Path dependency reexamined: Chinese welfare policy in the transition to unemployment

Comparative Politics

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2005, Pages

  Salinger, Dorothy J ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 29044443423     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/20072914     Document Type: Review

References (119)

1. Social insurance, such as unemployment insurance, is generally contributory, whereas welfare, such as China's minimum livelihood guarantee program, is noncontributory.
2. China's National Bureau of Statistics admitted that nearly 31 percent of those employed in the state sector at the end of 1997 were cut (from 100.4 million to 76.4 million) within the following four years. Dali L. Yang, "China in 2002: Leadership Transition and the Political Economy of Governance," Asian Survey, 43 (2003), 34.
3. See W. Rand Smith, The Left's Dirty Job: The Politics of Industrial Restructuring in France and Spain (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998);
4. Chris Howell, Regulating Labor: The State and Industrial Relations Reform in Postwar France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 211ff;
5. Ruth Berins Collier, The Contradictory Alliance: State-Labor Relations and Regime Change in Mexico (Berkeley: International and Area Studies, University of California, Research Series No. 83, 1992);
6. Kevin J. Middlebrook, The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
7. David Ross Cameron, "From Barre to Balladur: Economic Policy in the Era of the EMS," in Gregory Flynn, ed., Remaking the Hexagon: The New France in the New Europe (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 117-57.
8. Nora Lustig, Mexico: The Remaking of an Economy, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 1998);
9. Riordan Roett, ed., Political and Economic Liberalization in Mexico: At a Critical Juncture? (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993);
10. Judith A. Teichman, Privatization and Political Change in Mexico (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995);
11. Katrina Burgess, "Loyalty Dilemmas and Market Reform: Party-Union Alliances under Stress in Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela," World Politics, 52 (1999), 105-34.
12. Paul Pierson, Dismantling the Welfare State: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 6-18, 181-82.
13. Joan M. Nelson, "Introduction: The Politics of Economic Adjustment in Developing Nations," in Joan M. Nelson, ed., Economic Crisis and Policy Choice: The Politics of Adjustment in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 22;
14. Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, "Introduction: Institutions and Economic Adjustment," in Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, eds., The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributive Conflicts, and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 32.
15. Interview, Professor Ci Qinying, Wuhan, August 28, 2004.
16. Pierson, p. 172.
17. Howell, p. 209.
18. James G. Samstad, "The Unanticipated Persistence of Labor Power in Mexico: The Transition to a More Democratic Corporatism," paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 28-September 1, 2002.
19. On the term state project or mission, see Alfred Stepan, "State Power and the Strength of Civil Society in the Southern Cone of Latin America," in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 317-43.
20. In market democracies with competing political parties, variation along the left-right continuum with party turnover is the functional equivalent.
21. Xiaobo Lu, "Minor Public Economy: Revolutionary Origins of the Danwei," in Xiaobo Lu and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Danwei: The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1997);
22. Corinna-Barbara Francis, "Brokered Patterns of Governance in the Chinese Polity" (unpublished ms.); Mark W. Frazier, The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace: State, Revolution, and Labor Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002);
23. Wen-hsin Yeh, "The Republican Origins of the Danwei: The Case of Shanghai's Bank of China," in Lu and Perry, eds., pp. 60-88.
24. Charlotte Ikels, review of Nelson W. S. Chow, Socialist Welfare with Chinese Characteristics: The Reform of the Social Security System in China (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 2000),
25. in Journal of Asian Studies, 61 (August 2002), 1024. However, not every member of the truly indigent is located and included.
26. Jonah D. Levy, "Directing Adjustment: The Politics of Welfare Reform in France," in Fritz W. Scharpf and Vivien A. Schmidt, eds., Welfare and Work in the Open Economy: From Vulnerability to Competitiveness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);
27. Vivien A. Schmidt. From State to Market? The Transformation of French Business and Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 193;
28. Philip H. Gordon and Sophie Meunier, The French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution Press, 2001), pp. 8-9, 16.
