ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a brief overview of the changes in welfare policies of China since 1949 when the Communist Party came into power. It shows that the welfare policies in China are centred on two themes: facilitating economic growth and maintaining the political authority of the Communist Party.1 Despite that, China has moved from a command economy pursuing Communist ideology to a market economy following ‘Socialism with Chinese Characters’, the approaches the state has responded to changing welfare needs have not really drifted away from the two themes. What has changed is the understanding of what types of policies and institutions can help to fulfil greater economic growth and legitimising control by the Communist Party. There are many ways to define the stages of reform in China. To show how pursuing economic
growth and political authority has led to welfare changes, this chapter presents the welfare history in a chronological order: 1) pre-1978, the period of Central Planning; 2) 1978-2003, the period in which economic growth played a dominant role; and 3) post-2003, the period that many scholars claim to be the ‘spring’ of social policy.
