Chinese Workfarism

Logics and Realities of the Work–Welfare Governance Model

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12916601
AutoresXiaodong Sun (0000-0001-5015-0945, China University of Political Science and Law, autor de correspondencia)
Año2014
Volumen8
Número1
Páginas43-58
Fecha de publicación2014-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAsian Social Work and Policy Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1753-1403 • E-ISSN: 1753-1411
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aswp.12024
OpenAlexW2038682692
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas33

Given the fundamental disparities between China and the west in political structures, social values, policy regimes, and problem loads, it is meaningful to use “workfare” as a challenging analytical standpoint and detect that China had created unique workfare regimes to build up the past state‐socialism and the present market‐socialism. In the era of state‐socialism, the dual‐track welfare system, apparently adopting an institutional approach to the city and a residual approach to the countryside, was purposely integrated with the segregated urban‐rural work system, constituting a China‐specific workfare regime in which the whole workforce was included and effectively organized into the socio‐economic order. Under market‐socialism that appears as an awkward hybrid, the work‐welfare governance model is being gradually transformed into a pragmatic, much marketized one, though without idealogical legitimacy as well as a clear‐cut vision. On the one hand, employment differentiation and income disparity resulted from a strategic shift from the “reform‐without‐losers” stage to the “reform‐with‐losers” stage in the labor market, together with a large scale rural‐to‐urban labor migration, are structuring a market‐oriented, stratified employment system. On the other hand, while being a welfare laggard, China's productivist, status‐segregated welfare system is taking shape owing to a set of welfare reforms along the line of marketization and societalization. All these changes would imply that China is converging towards a neo‐liberal regime in which the role of the state is residual to the market

China · Communism · Corporate governance · Economic system · Economics · Legitimacy · Market economy · Market socialism · Marketization · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Socialism · Welfare · Welfare reform · Welfare state · Workfare · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Employment and Welfare Studies · Social Policy and Reform Studies