of money out of their pockets. Some companies allegedly prey on the elderly by exploiting their loneliness.

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But police crackdowns on these companies seldom occur because the businesses are legally registered and their products are legal. If there is false advertising, it also tends to go unpunished – and unproven – because victims often don’t collect evidence, according to authorities.

Over the past decade, mainland health-enhancement companies have sprung up to tap the huge market created by the country’s growing silvered-hair population.

China’s population is ageing fast, with 16.7 per cent, or 230 million people, age 60 or older. Those who are at least 65 years old – 150 million people – comprise 10 per cent of the population, according to the national statistics authority.

A US study by Washington University of St. Louis, Missouri – host of an ageing forum in Shanghai in January – projected that the number of mainland residents aged 65 or older above will rise from 100 million in 2005 to 329 million by 2050; those aged 80 or older will number 120 million.

In Shanghai, the metropolis with the greatest number of older residents, 4.58 million, or 31.6 per cent, of its 15 million permanent residents are aged 60 or above, while 800,000 are at least 80 years old.

On a sleepy narrow road in Shanghai’s Baoshan District, a small health club seems distinct from other stores on the street. Many silver-haired customers gather and chat by the door while waiting to enter to sit and receive service in a kind of “electric curing chair”.

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The appeal of the service is that it is free; thus visiting the club everyday has become routine for hundreds of old people living in nearby communities.

Inside the small room in Ruiqining Health Club are 12 chairs – reserved for the number of people the store owner allows at once to enjoy the 30-minute low-voltage electric treatment. Regular customers zealously tell newcomers how the chair magically solved their health problems, from itchy skin to insomnia to immune system deficiency.

“I have come here every morning since February and through sitting on this chair I feel much better than before, especially that I can sleep well now,” said 72-year-old Zhang Honggen, who was missing most of his teeth. “It’s good that I don’t have to pay for it.”

He said he hasn’t bought the chair yet, although he has peers who did. The chair, with its price tag of 35,000 yuan, is said to be a Japan-imported brand.

But Zhang, a former farmer in Shanghai whose land was sold to property developers and now lives on a monthly pension of 2,000 yuan, did buy numerous other health-enhancement goods worth more than 20,000 yuan in recent years.

What was hoarded at his home included “Hong Kong-produced” ferment, ganoderma powders, nucleic acid capsules and Chinese caterpillar fungus pills. He also bought a “miraculous needle” and a curing machine, both of which purportedly use low-voltage electricity to boost people’s health.

“The sales people told me their products were amazingly good; but after I bought and used them for a while, I found their products were not so useful,” Zhang told the South China Morning Post. “Then when I called them again, they either had a bad attitude or were unable to be contacted.”

Zhang said he was often approached by sales personnel from health-enhancement companies who called him or encountered him at community parks.

“They at first gave me free things, such as free edible oil or free eggs,” he said. “They asked me to attend their health speeches, also for free. I think since I am idle, it’s fine for me to join them.”

Zhang attended four or five speech sessions, buying products at two of them. “The companies charted buses to send us to the events held in Hongkou District. But if we didn’t buy eventually, we had to go back home by ourselves,” he said.

The speeches were generally delivered by people clad in white gowns, deemed to be doctors. “What the doctors talked about at these sessions was reasonable,” Zhang said.

After the speeches, sales staff gathered around the elderly, trying to persuade them to buy products.

Zhang said he agreed to buy because he was touched by the “good service” of the health-enhancement companies.

“[Before I bought] they respected me very much,” he said. “They called me ‘uncle’ and chatted with me patiently. What’s more, they initially did things for me, like delivering me bottles of mineral-substance-rich water. Each bottle is 5kg and they have to climb four floors, as there is no lift in my apartment.”

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Author Huang said that displaying a “warm heart” is an important selling point for health-enhancement companies, the Beijing News reported.

Huang said staff called her “granny” sweetly. When she was hospitalised from a stroke, they went to the hospital every day to fend for her. They even washed her underwear, she said.

“Upon these kids’ request [to buy], how can you refuse them?” she was quoted as saying. “They are just making a living and they also have a hard life.”

