Introduction: People Oriented: A New Stage of Social Welfare Development in China
Alongside 35 years of economic development, China’s social welfare system has also undergone rapid change. The Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) is facing pressure to provide more services to the people it has served in the past, such as orphans, older people without families, and people with disabilities. The MCA is also facing pressure to provide new services to social groups that were not previously covered, such as orphans in communities, “left-behind children” whose parents have migrated to the cities for work. New service projects have been created overnight, as happened with free school lunches and school buses. Local governments, especially governments in relatively developed areas, are competing in welfare provision to see who can provide more and better services. Walking in the streets of Beijing, it is not unusual to see advertisements in supermarkets or in residential areas, along the lines of, “The government will provide a free pair of glasses to Beijing residents aged above a certain number of years” or “The government is providing a free health check (or a free flu injection) for all Beijing eligible residents in attendance at a particular time and place.” This new trend is vastly different from even a few years ago, when the role of government in welfare provision was strictly residual and welfare was generally regarded as the private responsibility of families for whom policy support was rare. At that time, the state
Review Article: Human Rights Based Social Policies – Challenges for China
This review article discusses findings from current Chinese social policy literature about the dilemmas facing the Chinese government to reform China's residual social policies, from historic, socio-economic and political perspectives. It explores how human rights based policies and transparent management are beginning to be reflected in recent literature as the policy changes emerge from current social and political development in China. China is emerging as a new important international force, both economically and socially. Its social policies are at a turning point as it shifts to a middle developed country and as the world witnesses the emergence of a new welfare state.
Capturing Crime in the Antipodes: Colonist Cultural Representation of Indigeneity
This chapter adopts a Southern criminological lens, which allows the authors to explore how colonialism has been constructed and depicted in museums within both regional and urban Australia. By studying spatial and historical silences in Australian museums, this chapter offers a consistent frame to chronologically chart Anglo-Australian depictions of Indigeneity, imperialism and violence wielded by the state. As this chapter will argue, museums can often reflect Westernized (white) conceptualizations about Indigeneity and the state violence involved in colonization, which actively re-enforces popular views and influences sociopolitical visions of identity, the state and justice.