29. Mari Miura and Bruno Palier, "Veto Players and Welfare Reform: The Paradox of the French and Japanese Unions," paper prepared for the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, August 27-31, 2003.
30. Samstad.
31. These enterprises were usually comprised of pre-1949 private firms merged in the 1950s and run at the level of the neighborhood, under the urban district or ward. State Council, "White Paper on Employment, Social Security," Asian Wall Street Journal, Apr. 29, 2002, p. 8.
32. Frazier.
33. Athar Hussain et al., "Urban Poverty in the PRC," Asian Development Bank Project No. TAR: PRC 33448.2002, p. 154.
34. Linda Wong, Marginalization and Social Welfare in China (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 66.
35. Some exceptions are discussed in Elizabeth J. Perry and Li Xun, Proletarian Power (Boulder: Westview Press. 1997).
36. Sarah Cook, "From Rice Bowl to Safety Net: Insecurity and Social Protection during China's Transition" (Beijing: unpublished ms., November 2001), p. 7.
37. Welfare was granted at varying levels of service; workers in the larger, favored state-owned firms in key industrial sectors fared best. Andrew G. Walder, "Property Rights and Stratification in Socialist Redistributive Economies," American Sociological Review, 57 (August 1992), 524-39.
38. Gong Li, Kua shiji nanti: Jiuye yu shehui baozhang [A Difficult Issue Straddling the Century: Employment and Social Security] (Kunming: Yunnan renmin chbanshe, 2000), p. 196.
39. Kuai Lehao, "Meiyou naru dibao di 'huise qunti'" [The "Grey Mass" That Hasn't Entered into the Minimum Livelihood System], Nanfang choumo [Southern Weekend], Mar. 29, 2002. The "three withouts" amounted to three million as of 1990, when the total urban population was about three hundred million.
40. Private communication, Linda Wong, January 8, 2004.
41. Elisabeth J. Croll, "Social Welfare Reform: Trends and Tensions," China Quarterly, 159 (September 1999), 692.
42. Elisabeth J. Croll, "Social Welfare Reform: Trends and Tensions," China Quarterly, 159 (1999), Ibid., p. 685.
43. Wong, pp. 67-69, 155;
44. Sarah Cook, "Politics, Policy Processes and the Poor: Responding to Poverty in China's Cities," report on a research project, "The Political and Social Dynamics of Poverty in China," undertaken as part of the DFID funded IDS Poverty Research Programme," December 2000, p. 1;
45. Nelson Chow and Xuebin Xu, Socialist Welfare in a Market Economy: Social Security Reforms in Guangzhou, China (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), p. 56.
46. Yang Tuan, "Jianli shehui baozhang xin tixi di tansuo" [Explorations on Establishing a New Social Security System], Lingdao canyue [Leadership Consultations], 172 (July 5, 2000), 16;
47. Jane Duckett, "China's Social Security Reforms and the Comparative Politics of Market Transition," Journal of Transition Politics and Post-Communist Studies (March 2003), 10. An anonymous reviewer suggested that the Chinese might have drawn lessons internationally from other countries when they continued to rely on the enterprise.
48. State Council, p. 20.
49. Tang Jun, "The Report of Poverty and Anti-Poverty in Urban China: The Poverty Problems in Urban China and the Program of Minimum Living Standard" (Beijing: unpublished ms., 2002), p. 18, notes that Zhu Rongji called for this goal in April 2000 in Liaoning province; the party's fifteenth congress's fifth plenum in October 2000 expressed it more fully.
50. Duckett.
51. See Andrew G. Walder, "The Remaking of the Chinese Working Class, 1949-1981." Modern China, 10 (1984), 3-48;
52. Dorothy J. Solinger, "Why We Cannot Count the Unemployed," China Quarterly, 167 (September 2001), 671-88.
53. Gordon White, "The Changing Role of the Chinese State in Labour Allocation: Towards the Market"?" Journal of Communist Studies, 3 (June 1987), 129-50.
54. Gordon White, Riding the Tiger: The Politics of Economic Reform in Post-Mao China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 138-43, 159.
