Abstract: Policies on smart elderly care industry are of great significance for optimizing its overall layout, promoting its orderly development and effectively coping with the aging of the population. The paper has constructed an analysis framework from three dimensions of policy tools, policy objectives and policy effectiveness, and then made quantitative analysis of 88 policy documents on smart elderly care industry promulgated by the central departments from 2011 to 2021 using content analysis and the PMC index model. The results show that China’s policies on smart elderly care industry present the development pattern of “fluctuating development-slow progress-explosive growth”. The structure of policy tools is unbalanced, with a large proportion of supply-based policy tools and a relatively small proportion of demand-based and environment-based policy tools. The policy objectives haven’t played the guiding role effectively, with less emphasis on technology and standards, but policy effectiveness works well. Based on this, the paper proposes that the government should rationally allocate policy tools, improve policy objective system and optimize policy effectiveness mechanism to promote the healthy development of smart elderly care industry.