Abstract
Rapid welfare expansion is taking place in China across a range of policy fields. In the Nordic countries, intra-Nordic diversity and significant policy changes are not difficult to identify despite the notion of universal Nordic welfare regimes. This article will bridge these very different worlds of welfare in an effort to classify the Chinese unemployment-protection system with a comparative framework aimed at furthering the emerging Sino-Nordic research dialogue. This research dialogue has gained relevance in recent years with the new official Chinese goal of building a more universal welfare system. Welfare research that includes China from a comparative perspective is still extremely rare. Despite the lofty Chinese goals, many Chinese policy challenges still loom large. These are the rural-urban divide exacerbated by the Chinese household registration system, coverage of unemployment insurance and social assistance, inadequate and declining benefit levels, and, finally, funding issues. As this article will also substantiate, Denmark and Finland are something approaching best cases for illustrating intra-Nordic diversity. As regards the Chinese challenges, it is explained how they can to some extent be understood as the teething troubles of a developmental welfare state, since the Nordic counterparts have faced similar issues during their eras of welfare expansion.
Highlights
Market-oriented reforms of the labour market and the emergence of unemployment as a social problem are more than anything else the epicentre of dramatic social change in China in recent decades (Xu, 2012; Lee & Warner, 2007)
Even within the broader welfare regime approach, China is curiously enough not always included in the literature on East Asia, this might in part be a reflection of the fact that there is great deal of social policy devolution in China, which makes it difficult to talk of a nationally coherent welfare state as such
It is important to note that rural-urban migrants are still excluded from the new social assistance, the Minimum Living Standard Scheme (MLSS)., which will be explained further below, and that surveys in 2005 and 2010 placed coverage of unemployment insurance among migrant workers at a very low nine to ten per cent (Wong, 2013)
Summary
Market-oriented reforms of the labour market and the emergence of unemployment as a social problem are more than anything else the epicentre of dramatic social change in China in recent decades (Xu, 2012; Lee & Warner, 2007). The social-policy response to this has been the introduction of both unemployment insurance and social assistance, and there is a relatively rich English literature on the development and challenges of these new schemes (for example Liu & Kongshøj, 2014; Ngok, 2013; Gao, 2013; Lei, 2012; Chan, 2010; Duckett & Carillo, 2008). This literature will be drawn on later in this article. It is important to note that rural-urban migrants are still excluded from the new social assistance, the Minimum Living Standard Scheme (MLSS)., which will be explained further below, and that surveys in 2005 and 2010 placed coverage of unemployment insurance among migrant workers at a very low nine to ten per cent (Wong, 2013)
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