55. Gordon White, Riding the Tiger: The Politics of Economic Reform in Post-Mao China (1993), Ibid., p. 140.
56. Lin Lean Lim and Gyorgy Sziraczki, "Employment, Social Security, and Enterprise Reforms in China," in Gregory K. Schoepfle, ed., Changes in China's Labor Market: Implications for the Future (Washington, D.C.: US. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 1996), pp. 51-52.
57. The information in the following paragraphs is drawn from Chow and Xu, pp. 59-62, unless specified otherwise.
58. Article 4 of the 1986 Bankruptcy Law holds that the state will guarantee the basic living needs of bankrupt firms' former workers. Thus, a state council circular of 1997 called on local governments to "pay for the arrangement of employees if a bankrupt enterprise can not afford the arrangement." Quoted in Summary of World Broadcasts [hereafter SWB] FE/2899 S1/3, Apr. 22, 1997, from Xinhua [New China News Agency], Apr. 20, 1997.1 would like to thank Stephen Green for alerting me to the provision in the law.
59. Wei Yu, "Financing Unemployment and Pension Insurance," in Andrew J. Nathan, Zhaohui Hong, and Steven R. Smith, Dilemmas of Reform in Jiang Zemin's China (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999), p. 130.
60. Ching Kwan Lee, "From Organized Dependence to Disorganized Despotism: Changing Labour Regimes in Chinese Factories," China Quarterly, 157 (1999), 55;
61. Chow and Xu, p. 13.
62. Li Hong, China Daily, Feb. 10, 1992,
63. in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, China Daily Report [hereafter FBIS], Feb. 10, 1992, p. 27;
64. Herald Translation Service, Chinalaw Web, http://www.qis.net/chinalaw/ prclaw66.htm.
65. Chow and Xu, p. 60.
66. Hussain, p. 84,
67. notes that the share of employment in nonpublic sector firms, 1994 to 2000, rose from 21 to 54.9 percent, yet most working in this sector lacked formal labor contracts and were outside the scope of social insurance. Only those in the "public sector," 83 percent of those classified as "staff and workers," were covered as of 2000.
68. "Zhu Rongji zongli zai guoyou qiye xiagang zhigong jiben shenghuo baozhang he zaijiuye gongzuo huiyishang di zongjie jianghua" [Premier Zhu Rongji's Summary Speech in the Work Conference on State-Owned Staff and Workers' Basic Livelihood Guarantee and Reemployment Work], Laodong baozhang tongxun [Labor Social Security Bulletin], 3 (January 13, 1999), 4-7.
69. In 1996 45 percent of state firms ran at a loss. It was the first year in which the state firms as a group lost money. Loraine A. West, "The Changing Effects of Economic Reform on Rural and Urban Employment," draft of paper presented at the conference "Unintended Social Consequences of Chinese Economic Reform," Harvard School of Public Health and The Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, Harvard University, May 23-24, 1997, p. 7.
70. "Shiye baoxian tiaoli: Zhonghua renmin gongheguo guowuyuan ling di 258 hao" [Unemployment Insurance Regulation PRC State Council Order No. 258], Zhongguo laodong [Chinese Labor], 3 (February3, 1999), 44-45.
71. Hussain, p. 98.
72. The following paragraphs come from Dorothy J. Solinger, "Labor in Limbo: Pushed by the Plan towards the Mirage of the Market," in Françoise Mengin and Jean-Louis Rocca, eds., Politics of China: Moving Frontiers (New York: Palgrave, 2002).
73. Hu Angang, "Creative Destruction of Restructuring: China's Urban Unemployment and Social Security (1993-2000)" (n.p., n.d.), pp. 16-17, notes that in 1999 the average living allowance for laid-off workers was 18.5 percent of wages of employed workers; unemployment insurance was 14.1 percent of wages.
