Welfare practices in rural China

Abstract

In rural China emergency aid and long-term financial assistance are distributed annually to approximately seven million people. Final responsibility for this enormous undertaking lies with the Ministry of Public Security in Peking, but for the majority of individuals in need relief comes directly from surpluses generated and controlled by village communities. Rural relief is distributed primarily in kind rather than in cash payments and guarantees only a minimal standard of living. Thus recipients who are physically able supplement their aid with light jobs or cultivate dependency relationships with neighbours and relatives. The number of recipients is kept at a minimum by a government policy of full employment, limited internal migration, and a strong sense of family responsibility for destitute or disabled relatives. Administered without a separate welfare bureaucracy or staff, the system is organizationally simple. It success, however, rests on a complex mix of political and economic resources not easily replicated by reorganization of bureaucracies, retraining of civil servants, or increases in cash payments. In short, the rural relief system is an integral part of the social and political transformation of the traditional rural economy implemented by the Chinese Communist Party since 1949.