Marginalization and Social Welfare in China

Linda Wong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415133128
• eBook ISBN: 9781134786343
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a systematic analysis that defines and accounts for the contours and operation of China's welfare system. It is underpinned by recent empirical research and strong comparative theory, and will be welcomed as a significant advance in furthering our understanding of social welfare in China.

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Chinese socialism and social welfare

THE NARROW WELFARE SYSTEM IN CONTEXT

This book is about social welfare for marginal groups in Chinese socialist society. By marginal groups are meant individuals who are excluded from participation in the social life of the community. Their ranks include people who are unable to work, individuals who have no family, households stricken with poverty, persons who need help to overcome temporary hardships (due to natural disasters or military service), the mentally and physically disabled, and all those who lack the skill for unassisted survival. The job of helping these groups rests with the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the local community groups it supervises. This structure of aid is distinct from the wider system of income, social security, goods, services and life guarantees available to working people in China. Relating to China’s broad social welfare system, for instance social security and work-based welfare packages, quite a lot has been written. Meanwhile, comparatively fewer accounts on support targeted at her dependent and needy citizens are on offer. And yet in a socialist society these are the very persons whose treatment best reflects the society’s compassion and solidarity. In market economies which extol merit, competitiveness and success, such persons are often treated with contempt. Socialists’ values are supposedly different. Their claim to moral supremacy is premised on their abiding commitment to equality and fraternity. The possession of poverty, handicap and other personal misfortunes are not grounds for denying respect and communal membership. Indeed the worth of human beings cannot be measured by their economic values. The ultimate goal for social distribution is allocation according to need, rather than merit and ability. Thus a study of the social treatment of dependent groups in Chinese society is important in moral terms. By finding out the extent to which marginal citizens enjoy the social rights of citizenship, the current study will shed light on how far socialist morals are honoured by the state and society.

Glazer, an American social policy theorist, calls the system of contributory and as-ofright services and benefits for the general population Welfare I. Wide public endorsement always protects them from the shifting preferences of politicians, party politics and changing administrations (Glazer 1986). He reserves the term Welfare II to denote the structure of selective, remedial and oftentimes means-tested services. Enjoying less public support from tax-payers who resent such services as a welfare burden, help is often given grudgingly and the relevant programmes are constantly subject to criticism and budget cuts. Following this classification, the current study is concerned with Welfare II under Chinese socialism. Serious research on narrowly conceived welfare— what it is, how it functions, what determines its scope, and how it responds to social and economic change—is conspicuously lacking. This book hopefully sheds light onto this neglected social reality.

Civil affairs welfare is more than aid to needy groups. In terms of entitlement to social welfare, the 75 per cent of Chinese citizens who live in rural areas also suffer from marginality. While urban residents have recourse to a large range of state and employer-supplied benefits, social provisions in the hinterland are meagre and mean. Hence, in welfare terms, peasants and the motley crowd of unfortunate and displaced persons are similarly disadvantaged.

The Ministry’s oversight of rural welfare had a long history. Since the 1950s, the Ministry, then known as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, had the remit for natural disaster relief and social relief. In the days of collective agriculture, communes and their subordinate production brigades and teams had to finance and administer their welfare projects, just as they did for organizing production, investment and governance. State aid, however, was limited to places too poor to carry out their duties. When household contracting replaced collective farming in the early 1980s, new welfare schemes were needed to replace the protective shield previously in existence. One experiment was a programme of loans with the objective of helping poor peasants embark on production projects when the Ministry realized that relief grants would never be enough to fight poverty. Another was the promotion of peasant credit unions and welfare fund collections to finance welfare undertakings. These funding schemes were intended to pool local resources and use them more effectively. Gradually, as the rural economy gained strength, the Ministry pushed for the creation of welfare services in townships and villages. In the more affluent places, rural pension schemes were instigated. By the end of the last decade, civil affairs has become a de facto Ministry of rural social security. Notwithstanding these efforts, a near vacuum of social security and low standard of services remain the hallmarks of the rural welfare system.

