Socializing welfare responsibility : a case study of urban community services in Guangzhou

Abstract

This study attempts to examine the welfare socialization approach through the adoption of community service policy in urban neigbourhoods in China. It is a qualitative and exploratory study of the implementation of community service policy under the ambit of welfare socialization, an approach akin to Western-style privatization. By employing the parameters of privatization in terms of reduction in state funding, provision and regulation, the extent to which community-centred social programmes have taken up the vacuum left by state withdrawal is investigated. The advent of market-oriented economic reforms since the late 1970s have exerted wide-ranging and profound impacts on Chinese society. Among these impacts, state-run production units have undergone unprecedented restructuring and the welfare system has been readjusted accordingly. Focusing on the rapidly industrializing and developing urban cities, welfare provision underwent substantial revamping. Co-existing with state-operated provisions, privately-run welfare institutions, family care, and social services run by the quasi-statutory Street Offices in urban communities have flourished since their initiation in 1987. To respond to the transforming social situations and rising expectations of local residents, communities have launched a wide range of programmes. The scope of service items, recipients and providers have been broadened to fill the vacuum engendered by the rolling back of the state and decline of work unit welfare functions. Market principles and ideologies were injected into the design and operation of community services. Along with conventional welfare services for the needy, convenience services facilitating residents’ life, community-based employment services as well as management of the state-owned enterprises’ retirees emerged successively in the last two decades. Shayuan Street in Guangzhou has been selected as a case study to illustrate how the community service policy is implemented in practice. The staff and cadres of the community organizations, service users, non-users, as well as the officials of the government bodies concerned were interviewed to gauge their views and comments. The findings suggest there are wide policy implications resulting from the community service policy and on welfare development in China. Chinese social welfare is now heading for corporatization or marketization aimed at synchronizing with the economic reforms and structural transformation. Welfare responsibility has become individualized, meaning that people have to pay for service consumption, which used to be the responsibility of the state. Social policy under the market economy is not solely enacted for the purpose of relieving the needy but also for enhancing economic growth. The expression of community services has functioned as a tool to manage social change and social problems.