74. Jingji Ribao, May 18, 1998;
75. Yang Jianmin, Shi Hanbing, and Lu Ting, "Zhongguo shehui baozhang shiye fazhan zhuangkuang" [The Situation of China's Social Security Enterprise], in Ru Xin, Lu Xueyi, and Li Peilin, Shehui lanpishu: 2003 nian: Zhongguo shehui xingshi fenxi yu yuce [Social Blue Book: 2003 Analysis and Predictions of China's Social Situation] (Beijing: Sciences Documentation Publishing House, 2003), p. 49.
76. "Nationwide Employment Project to be Launched," FBIS, Jan. 25, 1994, p. 69,
77. from Xinhua, Jan., 24, 1994;
78. Ru Xin, Lu Xueyi, and Dan Tianlun, eds., 1998 nian: Zhongguo shehui xingshi fenxi yu yuce [1998: Analysis and Prediction of China's Social Situation] (Beijing: Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House, 1998), p. 86.
79. Yang Shucheng, "Zaijiuye yao zou xiang shichanghua" [In Reemployment We Must Go toward Marketization], Zhongguo jiuye [Chinese Employment] (March 1999), 19.
80. "Zhu Rongji zongli zai wanshan shehui baozhang tixi zuotanhuishang qiangdiao, 'zai jinnian shixian liangge quebao di jichushang, jiakuai jianli wanshan di shehui baozhang tixi'" [The Premier Emphasizes in the Forum on Completing a Social Insurance System, "In This Year, on the Foundation of Realizing the Two Guarantees, Speed Up the Establishment of a Complete Social Insurance System"], Zhongguo laodong, 1 (2000), 5.
81. "1998 nian qiye xiagang zhigong jiben qingkuang" [The Basic Situation of the Laid-off Enterprise Staff and Workers in 1998], Laodong baozhang tongxun (1999), 10, states that laid-off workers let go by enterprises losing money represented 67 percent of all laid-off workers at the end of 1998.
82. Based on dozens of street interviews in Wuhan, 1999-2002.
83. Wang Dongjin, "Shehui baozhang zhidu gaige de zhongdian" [Critical Points on the Reform of the Social Security System], Gaige neican [Reform Internal Reference], 10 (2001), 5;
84. Zhang Zuoji, "Guanyu shehui baozhang tixi jianshe di youguan wenti" [Some Relevant Issues in the Construction of the Social Insurance System), Laodong baozhang tongxun, 1 (2001), 9-10.
85. That year the income of 41 percent of urban households declined. Wong, Marginalization, p. 124.
86. Song Xiaowu, Zhongguo shehui baozhang zhidu gaige [The Reform of China's Social Security System] (Beijing: Qinghua daxue chubanshe, 2001), pp. 137-38, notes that 1993 sample data showed 15 million urban inhabitants in poverty; by 1996 the State Council Development Research Center's research found that at least 12 million households (or over 30 million people) were living in absolute poverty.
87. Cook, "Politics," p. 5;
88. Song Xiaowu, pp. 137-38.
89. Li Peilin, "Dangqian zhongguo shehui fazhan de rogan wenti he xin qushi" [Current Issues and New Trends in Social Development], in Ru Xin, Lu Xueyi, and Li Peilin, eds., Shehui lanpishu: 2003 nian, p. 23.
90. Zhonggong zhongyang zuzhibu ketizu [Chinese Central Organization Department Research Group], 2000-2001 Zhongguo diaocha baogao - xin xingshixia renmin neibu maodun yanjiu [2000-2001 Chinese Investigation Report-Research on Internal Contradictions within the People under the New Situation] (Beijing: Zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 2001), pp. 170-71. The urban population does not include peasant migrants residing in cities less than one year.
91. Cook, "From Rice Bowl," p. 4.
92. Wong, p. 124.
93. Tang Jun, "The New Situation of Poverty and Antipoverty," in Ru Xin, Lu Xueyi, Li Peilin et al., eds., 2002 nian: Zhongguo shehui xingshi yu yuce (shehui lanpishu) [Year 2002: Analysis and Forecast of China's Social Situatiuon (Blue Book on Chinese Society)], (January 1,2002, FBIS Translated Text).
