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Roundtable: State and Civil Society in Contemporary China: Negotiating Social Service Provision
Organizer: Shawn Shieh, Marist College
Discussants: Jonathan Schwartz, State University of New York; Hong Zhang, Colby College; Marsha Smith, Augustana College; Andre Laliberte, University of Quebec at Montreal; Wanxin Li, Tsinghua University; and Joan Kaufman, Harvard University
During the reform period, social service provision has undergone significant changes. The state has been withdrawing from providing social services via the work unit and resorting increasingly to market mechanisms and civil society organizations to finance and deliver those services. A critical challenge the state faces in this transition is the creation of a regulatory framework to manage the diverse interactions between the state, markets and civil society in social service provision. This roundtable explores the varied responses of the state and civil society to these changes in both crisis and noncrisis situations, and the challenge of negotiating and institutionalizing the roles of the state and civil society in social services. Participants will be asked to address a common set of questions for their particular case. How have state and civil society roles evolved in their area of social services, and to what extent do they represent a departure from past practices? Has the role of civil society organizations been recognized by the state, and what is the process by which official recognition is negotiated? How has this negotiated relationship affected the quality of social service provision? Some participants will address crisis situations such as the response to the SARS, while others will examine responses in noncrisis areas such as HIV/AIDS, migrant worker benefits, poverty relief and child welfare. Still others will look at the problems created by these changes, and the state’s efforts to create a regulatory framework to address these problems.