Handbooks of Research on Contemporary China. Cheltenham, UK, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2017. xiii, 443 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures.) US$270.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-78347-273-4.
China’s adoption of reform and opening-up policies in late 1978 has led to great transformations in its broadly defined economic and social institutions, of which social welfare is a major part. Handbook of Welfare in China, edited by Beatriz Carrillo, Johanna Hood, and Paul Kadetz, is a collection of 20 authoritative studies of welfare in China written by both leading and emerging scholars in the multidisciplinary field of social welfare. The Handbook focuses on the reform era (1978 to the present), but with an impressive introduction by the editors and three historical studies analyzing China’s welfare provision from the late Qing to the People’s Republic, which, taken together, firmly situate the contemporary studies in a historical background. The aim of the Handbook, according to the editors, is thus “to highlight and provide a better understanding of China’s major actors, institutions, structures and challenges in welfare provision from the end of empire to President Xi Jinping’s ‘rejuvenated’ China that is also an important global player” (3).
The Handbook classifies social welfare into three major categories, which are social insurance, social relief, and social services, based on received theorization of social welfare (1).
The book is structured into five parts. Part 1 sets up the context of China’s welfare in three historical studies, discussing state regulation of non-state charities, leprosy, and psychiatric welfare. Part 2 addresses the foundations of the welfare system in China’s reform era, with six studies on welfare policy, health care, housing, education, urban minimum livelihood, and minorities’ social welfare, respectively. These studies as a whole provide a comprehensive assessment of China’s mainstream social welfare system, which has developed as policy responses to the gradual breakdown of the pre-reform socialist welfare system and which has resulted in new types of inequality. Part 3, entitled “gaps in the welfare system,” analyzes social welfare for the disadvantaged, including the elderly, the disabled, and women as well as the rural population. The first three categories, especially the elderly and the disabled, have long been the targets of social welfare both in China and the world; the rural population, however, as disadvantaged in terms of social welfare, has been closely related to the household registration (hukou) system that took shape in the 1950s. Under this hukou system, the state provided comprehensive social welfare benefits to the majority of urban residents, while leaving rural residents, who had practically no way to escape their rural citizenship, to rural collectives which offered a much lower level of welfare benefits. Part 4 discusses the non-state welfare providers such as NGOs and elite philanthropists in the reform era, while part 5 analyzes the environmental and demographic challenges of welfare provision in the twenty-first century. In the cases discussed in the Handbook, attention has been paid to local disparities in both policy design and implementation within the broad framework of state-society relations (14). In addition, this Handbook includes a series of brief introductions written by the editors to each of the five parts, guiding readers to the major themes, arguments, and debates of the particular part and linking the different parts into a coherent whole.
As a collection of studies by scholars from a variety of disciplines, such as history, political science, economy, sociology, anthropology, and demography, this Handbook sometimes presents competing perspectives. The differing viewpoints should be treated as a strong point, as they are thought-provoking. For instance, in their introduction the editors raise the issue of the accuracy of applying Western concepts, such as Esping-Andersen’s welfare regimes and T.H. Marshall’s social citizenship, to understanding China’s welfare provision. This is, to some degree, supported by the studies of historians Thomas David DuBois and Emily Baum, both of which reveal that China’s indigenous ideas and institutions of social welfare persisted when the ruling governments attempted to adopt foreign models throughout the twentieth century. On the other hand, political scientist Tony Saich of Harvard uses Marshall’s concept of “social citizenship” to assess China’s welfare policy in the reform era, in which he concludes that “social citizenship” is likely to precede “political citizenship” in China (95). I think it may well be that China’s social welfare will continue to proceed in a distinctive Chinese path, which is not related to “political citizenship” in Western terms.
I would like to raise one point for discussion. This comprehensive Handbook on social welfare defines social insurance and social relief as two of its three essential parts. However, neither the editors’ extended introduction nor the three historical studies pay attention to social insurance or social relief in the first half of the twentieth century. Consequently, the Beijing government’s (1912–1927) and the Nationalist government’s (1927–1949) efforts in social insurance and social relief, which had significant policy meaning for contemporary social insurance and social assistance in both China and Taiwan, have been ignored. Thus, a historical study on China’s social insurance and/or social relief (or simply social security) in the first half of the twentieth century would have greatly balanced its coverage and enriched its historical background. Nonetheless, this Handbook is an important and indispensable source for scholars and researchers in all related fields who are interested in the topic of China’s social welfare, broadly defined.
Aiqun Hu
Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, USA