Social policy evolution and social citizenship development in China

Abstract

In China, for a long time, due to the influence of the urban and rural dual social and economic structure and the household registration system, coupled with the localization of social welfare and public services provision, the development of Chinese social citizenship has had a significant regional color, and there is no unified national social citizenship. In recent years, social citizenship in China has received wide attention from scholars at home and abroad due to the huge number of internal rural–urban migrants, the reforms of social policy and the household registration system. This chapter aims to analyze the change of Chinese social citizenship in light of the evolution of social policy. Since the founding of new China in 1949, China’s social policy development has experienced different stages, which brought about different images of social citizenship. The rapid social policy expansion since the new century has reduced the fragmentation of Chinese social citizenship and created a favorable condition for building up a national social citizenship in China. Looking forward, Chinese policymakers should make a decision on building up a “social China” based on a unified national social citizenship that will go beyond hukou citizenship, occupational citizenship and local citizenship.