The Roundtable on China Care Economy Policy Actions and International Cooperation was jointly convened by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Center for International Knowledge on Development (CIKD). The roundtable served as a critical platform to deliberate on the pressing issues surrounding the care economy, especially the disproportionate care burden for women, in the contexts of current and emerging megatrends such as population ageing and the shrinking labour force. It also aimed to solicit inputs on how these issues could be addressed by more proactive policy solutions in China that could contribute to more inclusive, just and sustainable growth.

The roundtable was part of the project “Advancing gender equality through recognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work of women and girls in Asia and the Pacific”, implemented by ESCAP’s Social Development Division under the China-ESCAP Cooperation Programme. This project aimed to provide technical support to governments in four Asia-Pacific countries (i.e., Cambodia, China, Indonesia and the Philippines) to design and implement policy initiatives at the national/subnational level that recognize, reduce and redistribute the unpaid care and domestic work responsibilities of women and girls and promote the enhanced participation of women in the labour force. Such policy initiatives may include the development and scaling up of national investment in care infrastructure, care services, gender-responsive social protection measures, as well as employment-related care policies.