China's Social Policy: Reform and Development in the Context of Marketization and Globalization.

This paper offers a wide-ranging review of social policy trends and developments in China. It details the characteristics of what had been traditional social polity during the first 40 years of the People's Republic. It then looks at the pressures on this system in the context of Market Reform and the Open Door policy, and comments on the changing roles of government, NGOs and urban employment units, in the societalization of social policy away from the state welfare model. The general direction of reform is portrayed as neo-liberal, geared to reducing the role of government in the provision of welfare and to increasing individual responsibility for social security and well-being. However, there is as yet no prospect of a fully privatized social welfare system, owing to the continuing weak state of the non-governmental sector. In conclusion, prospects for the future are analysed and summed up in the light of the government's two overriding policy objectives: economic development, coupled with the maintenance of social/political stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]