In welfare matters, China follows the approach of ‘one country, separate systems’. Instead of having one system that applies equally to every citizen, many different systems prevail. These build on varying membership criteria. They are also distinquished by different range and levels of entitlement. There are at least four main criteria that govern who should come under which system: place of residence, employment status, family status, and personal characteristics. The first criterion divides the citizenry into urban residents (20–25 per cent of the total population) and the rural population (the rest). By dint of the household registration regulation in force since 1958, change of residential status was virtually impossible. The primary aim was to prevent influx of the rural population into urban areas. As far as employment status was concerned, whether one was working or not working was utterly important. Urban employees were looked after by their work units while rural folks previously came under the care of communes and now regain freedom in taking up household production or any other economic pursuits. The type of enterprise one works in affects one’s treatment to a large extent. Enterprises in public ownership (state-owned and collective-owned) offer more job security and occupational benefits. The private sector and rural enterprises supply none of these, or very much less. The third criterion, family membership, was and still is the most important determinant of individual well-being. Most individuals obtain their material, emotional, physical care and social needs in the family. As far as civil affairs services were concerned, only persons who do not have a family, for example childless elders and orphans, and have no work or income, qualify. Finally, personal situations like disability, infirmity, poverty or individual problems are pertinent. Special services cater to different needs and problems. Yet aid is often subject to the discretion of the local masses and officials.

In operational terms, the most important factors affecting welfare entitlements are work and residence. The broadest system of welfare covers citizens who participate in production, essentially the vast majority of the country’s population. This system is by no means uniform. There are at least two tiers in the edifice—an upper deck for urban workers and state employees and a lower floor for the peasantry. Under the planned economy, both urban and rural residents enjoyed an equitable share of food (grain for urbanites was subsidized by the state), guaranteed income, a measure of employment security, and sundry goods and amenities. Material conditions at the upper deck are more enviable. None the less, the Chinese peasantry had recourse to basic life guarantees not available to peasants in other developing societies. Such provisions as food grain, schools, clinics and relief for the destitute were available from people’s communes, brigades and teams. The situation becomes more complex with the push towards market reform. The rural economy has been transformed into a cash nexus economy geared to production for market consumption rather than compulsory quotas set by the state. The urban system is less radically affected. Nevertheless, both in cities and in villages, the trends are towards less state and collective guarantees, more diversified channels of provision, higher dependence on community and family contributions, and heightened insecurity. The rural-urban or peasant-worker schism remains largely intact. Another development was increased mobility. Since the mid-1980s, an increasing number of peasant migrants, between 80 to 100 million, have sought work and business opportunities in urban areas. Nevertheless, they still carry their rural status and do not qualify for urban welfare. Further down the welfare scale is the place of civil affairs welfare and relief. Eligibility to services is stringently controlled. This secondary system serves only persons excluded by the wider welfare system. The assistance provided at best caters to subsistence standards. Recipients suffer from strong social stigma.

Under the planned economy, the production of welfare involved at least four major players: the family, the production unit, the neighbourhood and the state. The welfare nexus in China operated as a tiered system. The family was of course the innermost core. The support provided at this level was entirely privatized. Nevetheless the family was the first line of defence against want and insecurity. Its contribution to individual well-being was paramount wherever one lived. After the reform commenced, however, the family was even more crucial in determining life chances while it enjoyed less support from other social agencies. Beyond the family, the entitlement of rural and urban citizens diverged. In city areas, the second line of defence was the work unit which supplied the employee and his/her dependants with the bulk of his/her income and service needs. Smaller and poorer work units were usually not self-sufficient in terms of employee facilities. Similarly, people who were out of work, for example the retired and housewives, had to look for help from the next tier—neighbourhood-run programmes. Only when even local schemes failed, or when the person could not get help anywhere else, would civil affairs aid be invoked. In the villages, communes and brigades used to provide a cushion of collective protection. Now, social programmes are run and funded by townships and villages. The agency of last resort was civil affairs, which restricted aid to people who could not get help from family and local community. Analytically, the urban welfare nexus was a four-tier structure—family, work unit, neighbourhood, state; in the countryside, the aid hierarchy had three layers: family, community and state. This basic pattern remains largely intact under the reform.

