China's Development

The following sections are included:

• Contents
• About the Author

Welfare-centric approaches are ill equipped to account for East Asian development experiences. Based on the level of social expenditures either in absolute amount or as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), East Asian societies are too low to qualify for the title of a welfare state, particularly when they were at the stage of economic takeoff. Even after two decades of “welfare deepening” since the 1990s, their social expenditures in general are still not high by the standards of their international peers. Concepts and perspectives such as “reluctant welfarism” have been used to set East Asia apart from other welfare regimes.

Social policy has to be justified and defended, particularly when it involves competing visions of what are desirable social goals and what are best means to achieve them. The debate often centres on the relationship between the state, the markets and the family in the provision of social welfare. Since the 1990s, social investment has emerged as a new paradigm in European Union (EU) countries. It justifies social policy on the new ground that social expenditures are essentially investments capable of producing positive returns for households, the economy and society.

Education is highly valued in the modern era. Human capital theory, from a utilitarian perspective, offers practical reasons why education is a good thing to have. George Psacharopoulos, one of the leading scholars on international education, provides a useful overview of the benefits of education. Education generates both private and social benefits. Private benefits include labour market outcomes such as employability, higher earnings, less unemployment, labour market flexibility and greater mobility, and nonmarket outcomes such as greater consumer efficiency and better health. Social benefits include higher productivity, higher net tax revenue, less reliance on government financial support, lower crime rates, less spread of infectious diseases, better social cohesion, voter participation and so on.

China’s vocational education was not a priority in much of the 1980s and 1990s as the government was preoccupied with the expansion of the nine-year compulsory education and reform of higher education. Into the 2000s, the situation began to change. The expansion of nine-year compulsory education has approached saturation point; the spectacular expansion of higher education since 1999 has slowed down from 2006. The Chinese government began to pay more attention to senior secondary education, which had been sandwiched between compulsory education and higher education for decades.

The landscape of China’s higher education has changed profoundly since the late 1990s. Previously, China had a very low gross tertiary enrolment ratio. The situation began to change in 1999 when the government expanded the new intakes by a huge 48%. In 1998, the number of new enrollees was slightly above one million; it increased to 5.5 million in 2006, growing at a pace rarely seen in the world’s education history. The unprecedented expansion pushed China into the stage of mass higher education in the early 2000s, with 15% of the age cohort (18–22) having access to higher education.

For many decades, China’s leaders have seen science and technology (S&T) as critical to its modernisation agenda. It is still the case today, probably more so due to the higher expectation of China becoming a global innovation powerhouse. As China goes through different stages of development, its S&T system evolves as well, driven by new aspirations, changing needs and surging resources.

In 1978, China held the National Conference on Science and Technology. It turned out to be a milestone in China’s S&T development and a part of a larger agenda to divert China from political struggle to economic development. It ushered in the “spring of science”. Chinese scientists, often targets of political struggle under Mao, were reinstated under Deng. S&T was elevated as the primary productive force.

For decades, China has relied heavily on the household registration or hukou system to manage internal migration. The hukou system used to work against migration. Today, massive migration occurs, from rural to urban or urban to urban. In 2015, China’s migrant population totalled 247 million nationwide. Migrants from the countryside reached nearly 169 million. Massive migration has been an integral part and an important driver of China’s development.

Social investment as a policy paradigm can be seen as an attempt to reinforce the positive relationship between economic growth and social development. It is an attractive approach because it does not see social welfare and economic growth as antithetical. By investing in education, health and other capacity-building programmes of the people, social expenditures are expected to generate future returns for individuals and families, and create more resources for society, which in turn sustain economic growth, reduce welfare needs and improve social wellbeing. Social expenditures are not a liability as they produce long-lasting, cumulative effects for citizens and society.

The following section is included:

• Index