Social Assistance as Political Containment in Contemporary China

• In Event: 3167 - Section on Sociology of Development Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 4. Restructuring of the Labour Market and Employment in Growing Regions

Abstract

The Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (Dibao) is a means- tested in-cash social assistance program in China targeting the population below the official poverty line. By providing social assistance to about 60 million poor people, the Urban and Rural Minimum Livelihood Guarantee Scheme (Dibao) of the People’s Republic of China is one of the largest social assistance programs in modern history. This article aims to explain the relationship between the trajectories of social protest and the expansion of Dibao in China. We asked a basic question: what determines the provision of Dibao program? Specifically, does contentious politics play a role? We use two panel datasets that we have created (a social protest dataset and social assistance dataset based on the figures of the Dibao provision reported by the PRC Ministry of Civil Affairs). By quantitatively analyzing our panel dataset of Dibao provision and social unrest, we found strong evidence for our argument that Chinese government uses Dibao program as a containment strategy against social unrest. Our multivariate analysis identified a statistically significant relationship between monthly increases in labor unrest and Dibao recipients at the provincial-level, controlling for provincial-level fixed effects and monthly-dummies. In order to account for the statistical association between labor unrest and Dibao provision, we presented an analysis of the Chinese Communist Party’s historical approach to socio-political unrest. Here, we tried to examine why and how the CCP has devised and implemented the Dibao as a way of containment of unrest.

Authors

• Burak Gurel, Koc University

• Ali Bargu, University of Oxford

• Christian Göbel, University of Vienna