A top US medical anthropologist believes the United States and China must transcend geopolitical tensions and spur a global revolution in “social technology” to survive the looming ageing crisis.

Arthur Kleinman, a physician-anthropologist with joint appointments at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School, proposed that the US learn from China’s recent efforts to build a long-term care insurance system, while in return China can take lessons from the US nursing home model.

“We have never had societies with such a large number of people living into the old age period,” said Kleinman who, at 85 years old, will retire this year.

In an interview on March 31, he said there was an urgent need to deal with an “unprecedented” demographic shift: by 2050, nearly 30 per cent of the Chinese population and about 40 per cent of the Japanese population will be over 65 years old. For the US, it will be more than 20 per cent.

Widely recognised as a founding father of modern medical anthropology, Kleinman has expanded his scope from schizophrenia and suicide among Chinese families to the “inverse skill” of modern medicine – how doctors lose empathy as they train. That work culminated in his 2020 bestseller, The Soul of Care, a memoir about caring for his wife through Alzheimer’s disease.