Rebuilding the Urban Chinese Welfare State

ABSTRACT: China has experienced unprecedented lay-offs and rising levels of poverty in its cities over the past 15 years. As enterprises, local governments, and the central state have responded, they have built a new type of welfare regime in the process. Based on fieldwork in nine Chinese cities between 2000 and 2002, and a review of more recent documentary sources, I draw on perspectives from the broader comparative literature of welfare and social protection to examine policy responses to lay-offs and urban poverty in an effort to explain just what sort of new welfare state regime has come into being.

KEY WORDS: Social Policy, Welfare, Reform