Globalization, Inequality and Social Policy: China on the Threshold of Entry into the World Trade Organization

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, social researchers have had increasingly to turn from domestic to international and global perspectives in their efforts to account for growing levels of social inequality and in their search for practical policy solutions. It is against this background that China’s recent experience is to be appreciated. The combined programme of economic reform coupled with an open‐door policy has achieved much, yet has been accompanied by marked increases in social inequality. Until recently, most experts seemed to believe this trend to be a mere transitional “by‐product” of domestic economic reform. Further social reform, backed by sustained economic growth, would be sufficient to resolve the problem. However, the facts now suggest otherwise. Sustained economic growth and reform, especially from the later 1990s, has been accompanied by ever‐widening social inequality, with no signs of an end in sight. This is a critical period. China is now on the eve of entry into the WTO, with all the anxieties as well as rewards this signals for the Chinese people. Against this background the present paper weighs up the likely impact of globalization on China’s social structure and its systems of social protection. It concludes by offering suggestions for international social policy advance both “longitudinal” (between developed and developing countries) and “latitudinal” (between developing countries in competition with each other). Only by means of such “joint efforts” might China hope to escape the “social protection dilemmas” associated with entry into the WTO.