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Social Policy in China: Development and Well-being

Social Policy in China is not only a brief introduction, but also a critical evaluation of Chinese social policy and its development, especially since the economic reforms of the late 1970s. This book illustrates five key policy areas in China—social security, labour, health, education and housing—and presents the latest significant changes in each area. It introduces the Basic Urban Resident Medical Insurance Scheme (BURMI) for nonworking urban residents, a pilot programme with which several provinces have experimented since 2007. More importantly, this book gives a close-up of the social policy in China and avoids misinterpretation and misunderstanding for two reasons: considerable analysis of the primary sources in Chinese, such as governmental documents or policy papers; and the native-Chinese language abilities of two of the authors. It also explores in detail the impacts of Chinese social policy on citizens’ well-being, based upon a modified human dignity framework developed by one of the authors, Chan, and his colleague. Although some will be reluctant to accept it, the assessment is critical and hits home when concluding that the post-reform Chinese welfare system has moved away from the socialist model and only gives its people low levels of protection due to marketisation and decentralisation. The book gives a particular perspective to understand and evaluate modern China’s achievements and points out a reform direction that Chinese policy makers should consider seriously. However, a few issues deserve further discussion. The first relates to the definition of social policy. Since there is no consensus among Chinese academic circles about what social policy is, and the government seldom uses the term, this book gives a good starting point by focusing on the five policy areas mentioned above, according to the traditional Bereridgian approach. But it pays little attention to social-welfare services for special groups, especially the elderly and the disabled, both of whom are major targeted groups in the Chinese welfare system. And, along with the Party’s new focus on ‘social construction’ since 2006, the government is gradually attaching importance to income allocation and social governance in addition to the big five policy areas. This change is also worthy of consideration. The second issue is policy innovation. As the book correctly points out, local governments play a significant role in policymaking and implementation in China, which, though it results in fragmented welfare administration, also gives a space for local policy innovation. The Shanghai municipal government provides special social