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Chinese Religions and Welfare Regimes Beyond the PRC pp 39–58Cite as

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Welfare Regimes in Chinese Societies

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Part of the book series: Religion and Society in Asia Pacific ((RSAP))

Abstract

This chapter discusses the policies of outsourcing to religious institutions social services provision directed at vulnerable populations in the framework of welfare regimes’ analysis. I consider the institutional contexts of welfare regimes in developing societies, East Asian developmental states, and (post-)socialist countries, and their variety of approaches to reliance on non-state social welfare, as the PRC displays some of the attributes of each of these three types of societies. Many of the other Chinese states, societies and communities described in this book represent important cases of East Asian developmental states or developing societies transiting into such developmental states. I then look at how each of these welfare regimes includes or excludes religious institutions in their policies, and then outline the main area of intervention in which the state and religious institutions have competed to deliver social services.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Discussion of the welfare state outside OECD countries is scant and often remains limited to Latin America. See, for example, Kurtz (2002). Only East Asia, as discussed below, has received far more attention.

  2. 2.

    For a detailed discussion of these policies in the framework used here, see the first two chapters of Laliberté (2022).

  3. 3.

    Shaun Breslin (1996) was one of the first scholars to make this point.

  4. 4.

    A point made in Barry Naughton (2017).

  5. 5.

    The distinction between conservative-corporatist and liberal-residual welfare states refers to the work of Esping-Andersen (1990).

  6. 6.

    The World Bank still (cautiously) considers China a developing country. See World Bank (2018: 10, 12, 29).

  7. 7.

    See Huang and Guo (2017).

  8. 8.

    China’s National Bureau of Statistics estimated 287 million migrant workers for 2017. See http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/201804/t20180427_1596389.html.

  9. 9.

    Esping-Andersen (1990), Pierson (1994).

  10. 10.

    Baldwin (1990) made this argument with reference to the origins of the welfare state in Europe.

  11. 11.

    See, for example, Gough and Wood (2004).

  12. 12.

    Haynes (2007), Lunn (2009), Clarke (2013), Tomalin (2015).

  13. 13.

    Aspalter (2002), Hwang (2012). See also the critical perspective in Goodman et al. (1998).

  14. 14.

    Holliday (2000).

  15. 15.

    Jones (1990).

  16. 16.

    Jones (1993), Walker and Wong (2005), Yu (2015).

  17. 17.

    Takegawa (2009), Lin and Chan (2015).

  18. 18.

    The comparisons of China and Vietnam by London (2014) and Gao et al. (2013) are among the rare exceptions to this trend.

  19. 19.

    At time of writing, the DPRK appeared poised to undertake economic reforms, but it would not be the first time this process stalled. See Frank (2005) on previous rounds of failed reforms.

  20. 20.

    Haggard and Kaufman (2008: 143).

  21. 21.

    The authors assembled by Ngo and Quijada (2015) examine a wide range of former and actual socialist states, from the former USSR and Poland prior to 1989, to China, Vietnam, and the DPRK today.

  22. 22.

    Ferrari et al. (2003).

  23. 23.

    Haggard and Kaufman (2008).

  24. 24.

    Richters (2012).

  25. 25.

    Laliberté (2022, Chapter 1).

  26. 26.

    On Vietnam’s relative openness to religion, see the contributions to Taylor (2007).

  27. 27.

    See Esping-Andersen (1990), Nussbaum and Sen (1993), Lindert (1994), Haggard and Kaufman (2008: 3–4).

  28. 28.

    I refer to the notion of welfare insecurity developed by Ian Gough and Geoff Wood (2004), which describes the absence of state support and exclusion from market resources due to poverty.

  29. 29.

    For this concept of deep religious diversity, I refer to Bhargava’s (2011: 406–407) idea about diversity within as well as between religions, which aims to reveal intra- as well as inter-religious domination.

  30. 30.

    The notion of “religious establishment” originally referred to churches which were granted privileges by the British crown, and later by American colonies. The meaning now includes religions legally recognized by the state, whether they qualify as democratic or authoritarian. See the contributions to Beaman and Sullivan (2016).

  31. 31.

    Jennings (2014: 122).

  32. 32.

    Migdal (1988).

  33. 33.

    The Journal of Muslim Philanthropy and Civil Society, an academic publication, focuses on this issue. See also Clark (2004), Cammett (2014).

  34. 34.

    Cammett and MacLean (2011, 2014).

  35. 35.

    A conclusion which Tsai (2007) reached in her ethnography on four provinces.

  36. 36.

    Before 1997, literature on this subject often included Hong Kong.

  37. 37.

    Caldwell (2010: 331).

  38. 38.

    Laliberté (2022).

  39. 39.

    Barnett and Stein (2012).

  40. 40.

    Fountain et al. (2004), Bush et al. (2015), Feener and Daly (2016).

  41. 41.

    Dueck and Byron (2011).

  42. 42.

    Aijazi and Pandwani (2015).

  43. 43.

    Porter (1999: 12).

  44. 44.

    Olivier et al. (2015).

  45. 45.

    Astrow et al. (2001).

  46. 46.

    Rumun (2014).

  47. 47.

    Willaime (2007a: 13).

  48. 48.

    Willaime (2007b: 57).

  49. 49.

    Hefner and Zaman (2007: 2).

  50. 50.

    Borooah and Iyer (2005).

  51. 51.

    Yao (2000).

  52. 52.

    In 2017, data from the IMF and China’s National Bureau of Statistics suggested that GDP per head (at purchasing power parity in US dollars) in Gansu was just below that of Morocco, while that of Beijing residents was comparable to that of Italy.

  53. 53.

    Although Buddhism matters symbolically in India, followers of that religion constitute too small a minority to influence social policy: less than 0.7% of the total population of India identifies as Buddhist, according to the 2011 census. In the state of Sikkim, which has the largest proportion of Buddhists of any Indian state, barely one-quarter of the population identifies as Buddhist.

  54. 54.

    The size of China’s middle class is notoriously difficult to evaluate. In an article about the political values of the middle class in China, Andrew Nathan (2016) used estimates provided by Chinese social scientists and arrived at 23% for 2009. Extrapolating based on this information and assuming an increase of 1% per year, approximately one-third of China’s population of 1.4 billion could be identified as middle class in 2019.

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    André Laliberté

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Laliberté, A. (2022). Welfare Regimes in Chinese Societies. In: Chinese Religions and Welfare Regimes Beyond the PRC. Religion and Society in Asia Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9828-6_3

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