Review of Jennifer Pan, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers, Oxford University Press, 2020

Abstract

In this important book, Jennifer Pan examines the Chinese social assistance (safety net) scheme (known as dibao) arguing that China has ‘reshaped its major social assistance program … turning an effort to alleviate poverty into a tool of surveillance and repression’. Her basic argument is that this ‘distortion’ of the original objective of the scheme arises from the Chinese government’s preoccupation with ‘quelling dissent in the name of political order, or stability’. Pan draws on a range of different approaches and uses some innovative methods in this study. It is an important book not only for those interested in Chinese social policy and/or public security but for anybody interested in how the Chinese state works and how policies flow down to the lowest level of governance. However, the author overstates her case and the evidence she presents – while very interesting in itself – does not uphold the sweeping claims advanced in the book.