BEIJING — China issued a new set of professional standards for elderly caregivers to encourage more people to join the understaffed workforce.

The new standards scraped education requirements for entering the workforce, shortened the window of time needed to reach the highest professional level and updated the required skill set to suit the growing need for community elderly care, according to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS) and the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

With a senior caregivers workforce of around 300,000 and an elderly population of 249 million, among which 40 million are partially to fully incapacitated, the country is in pressing need for more caregivers, according to an MHRSS official.

The government plans to train 2 million senior caregivers by the end of 2022.

Chinese authorities said earlier that the country is capable of dealing with an aging population and has taken a slew of measures to boost its senior care industry, which includes encouraging investment from the private sector and developing community elderly care services.