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
Transitional and Developmental Challenges for Chinese Social Policy
This special issue explores the social policy challenges faced by China as it navigates a period of rapid social and economic change. While China has benefited from significant growth and new wealth in recent years, there are many sections of Chinese society that continue to live in poverty. The authors in this special issue provide thoughtful and creative responses to difficult policy questions with the aim of reducing poverty and expanding and improving social and community services.
Arab Uprisings and the Outstanding Return to Democracy: Tunisia as a Model
In the wake of the Middle Eastern crises, the Tunisian case in focus has been doted as a unique phenomenon being that it was the Genesis of the revolution that ultimately spread across the Middle East like wild fire, but has eventually heralded a new dawn as democracy has incidentally returned to the Empire. This literature therefore looks closely at the extent to which the ‘DignityRevolution’ has been instrumental in the Middle East uprisings, which have brought an end to dynastic autocracies. The literature zeros in on the Tunisian uprising which has attracted global concerns, sympathy and has sparked interests in the international arena. The literature finds that the people hold colossal prospect in the uprising and its resultant effect, as it paved the way for the revolutionist to generate, gather and disseminate information on the condition of the entire region to the international community. The people in this context were of utmost importance and played a very crucial role in the creation of awareness, mobilization of protesters and utmost determining the direction of the uprising and also ensuring a speedy return to democratic rule. The paper submits that the role of the people in ensuring that the ruins of the uprising is not left littering around and democracy restored is highly commendable and should be a model for all other Arab countries involved in the revolution.