This article presents a systematic examination of the workplace-based welfare system in urban China. During the pre-reform period from 1949 to 1978, most welfare provisions in China were delivered and the majority of welfare spending was spent by workplace units. Since China's market transition started in the late 1970s, this workplace-based welfare system is no longer financially sustainable, and more importantly its functioning constitutes an impediment to the formation of an institutional configuration for a market economy in China. The Chinese government has therefore experienced increasing pressure to reshape this workplacebased welfare system into a genuine welfare state, so as to shift the responsibilities of welfare provisions from individual work units to government bodies. Some institutional arrangements characteristic of welfare pluralism, which emphasize that the state, employers, and individuals share welfare responsibilities, are also incorporated into the newly emergent social welfare system in urban China.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
March 2001
Research Article|
March 01 2001
Dismantling the Chinese mini-welfare state? Marketization and the politics of institutional transformation, 1979–1999
Edward X. Gu
Edward X. Gu
*
Fairbank Center, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
* Tel.: +1-617-496-8123; fax: 1-617-495-9976. E-mail address: [email protected] (E.X. Gu).
Search for other works by this author on:
1
Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University, and An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fairbank Centre for East Asian Research, Harvard University.
* Tel.: +1-617-496-8123; fax: 1-617-495-9976. E-mail address: [email protected] (E.X. Gu).
Communist and Post-Communist Studies (2001) 34 (1): 91–111.
Citation
Edward X. Gu; Dismantling the Chinese mini-welfare state? Marketization and the politics of institutional transformation, 1979–1999. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 1 March 2001; 34 (1): 91–111. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0967-067X(00)00025-8
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Client Account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Could not validate captcha. Please try again.