Organizer: Jane Duckett, Manchester University
Chair: Marc Blecher, Oberlin College
Discussant: Gordon White, University of Sussex
This panel examines the effects of the Dengist market reforms and state decentralisation on employment and social welfare systems in both rural and urban China. Market oriented reforms since 1978 have transformed the working environment and conditions of many, as more people are employed in the non-state sector and as labour markets have emerged. At the same time, social safety nets have been torn apart, as the rural communes that emphasised egalitarianism in employment and rudimentary social welfare have been dissolved, and the urban "iron rice bowl" has eroded. Although leaders at the central and local levels realise the importance of safety nets, not least for preventing destabilising social unrest, decentralisation has limited the state's capacity to provide comprehensively for its population. Individuals, non-state enterprises, and small collectives (such as villages) are increasingly responsible for social welfare and employment issues, but it is often more profitable for firms and collectives to refuse that role with respect to workers and non-workers alike. The result is deepening inequity, as some wealthy entrepreneurs prosper while the unskilled (or unfortunate) face an impoverished and precarious existence. The social and political picture, with pockets of protection amid economic insecurity, is now a fragmented one that may be a time bomb for the current regime.
Four important dimensions of these proletarianising socio-economic processes are addressed by the panel: the variation in employment conditions and in safety nets (including health care, old age support, unemployment compensation, labour safety) available to Chinese people in different localities; the sources and political implications of this variation; the new roles enterprises and local-level state organs assume in light of these changes; and the implications for the capacity of the state to sustain the reforms.
The panelists were selected to bridge the urban-rural gap found so often in Chinese studies. Jane Duckett argues that decentralisation has led departments providing social welfare in urban China to set up new businesses to fund their work. This has produced variable quality in welfare provision even within localities and has further fragmented the state. Marc Blecher analyses both the ways that workers are comprehending and experiencing the reduction of social services and guaranteed employment, and also the efforts of the state and of enterprises to manage the retrenchment. George P. Brown and Michelle S. Mood turn to the countryside, arguing that the capacity for villages to provide safe and remunerative employment and a comprehensive social safety net depends on local economic resources and on the powers that village leaders exercise over local economic activity. Marion Jones looks at provincial and sub-provincial data on inequality in income and living standards to reveal the macro-impact of decentralisation. The papers together, by focusing on labour issues and social security, evaluate the possibility that new destabilising urban and rural classes are being created.
Work and Welfare in Rural China, or, How the Rural Reforms Have Changed
Employment and Social Welfare Conditions in Four Areas in Eastern China
George P. Brown, Boston College; Michelle S. Mood, Providence College
Rural reforms have had an uneven effect in China. As the market has penetrated rural China, the commune system of full employment, egalitarianism, and social welfare has been dismantled, providing many farmers with new employment opportunities and greater incomes, and leaving many others with greater uncertainties. In some areas, the limited social welfare benefits formerly provided by the commune system have disappeared, while in other areas the growth of TVEs has provided new employment and income opportunities and has created enough local revenue to reinforce and even expand on rural social welfare benefits.
We seek to answer the following questions with regard to these issues: (1) To what extent do off-farm employment opportunities offset changes in social welfare provisions? How are these economic opportunities for villagers conditioned by local, political leadership, gender, education, and training? (2) How variable are rural social welfare endowments, and are these differences simply a product of differing economic endowments? (3) Does this variation fit expected patterns of differentiation predicted by G. W. Skinner's "hierarchical regional space" model? (4) What is the effect of different forms of property ownership (especially with regard to rural enterprises) on rural social welfare provisions? (5) What is the effect of provincial and prefectural government policies regarding fiscal redistribution for rural social welfare purposes?
This paper is based on recent field work in rural Tianjin and Xiamen counties, and in rural Hebei and Jiangsu. In addition to case studies, the paper makes use of census data, provincial and sub-provincial statistical yearbooks, and internal reports on rural socio-economic conditions.