The economic reform has altered economic and social life to an unprecedented extent. As far as social care is concerned, new producers made their debut. One channel of production is voluntary organizations. Under a more tolerant ideological climate, voluntary agencies of many colours—local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), native charities, religious groups, international agencies—have begun to offer a variety of social services banned since the early 1950s. Programmes include schools, clinics, rural development projects, child care and rehabilitation services. The impact made by these bodies is limited in the main but is expected to increase. The other budding supplier is the market. Private schools, nurseries, hospitals, even nursing homes have quietly emerged. Though in their infancy, commercial services are likely to grow when more people become rich and demanding enough to afford them. In the field of special welfare, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has actively promoted multiple sources of aid under the slogan of ‘socializing social welfare responsibilities’. I have argued elsewhere that Chinese-style socialization is another form of privatization (Wong 1994a). The state is in clear retreat: its role in provision, funding and regulation of social care is being curtailed. Privatization in whatever name belies a redrawing of boundary between state and civil society.

The book is built around a number of central themes. First, what are the characteristics of the narrow welfare system? To answer this question takes us into an examination of the relevant policy, philosophical underpinnings, delivery systems and funding of civil affairs welfare. Secondly, what determines its shape and boundary? In locating the determinants of welfare, I shall argue that welfare is shaped by four mutually reinforcing forces—the traditional legacy, the role of the state, utilitarian Chinese familism, and China’s socialist system, principally its collective institutions. Third, what are the challenges to this system and how does it respond to the new exigencies of the reform? To elucidate this concern, I shall examine the welfare reforms undertaken so far and comment on their outcomes. In corollary the emerging issues of value conflict, discrimination, spatial inequality, stratification and social instability will be analysed. Finally, the theoretical relevance of China’s welfare experience will be summarized. The evidence so far suggests a refutation of a straightforward transposition of Western or socialist theory. China is too big and complex a society to adopt a uniform system to meet the need of development and its huge social obligations. The welfare system that evolves is necessarily a mixed system marked by internal inconsistency and tension. The ultimate shape is still unclear as the country lurches forward to an uneasy amalgam of socialism and market economy.

RESEARCH ON CHINESE SOCIAL WELFARE

The study of Chinese social welfare is a like a fallow field against the rich pickings of Sinology. Most China experts—anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists—have little interest in welfare matters. Until the recent past, welfare issues warranted no more than a chapter in a book or a few odd articles. Examples of the first kind are Whyte and Parish’s Urban Life in Contemporary China (1984) and Village and Family in Contemporary China (1978), Sidel and Sidel’s The Health of China (1982) and Davis-Friedmann’s Long Lives—Chinese Elderly and the Communist Revolution (1983). Early work in article form include Kallgren’s report on the labour insurance scheme in its inception years (Kallgren 1969) and Davis-Friedmann’s analysis of the ‘five guarantees’ scheme (Davis-Friedmann 1978). The definitive work on the way Chinese work units function as agencies of production, administration and welfare is Walder’s Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (1986). Researchers like Croll (1987), Feuchtwang (1987), Hussain (1989), Hussain and Feuchtwang (1988) and Hussain and Liu (1989) have commented on the problems of social security and poverty in the countryside. On urban welfare, Davis argued that despite recent reforms in labour insurance, what emerged was even more inequality in occupational entitlement (1988). But on the whole, the record of social policy in forty years of socialism was quite creditable (Davis 1989).

