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What explains divergent levels of support for welfare spending in a non-Western authoritarian state? Can self-interest and ideology, two major theoretical frameworks from cross-national research, explain attitudinal patterns in China? Using data collected from an original survey in two provinces in 2017, we examined urban Chinese attitudes toward welfare spending. We focused on three social policy domains with distinctive characteristics: education, healthcare, and poverty alleviation. All domains received fairly high levels of support for increased spending from our sample. Our regression models suggest that self-interest and ideology are both associated with welfare attitudes in urban China, but self-interest variables operate in unexpected ways, reflecting the distinctive socio-economic and cultural context in which welfare attitudes are formed. This study concludes with broad policy implications for social policy reform in China. © 2020 Zhejiang University.

Policy feedback theory posits that pre-existing policies shape citizens’ policy preferences and attitudes. This attitudinal feedback effect may, in turn, either reinforce or undermine current policies. This study seeks to examine whether attitudinal feedback explains why urban Chinese are motivated to contribute to social health insurance, a highly tangible issue for ordinary Chinese. Empirical data were collected in an original survey of urban inhabitants in three provinces between late 2017 and early 2018. Quantitative results reveal clear attitudinal feedback. Resource effects, interpretive effects, and individual learning effects all appear to shape motivations for contributing to social health insurance. © 2020, This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.© 2020 The Editor, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice.