ABSTRACT
This chapter presents readers to move more comfortably from the familiar to the unfamiliar and from the macro-level to the micro-level. This process of moving from one level to another also describes what it has tried to do in presenting the Chinese experience. The chapter explores the meanings and manifestations of well-being among the elderly in a Chinese urban area through an examination of various societal contexts and explains the relevancy of the values, policies, practices, and traditions to the status of the aged in China. In an increasingly competitive and efficiency-oriented world-wide economic situation, keeping older people productive first, through health promotion and disease prevention, and second, through providing opportunities for meaningful activity, can be a major contribution to both the nation's economy and the individual's quality of life. Chinese policymaking, by contrast, is based upon a maximization model which stems from the cultural perception of what the elderly have and can contribute to the betterment of society.