Huang said old people are willing to buy price-exaggerated health products even when they know they are “being taken advantage of”.

“When they are using you, they’d like to talk to you. It’s in contrast to the situation that at home, young generations are reluctant to speak a word to us old people,” Huang said.

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Zhang Xiaoyi, a professor from the School of International and Public Affairs of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said the effectiveness of these sales techniques aimed at winning the hearts of the elderly suggests that the mainland’s senior citizens have a psychological crisis.

“Old people’s psychological needs are not met with as their children don’t care [for] them or have little communication with them,” said the scholar who studies aging. “Those with good communication with the younger generation are not so easily conned.”

A five-minute video exposing how health-enhancement companies cheat the elderly went viral on the internet in May. It has been widely relayed by police authorities across many cities and the mainland’s nationwide state broadcaster, China Central Television.

Shanghai-based internet celebrity Xu Haojie said he made the video because his own grandparents were addicted to buying these products. He wanted to alert other elderly people of the risks of being drawn in and defrauded.

Xu’s grandparents have spent more than 100,000 yuan on health goods. They say the products are useful for healthy living and are keen to recommend them to friends and neighbours, Xu said.

Each time the grandparents moved, they would look for health-enhancement companies nearby so they could go there regularly, Xu said.

“They like to spend their time at these venues. There are many old people at those venues. The companies’ staff were kind to them and organised them to play simple games,” Xu told the Post.

“My grandparents said they liked the atmosphere there and it’s a sense of belonging.”

Xu said other members of his family tried to tell the grandparents not to use their money this way, but they said “they have fun there and they are willing to spend money on these products”.

Xu said he received scathing messages from internet users – apparently employees of health-enhancement companies. “Young people can be wayward in pouring money [into buying] an iPhone. Why can’t old people buy health goods?” one person asked him.

Hu Zhan, a professor from Fudan University’s Centre for Population and Development Policy Studies, said senior citizens enthusiastically buy health products because they care a lot about their health – a point young people don’t grasp.

“There is a similar logic that young people like to buy luxury bags while old people like to buy expensive health products,” he said.

One technique companies often use to fool geriatric customers is calling their products food that contains drugs and functions like medicine, Hu said. Selling drugs requires a license from the country’s drug monitoring body, the State Food and Drug Administration, but food doesn’t need that particular license.

Liu Junhai, a consumer rights researcher from China Renmin University, said old people on the mainland tend to get things on the cheap - thus they are easily hooked by sales pitches.

He said police will only catch fraudsters when their activity involves many people and a large sum of money. Most cases in which old people claim they are swindled lead to civil lawsuits.

An anonymous official from the Beijing Municipal Drug Administration said the authority can’t effectively supervise the health-enhancement market mainly due to the absence of evidence.

“We can punish only when there is evidence,” he was quoted in Caijing magazine. “Whether they sell things at a high or low price, or whether they coax you or not are not our business. On many occasions we can merely alert companies not to commit false marketing.”

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The China Consumers Association told the Post that the organisation has received a flood of complaints from elderly consumers who said they were cheated when they bought health products. Most of the time, however, the organisation can do nothing about it except remind victims not to get duped again.

Ge Lingling, manager of Ruiqining Health Club, said 200 people every day receive the free service on the store’s curing chair.

“Everything about my store is not illicit,” she said. “I don’t force old people to buy. If they are happy with our products, they will buy.”

Zhang, the former Shanghai farmer, said despite his son’s advice not to buy health-enhancement goods, he didn’t listen to him. “[It’s because] I use my own money, not his,” he said.

Zhang said he is actually aware of these companies’ cheating, but admitted it’s hard to resist their advertising. “I have already promised to my wife multiple times not to buy any more,” he said, with a big laugh.

Another Ruiqining Health Club customer said that although she takes part in some activities there, she has never bought any health-enhancement products.

“Health-enhancement companies are brainwashing me, but in the meanwhile, my daughter is also brainwashing me – telling me not to buy,” the 76-year-old woman surnamed Wang said with a giggle.

“It’s a hoax, my daughters told me. If I need health-enhancement products, one of them would buy some from overseas.”