The story of China's spectacular economic growth is well known. Less well known is the country's equally dramatic, though not always equally successful, social policy transition. Between the mid- 1990s and mid-2000s---the focal period for this book---China's central government went a long way toward consolidating the social policy framework that had gradually emerged in piecemeal fashion during the initial phases of economic liberalization. Major policy decisions during the focal period included adopting a single national pension plan for urban areas, standardizing unemployment insurance, (re)establishing nationwide rural health care coverage, opening urban education systems to children of rural migrants, introducing trilingual education policies in ethnic minority regions, expanding college enrolment, addressing the challenge of HIV/AIDS more comprehensively, and equalizing social welfare spending across provinces, among others. Unresolved is the direction of policy in the face of longer-term industrial and demographic trends---and the possibility of a chronically weak global economy. Chinese Social Policy in a Time of Transition offers scholars, practitioners, students, and policymakers a foundation from which to explore those issues based on a composite snapshot of Chinese social policy at its point of greatest maturation prior to the 2007 global crisis.

Chapter 1. Introduction: Chinese Social Policy in a Time of TransitionKaren Baehler and Douglas J. BesharovChapter 2. Welfare Regimes in the Wake of State Socialism: China and VietnamJonathan LondonChapter 3. Social Benefits and Income Inequality in Post-Socialist China and VietnamQin Gao, Martin Evans, and Irwin GarfinkelChapter 4. Social Security Policy in the Context of Evolving Employment PolicyBarry FriedmanChapter 5. Urban Social Insurance Provision: Regional and Workplace VariationsJuan Chen and Mary GallagherChapter 6. Health and Rural Cooperative Medical InsuranceSong Gao and Xiangyi MengChapter 7. The Quest for Welfare Spending Equalization: A Fiscal Federalism PerspectiveXin ZhangChapter 8. Financing Migrant Child EducationJing GuoChapter 9. Labor Migration, Citizenship, and Social Welfare in China and IndiaJosephine Smart, Reeta Tremblay, and Mostaem BillahChapter 10. Ethnic Minorities and Trilingual Education PoliciesBob Adamson, Feng Anwei, Liu Quanguo, and Li QianChapter 11. Danwei, Family Ties, and Residential Mobility of Urban Elderly in BeijingZhilin Liu and Yanwei ChaiChapter 12. Marriage, Parenthood, and Labor Outcomes for Women and MenYuping Zhang and Emily HannumChapter 13. Implications of the College Expansion Policy for Social StratificationWei-Jun Jean YeungChapter 14. The Evolving Response to HIV/AIDSZunyou Wu, Sheena G. Sullivan, Yu Wang, Mary Jane Rotheram,and Roger DetelsIndex