94. Tang Jun, "Dibao Zhiduzhong de shehui paichi" [Social Discrimination in the Minimum Living Guarantee System), paper presented at the Conference on Social Exclusion and Marginality in Chinese Societies, Hong Kong, November 16-17, 2001, p. 2.
95. Song Xiaowu, p. 148;
96. "Guowuyuan bangongting fabu tongzhi: Jiaqiang chengshi jumin zuidi shenghuo baozhang gongzuo" [The State Council Office Announces a Circular: Strengthen Urban Residents' Minimum Livelihood Guarantee Work], Renmin ribao haiwaiban [People's Daily Overseas Edition], Nov. 19, 2001,
97. from Xinhua, Nov. 17, 2001.
98. SWB, FE/3016, Sept. 5, 1997, p. G/6,
99. from Xinhua, Sept. 3, 1997.
100. From 1960 until the early 1980s the government prohibited rural people from entering cities and barred them from obtaining benefits accorded urban residents. Dorothy J. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
101. Cook, "Politics";
102. Elisabeth J. Croll, "Social Welfare Reform: Trends and Tensions," China Quarterly, 159 (September 1999), 684-99.
103. Hussain, p. 70.
104. It is unclear if this figure includes ad hoc subsidies to regions and firms in special difficulty or pertains only to a fixed arrangement in which shares were divided among administrative levels. See also "Circular from the State Council General Office on Further Enhancing Work on the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee for Urban Residents," Xinhua, Nov. 17, 2001, in FBIS-CHI-2001-1117.
105. Duckett, based on a statement by Hu Angang cited in the South China Morning Post, Aug. 10, 2002.
106. Increases are announced in Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, "Labor and Social Security in China" (Beijing: April 2002);
107. and SWB FE/4092, Mar. 11, 2001, p. G/5,
108. from Xinhua, Mar. 10, 2001.
109. In early 2002 the central government announced it had arranged to pay 86 billion yuan for social security-related purposes for the year. Feng Lei, Bao Shenghua, and Chen Mengyang, "Liaoning shebao gaige chongguan" [Liaoning's Social Security Reform's Important Period], Liaowang [Outlook], 11 (2002), 26.
110. That year the program's total fund reached 10.53 billion yuan, nearly double the amount spent in 1991. Of this, 4.6 billion came from the central treasury and 5.93 billion from local governments. Xinhuanet (Beijing), July 19, 2002. I would like to thank Jane Duckett for this citation.
111. Hussain, p. 78.
112. Song Xiaowu, pp. 143-44.
113. "Bian yingde shouru wei shiji shouru; dibao shouru keshi zhengce zuochu tiaozheng" [Change the Income Owed into Real Income; Readjust the Verification Policy of the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee], Xinhuanet, Oct. 24, 2002, http://news.xinhinnet.com/newscenter/2002-10/24/content_607113.htm.
114. "Circular from the State Council General Office on Further Enhancing Work on the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee for Urban Residents," Xinhua, Nov. 17, 2001, FBIS-CHI-2001-1117.
115. Tang Jun, "Jiasu zuidi shenghuo baozhang zhidu de guifanhua yunzuo" [Speed Up the Standardized Operation of the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee System], in Ru Xin, Lu Xuexi, and Li Peilin, eds., 2004 nian: Zhongguo shehui xingshi fenxi yu yuce [2004 Analysis and Forecast of Chinese Social Situation] (Beijing: Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House, 2004), p. 118.
116. "Xianji, xiance: Jianli zhongguo tese di jiuye baozhang tixi" [Offering Advice and Suggestions: Establish an Employment Insurance System with Chinese Characteristics], Zhongguo jinye, 4 (2000), 4-9;
117. Yi Wen, "Guoyou qiye di shehui baozhang yu ban shehui wenti" [State-owned Enterprises' Social Insurance and Managing Social Problems), Zhongguo jinye, 5 (2000), 7.
118. Mark W. Frazier, "The Unfunded Mandate of Heaven: The Center, the Cities, and the Politics of Pension Reform in China," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 29, 2002, pp. 20-23.
119. Cook, "From Rice Bowl," p. 18.