Rising Inequality and Declining Living Standards in China Since 1983
Marion E. Jones, University of Regina
This paper provides an overview of trends in and underlying causes of rural inequality and living standards at a regional and an interpersonal level in the wake of devolution and institutional change in China. First, in rural areas the dissolution of the communes, and the loss of that social security, has curtailed the quality of life considerably, due to rising mortality rates and increased fears over personal security, even with apparent increases in prosperity. Second, Dengist policies are limiting the pace of rural modernization due to the risk spreading behavior of rural households, and their limited participation in the off-farm labour market. To ensure subsistence and to maximize cash income through the business cycle, rural households retain control over their land while also having some household members in the non-farm sector. With little or no social security provision in many areas, these are perfectly rational actions, but they are hindering the agglomeration of land holdings, the modernization of agricultural production and the effective transfer of labour to the non-farm sector. Next, within urban areas similar trends are emerging in terms of families' survival strategies in the absence of the iron rice bowl. Urban households still have at least one family member in the state-owned sector to maintain access to the dwindling social security there, while boosting total family earnings and savings with free enterprise employment for other family members. Finally, data on regional trends in living standards and inequality point to increased convergence between the coastal regions and the three municipalities in both material and non-material terms, while there has been an increase in the gap between coastal areas and the interior. As a result there are considerable forces of social unrest in the country, due to both interpersonal or inter-household inequality within any locale, and also rising polarization between regions of the country.
Decentralisation and Entrepreneurialism in China's Urban Welfare Provision
Jane Duckett, Manchester University
This paper argues that decentralisation has encouraged state departments that provide urban social welfare to set up new businesses, and concludes that this is producing both differences in the quality of welfare provision and further fragmentation of the state system. Based on 1993 and 1996 interviews with officials in Tianjin's "Civil Affairs" system that provides such welfare services as care for the disabled, old age homes and orphanages, the paper explains that although decentralisation has increased local government revenues, these departments are politically weak in relation to other parts of the state administrative system and so receive a smaller share. They are short of resources for even the most rudimentary welfare provision. Bureaux and their agencies that provide these services therefore often rely on income from business ventures for their work.
Better services are now often provided by those bureaux and agencies with the most successful business ventures or by those institutions most closely attached to them. While entrepreneurialism in this sector can therefore mean a wider range of improved social services for urban residents, this comes with several consequences. First, residents now have to pay for more facilities. Second, the quality of services can be extremely varied within a given locality, and urban dwellers dependent on institutions that are not well-placed to find non-state sources of extra revenue can still fall through the security net. Third, the businesses give departments more autonomy in relation to both higher levels of the state system and to local governments and further fragment an already decentralised state.
A World to Lose: Workers, Managers, and the State in the Retrenchment of Social
and Employment Guarantees
Marc Blecher, Oberlin College
Facing increasing pressures of the market and the marketizing state, many older Chinese enterprises are reducing the social and employment guarantees that they have been providing to their workers, while newer firms are not even beginning to make such provisions. This shift could have explosive political effects, as the Chinese leadership is all too well aware. In the hope of gauging just how destabilizing the transition could be, this paper will analyze both the ways that workers are comprehending and experiencing the reduction of social services and guaranteed employment, and also the efforts of the state and of enterprises to manage the retrenchment. It will be based on in-depth interviews now being undertaken with factory workers and managers in Tianjin, as well as on standard documentary and statistical methods.
On the workers' side, information will be presented on: the concrete effects of the reduced guarantees on the livelihoods of various working class strata (including age, skills, gender, and ownership and productive sector); the material alternatives workers face; their expectations, both at the material level but also, more importantly, in terms of their political and even moral values; their reactions, as communicated directly and indirectly in the interviews as well as their political activities; the effects of differential levels of retrenchment on the internal structure and relations of the working class; and, finally, workers' sense of the political possibilities for registering concerns they may have.
On the side of the state and enterprises, the paper will examine: the reasons behind the cutback in social services and employment guarantees (e.g., market pressure, a wish for managerial flexibility, political demands to comply with reform policies); officials' own political values, concerns and expectations; and the specific details of the social and labor policies they are putting into place.