Even as Grandpa struggled through his final, labored breaths, fighting a battle he would ultimately lose, vultures were circling outside the intensive care unit. They quietly shadowed relatives emerging from the ICU, waiting for a moment between waves of grief to offer condolences in hushed voices. But once acknowledged, they quickly turned to their real purpose: Should our loved one die, they assured us, they would take care of everything. Their “one-dragon service” would transport the body to the crematorium, arrange the funeral, and secure a tombstone.

Earlier this year, the Chinese government adopted new funeral regulations intended to make end-of-life arrangements more affordable and environmentally sustainable, while encouraging cremation over traditional burials. To the uninitiated, the measure might sound like another instance of Communist Party intrusion into private life, imposing rules on a deeply personal matter in ways that many Western observers might find objectionable.

Such skeptics might reconsider after encountering the funeral agents prowling hospital corridors. In a culture so wary of death that the number four is often avoided because its pronunciation resembles the word for “death,” these persistent young men are especially jarring. Yet their aggressive salesmanship makes economic sense: China’s funeral-services market is estimated to exceed $59.8 billion annually, with demand expected to grow as the population ages.

For grieving families, refusing these services can be extraordinarily difficult, if not effectively impossible, in some places. When Grandpa’s health deteriorated, we tried in vain to arrange a more economical funeral ourselves. Asked how we could transport his body, hospital employees offered little guidance beyond directing us to the same smiling men waiting outside. When we called the crematorium and cemetery directly, we were told their schedules were full. Yet when funeral agents contacted those very facilities, they secured same-day reservations within minutes.

The apparent preferential access reflects the peculiar economics of China’s socialist market system. Urban land is state-owned, and even ostensibly private homes generally come with land-use rights lasting 70 years. Cemeteries, too, operate within a heavily state-controlled system; graves cannot simply be relocated when a lease expires. Most hospitals are public institutions, reflecting a health-care system built around broad access and relatively low costs. Crematoriums, because of their environmental impact and the sensitivity surrounding death, are also closely controlled by the state. Where public-sector wages are constrained, informal arrangements between employees and private funeral agents may create tempting financial incentives. Families, meanwhile, have little way of knowing how the “one-dragon service” actually functions.

The precise relationships between these private intermediaries and public institutions are largely opaque to consumers. The concern is serious enough that national regulations introduced in early 2026 explicitly bar funeral intermediaries from adding markups to public funeral-service fees, require original receipts, and call for investigations when hospital employees improperly disclose information about critically ill or deceased patients. Whether those provisions will be enforced consistently is another question.

In the meantime, families pay the price. Grandpa’s one-dragon package began with a negotiated fee that kept climbing, eventually exceeding $1,490 in service charges alone. That was on top of more than $29,900 for a tiny burial plot for his cremated remains. Rituals ostensibly intended to comfort the departed spirit brought further charges for fruit, candles, and a specialized black-and-white portrait. Before cremation came the expensive casket, burial clothing, paper money to burn, and cosmetic services to prepare the body. Every addition seemed to carry an inflated price, with the intermediaries apparently keeping the difference.

A decree from Beijing will not, by itself, end the exploitation of bereavement. Once families engage a provider, withdrawing halfway through the process can be nearly impossible. Nor is the problem likely to disappear while essential services remain inaccessible without an intermediary. An Uber-style platform matching families with competing funeral providers might reduce prices. But if public institutions still determine who can release and receive bodies, and families cannot independently reserve crematoriums, cemeteries, or transportation, a slick new platform would do little to change the underlying power imbalance.

What families need is genuine access to prices, procedures, and the inner workings of the funeral industry. With Beijing showing little appetite for wholesale privatization of crematoriums and cemeteries, poorer households may continue to confront what Chinese speakers call si bu qi: the inability to afford even death.

The new rules are a welcome start, but enforcement matters more than proclamations. Every stage of funeral and burial arrangements should come with standardized, publicly available fees, so that opportunistic intermediaries cannot invent charges at a family’s most vulnerable moment.

China could also consider targeted privatization where it is politically feasible. Private hospitals already outnumber public ones by roughly 2.1 to one, though many focus on wealthier patients and may be less accessible to people relying on public insurance. Better integration with the broader health-care system could allow these institutions to serve more ordinary households. With incentives to provide additional services, private hospitals might also offer a more transparent alternative for coordinating arrangements after a death. Families should have the freedom to choose such options, rather than being directed toward an opaque network of middlemen. Only then might China’s mourners finally be spared the vultures waiting outside the ICU doors.