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Social Welfare Reform: Trends and Tensions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Elisabeth J. Croll
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Extract

The acceleration of economic reform in the early and late 1990s has highlighted repeatedly the importance of social welfare for maintaining economic growth, social stability and political authority. Indeed each of these decade-long goals of China's government can be seen to rest on either establishing or maintaining an accessible social welfare package. Economic growth requires further enterprise reform which in turn requires alternative forms and funding of worker social welfare. Sporadic reports of urban unrest resulting from lay-offs and loss of welfare benefits and of rural discontent resulting from the continued absence of welfare benefits suggests that social stability and political authority are dependent on the government's ability to reform social welfare provisioning. Simultaneously the process of economic reform itself has altered urban and rural socio-economic and political environments and had far-reaching consequences for welfare demand, service supply and notions of security.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 159 , September 1999 , pp. 684 - 699
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1999

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