In the 1980s, a number of books appeared which focus directly on social welfare. The first is Dixon’s The Chinese Social Welfare System 1949–1979. Published in 1981, this is the first book in English to provide a wealth of data on services and practices under the reign of Mao. A second report, Wong and MacQuarrie’s China’s Welfare System: A View from Guangzhou (1986) examines welfare services in Guangzhou during the early reform years. In light of rapid changes in China today, both works now appear dated. A third book, Chow’s The Administration and Financing of Social Security in China (1988) summarizes the key elements in the administration and funding of social security for the urban workforce. The need for reform and the major orientations are linked to transformations of the economic and employment systems, and to demographic changes as well as problems of organization and affordability.

Works embodying deeper analytical and critical interpretations appeared only recently. Chan and Chow’s More Welfare After Economic Reform? Welfare Developments in the People’s Republic of China (1992) offers a longitudinal and theoretical overview of developments in welfare. The authors delineate three stages of growth and adaptation: (1) the pre-revolutionary stage with a residual approach marked by minimal state intervention, family care and private charities, (2) the period of socialist construction featuring structural arrangements to effect redistribution as well as pragmatic adherence to traditional family care, (3) the period of reform marked by a relaxation of state monopoly on welfare provision towards shared responsibility and community care. The point about a reversal from ‘the normative institutional welfare delivery to a residual structure’ is well taken. Nevertheless, the three stages are rather crude and sweeping. In particular, the conception of the Chinese ‘welfare model’ or ‘system’ suggests a conceptual uniformity which has little empirical meaning. In real life, China has many systems and structures of welfare built on different allocative principles and status hierarchies.

In The Myth of Neighbourhood Mutual Help—The Contemporary Chinese Community-Based Welfare System in Guangzhou (Chan 1993), Chan reviews the policy and practice of having urban neighbourhood organizations provide social care to local residents. The author is right to point out that despite much official elation over this approach, community care is far from a panacea to the problem of social support in Chinese cities. Up until the early 1990s, its claims are probably more myth than reality. This is because its development is fundamentally constrained by limited state support, scarce local resources, unreliability and regional diversity.

Leung and Nann’s book Authority and Benevolence—Social Welfare in China (1995) sets out to ‘provide a comprehensive account of social welfare and social services in China, and to highlight the achievements and difficulties’ (Leung and Nann 1995: xi). Social welfare in China composes of employmerit-based welfare, neighbourhood-based welfare in the urban areas, locality-based welfare in the rural areas, and the work of civil affairs. The book offers a good guide to the evolving institutional framework, social changes and policy instruments in bold outline. Nevertheless, its brevity (168 pages of main text) means that it cannot offer the many interesting details and in-depth conceptualization that is needed for a careful appraisal. In 1995, my own work, Zhongguo Shehui Zhuyi de Shehui Fuli—Minzheng Gongzuo Yanjiu [Social Welfare Under Chinese Socialism—Research on Civil Affairs Welfare] was published in China (Huang Li Ruolian [Wong] 1995). This is a condensed and translated version of my doctoral dissertation completed in 1992. Some of the themes developed in the original thesis have found their way to articles on selected topics (Wong 1990c, 1993, 1994a, 1995a). These early efforts are being reassessed, updated and revised for the present volume.

Without exception, the works cited are written by researchers working outside China. Chow, Chan, Wong and Leung are from Hong Kong. Both MacQuarrie and Nann have worked in Hong Kong for years. The latest contribution, from an insider’s perspective, comes from Chen Sheying, a PRC scholar who completed his doctoral training in s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables and figure
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Chinese socialism and social welfare
• 2 The culture of welfare: the pre-revolutionary legacy
• 3 Social welfare in the first three decades
• 4 The new welfare challenge
• 5 Welfare for veterans and peasants
• 6 Urban welfare and mutual aid
• 7 The role of the state
• 8 Utilitarian Chinese familism
• 9 The collective canopy
• 10 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index