The Role of the Government in Traditional Social Retirement Enumerating the various changes in the role of the government in old age care (from underwriting to today's encouragement of social institut

The Role of the Government in Traditional Social Retirement Enumerating the various changes in the role of the government in old age care (from underwriting to today's encouragement of social institutions) The Changing Role of the State: Changes in Old-Age Security Policies in New China

After the founding of New China, China's social policy reforms have gone through at least two more pronounced transitions. The first transition took place in the 1980s and 1990s, a critical period in the transition from a traditional planned economy to a modern market economy. Compared with the pre-reform period, social policy reforms in this period were characterized by a clear contraction of the state, advocating limited government responsibility and emphasizing individual and social responsibility. The second turn, on the other hand, took place at the end of the 1990s and especially in the period of building a harmonious society after entering the new century. Compared with the early period of the reform, the social policy reforms in this period were marked by a moderate return of state responsibility.

(1) Social policy before reform and opening up

After the founding of New China, a "state-unit"-style social policy system was gradually established in China, with strong government intervention as the primary feature of this system. The urban old-age security system, which covers the government and enterprises and public institutions, has basically been established. In contrast to the urban sector, the rural pension system has been lagging behind, with the family and the land as the main resources for farmers' old age, but with no statutory form of protection, and with a relative lack of state responsibility. 1956 saw the establishment of the corresponding Five Guarantees System, whose funding came mainly from the village collectives. Therefore, the rural old-age security is a collective and family **** the same burden model.

From the point of view of the form of fund-raising, the "pay-as-you-go" system was the main principle of the old-age security system at that time, i.e., individuals did not need to save for their pensions compulsorily, and their pensions were not directly related to their own work contributions. The State formulated a relatively average pension payment system, and the units paid the employees uniformly according to the corresponding standards. This is a relatively average, universal form of protection, personal responsibility is not directly reflected in the standard of pension payment, but more reflects the responsibility of enterprises and the government, and because the enterprise at that time has a strong characteristic of state ownership, so the pension security system in this period reflects more is the responsibility of the state. The state, in an omnipotent posture, almost monopolized the provision of social welfare. But this situation was gradually changed after the reform and opening up.

(2) State contraction: the first turn

Social policy reforms in the 1980s and 1990s were profoundly influenced by the economic system reform. In the process of the whole economic system reform, the transformation of the production and operation mode of enterprises became the central link, around which all aspects of supporting reforms should be carried out in phases, and the social security system was precisely an important part of this supporting system.

From the viewpoint of urban pension security, in 1986, the State Council promulgated the Interim Provisions on the Implementation of the Labor Contract System in State-owned Enterprises, requiring enterprises to uniformly implement the labor contract system, and the retirement of contract employees to implement a social insurance system, the pension fund raised by the enterprise and the labor contract workers to pay for their own contributions, and the state will appropriately subsidize them when they are insufficient. This policy broke the traditional lifelong system of employment, and also broke the relationship of dependence between the worker and the unit, so that the individual through the unit to obtain the possibility of welfare protection is greatly reduced, the planned economy "state-unit" type of protection model has been impacted.

Though during this period the state also began to explore the establishment of a social pension insurance system for rural areas (the Old Farmers' Pension Insurance), attempting to implement a pension insurance system in which "individual contributions are the main source of income, supplemented by collective subsidies, and supported by the state". However, because this system is still essentially a farmer's self-savings model of old age, the lack of collective, especially the State's effective financial support, which led to its always low level, low-coverage operation, and did not play the desired role of protection.

The reforms of this period were characterized by a clear contraction of the state, i.e., they emphasized the limited nature of the government's responsibility and asserted that individuals should be responsible for their own well-being, so that the government's responsibility was continually weakened, while the responsibility of the individual, the family, and the community was overemphasized. The contraction of the state is a contraction in the relative sense, i.e., relative to the incremental contraction of the growing demand for social welfare, the state's investment in social welfare lags far behind the pace of economic development, and also lags behind the welfare needs of society. This is a typical liberal-style reform, and this reform orientation has brought about serious social problems in the ensuing decades.

(C) The return of the state: the second turn

At the turn of the century, the reform of state-owned enterprises entered an offensive stage, and the further deepening of the reform of the market economic system faced the problem of unsound supporting facilities, especially the social security system. While economic development and social progress has raised the issues of social equity and justice to the same level of importance as the development issues, actively building a harmonious socialist society has become the focus of the work of the Party and the government in the new century, and social policy reforms have begun to emphasize the important role of the state in social welfare. Since the end of the 1990s, the government has been increasing its investment in social and livelihood programs, and at the same time introducing a series of related policies to improve the social security system and support the development of social forces. Compared with the early stage of the reform, the role of the government has been significantly adjusted, and state intervention in the field of social welfare has become more and more obvious.