Abstract
In examining the development of urban social security in China between 1949 and 1988, this study elucidates the impact of a country’s politics on the modification of the design, operation, and transformation of its social security. This study complements existing theories and questions regarding the correlation between economic growth and the development of social security and tests the utility of popular theories of social security development for understanding the Chinese case. In order to conduct vertical comparison, this study divides the period of social security development—namely, 1949 to 1988—according to changes in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doctrine. Focusing on the emergence of and modifications to China’s social security system before its reform in 1988, this study identifies the structural features and philosophy of its institutional design and analyses its development using statistical data. More specifically, this study demonstrates that changes in the doctrine of the CCP decisively impacted the development of China’s urban social security. In doing so, this study demonstrates a new means of predicting a country’s social security development.
The development of China’s urban social security system, 1949–1988