Article in "WirtschaftsWoche"

Dr. Armin Müller from project B05 "Inclusion and Benefit Dynamics in the Chinese Welfare Regime" was interviewed by WirtschaftsWoche. In the article "Altersvorsorge: Chinas Renten-Zeitbombe tickt" (paywall), he gives his expert opinion of how to deal with the ageing of Chinese society.

The article examines the financial sustainability of the Chinese pension system, which is precarious according to recent Chinese studies. In the People's Republic, similar to Western countries, there are debates about demographic change and an increase in the retirement age. The interview helped to contextualize the debate and shed light on important background information. For example, the retirement age is particularly low for women at 50 or 55. However, retired women often continue to play important social roles, such as looking after children, which enables the next generation of women to work full-time. Although raising the retirement age reduces the costs of contribution-financed pension insurance, it increases the need for childcare elsewhere. In addition, the system under discussion primarily covers employees in the formal urban sector. The vast majority of Chinese people do not benefit from a pension, which represents an independent livelihood, and is hardly considered in the discussion.

Contact:
Dr. Armin Müller
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3473
E-Mail: armmueller@constructor.university

Jour Fixe with Jonathan D. London on February 28, 2024

As the last event of the CRC 1342 Jour Fixe lecture series in the winter semester 2023/24, Jonathan London from Leiden University gave an insight into his current research on Wednesday, February 28. He presented excerpts from his book "Welfare and Inequality in Marketizing East Asia".

In his lecture, Prof. London presented his book, in which he described socio-political expansion tendencies based on a determination of regime types and accumulation regimes in ten Southeast Asian countries - against the backdrop of the increasing marketization of these countries' economies. Despite the expansion of new protection programmes, however, serious problems must be noted. On the one hand, there are considerable differences between the de jure and de facto forms of these social programmes in terms of the scope of benefits and inclusivity. On the other hand, serious shortcomings can still be observed in particularly demanding areas (such as education and health), in which the creation of effective infrastructures, qualified labour etc. is necessary for a sustainable improvement in the situation for broad sections of the population, in addition to the necessary funds. Taken together, this stands in the way of an effective reduction in social inequalities, despite the significant economic development in Southeast Asia.

Jonathan D. London is Associate Professor of Political Economy - Asia at Leiden University's Institute of Area Studies. London's research interests span the fields of comparative political economy, development studies, and the political economy of welfare and inequality. Fluent in Vietnamese, London is sole editor of the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam (2023). His 2018 book, “Welfare and Inequality in Marketizing East Asia” developed a critique of theoretical literature on welfare regimes analysis and a comparative analysis of 10 East Asian countries.  He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Tobias ten Brink
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3382
E-Mail: ttenbrink@constructor.university

Project B05: "Inclusion and Benefit Dynamics in the Chinese Welfare Regime"

The B05 project successfully conducted field research in China for the first time after China ended its zero-COVID policy.

Dr. Zhe Yan conducted extensive field research from September to December 2023. The purpose of the research trip was twofold: to investigate the coverage and generosity of both maternity protection and long-term care. The research is timely as China is experiencing rapid population aging, with only 9.56 million births in 2022, the lowest number since records began in 1949. The emerging social reality calls for a social policy response. The country has already piloted long-term care insurance in selected cities and extended maternity leave to encourage women of reproductive age to have children. However, the outcome of these policy initiatives remains unclear and requires rigorous research.

Despite more difficult field access and the securitization of Sino-European knowledge exchange in recent years, data collection was feasible. To collect data, Dr. Yan visited various long-term care facilities and community care centers in Shanghai, Suzhou, and Kunshan, with local colleagues. He also conducted numerous in-depth interviews with Chinese couples with newborns to examine the implementation of the maternity insurance program from the beneficiaries' perspective. Preliminary data analysis suggests that there are gaps between de jure entitlements and de facto policy implementation in both long-term care and maternity protection. This can be partly explained by the conditionality of access to benefits, such as the hukou (household registration) system for admitting the elderly for long-term care, and the extent to which employers are willing to enroll workers for maternity insurance. Therefore, expanding coverage and improving the generosity of social insurance depends on policymakers' determination to address these issues. The B05 team aims to identify the factors that influence the outcomes of recent social policy in these important areas.

While in China, Dr. Yan was hosted by Duke Kunshan University as a Scholar in Residence at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, where he is also part of the local Aging and Care Initiative. To support field research, meet long-standing collaboration partners e.g., from Fudan University, and to establish academic collaborations with local research institutions, Prof. Tobias ten Brink visited Shanghai and Kunshan in October. At Duke Kunshan University, he also met with the Director of the Center to establish future cooperation. Tobias ten Brink also gave a public lecture to the students and faculty members, focusing on the research program of the CRC 1342 and findings of the B05 project.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Tobias ten Brink
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3382
E-Mail: ttenbrink@constructor.university

Dr. Zhe Yan
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3474
E-Mail: zyan@constructor.university

New article in "The China Quarterly"

Dr. Armin Müller, postdoctoral researcher in the project B05: "Inclusion and Benefit Dynamics in the Chinese Welfare Regime", wrote an article for "The China Quarterly" published online by Cambridge University Press.

The article "Cooperation Between Colleges and Companies: Vocational Education, Skill Mismatches and China's Turnover Problem" analyzes how market failure in skill formation is tackled in China from a collective action perspective. The state intervenes by providing vocational education in public middle schools and colleges, trying to provide companies with the skilled labor they need. However, much like in the Italian system, weak bureaucracy undermines the implementation of state regulation and the effective creation of vocational skills. Therefore, under the surface, skill formation is still dominated by market dynamics, and hence market failure. The article focuses on the role of collaborative projects between vocational colleges and private companies in mediating the dynamics of market failure. While such projects somewhat decrease the skill mismatches in the labor market, they are voluntary negotiated agreements that cannot tackle the underlying redistributive problems between companies and workers. Overall, the status quo drives the polarization of skills in the long run, thus reinforcing economic inequality.

Abstract

The Chinese government promotes cooperation between colleges and companies in vocational education to improve the supply of skilled workers and increase labour productivity. This study employs the concept of positive coordination – negotiations concurrently addressing productive and distributive questions – to analyse the advantages and limitations of voluntary cooperation embedded in networks. In terms of production, many projects focus on updating, narrowing and deepening curricula to lower the costs of initial training borne by companies and the risk of labour turnover. In terms of distribution, however, the deep and narrow curricula are at odds with students’ preference for general and transferable skills; and the mutual commitments of both companies and students are uncertain. The solutions provided by cooperation are partial and unstable. Overall, they reduce skill mismatches but cannot control turnover or overcome market failure, which undermines tertiary vocational education's contribution to labour productivity.

Armin Müller is a postdoctoral researcher at Constructor University, Bremen, Germany, and member of the project "Inclusion and Benefit Dynamics in the Chinese Welfare Regime" at the Collaborative Research Centre 1342 "Global Dynamics of Social Policy" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). He formerly worked at Georg-August University Göttingen, Germany. His research focuses on social protection and the healthcare system in the People’s Republic of China, as well as vocational education and migration. He wrote his PhD about China’s rural health insurance at the University of Duisburg-Essen and spent one semester with the Transnational Studies Initiative at Harvard University studying transnational forms of social security.

Contact:
Dr. Armin Müller
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3473
E-Mail: armmueller@constructor.university

CRC 1342 Jour Fixe with Prof. Yuegen Xiong on January 10, 2024

The first event of the new year was a lecture by Prof. Yuegen Xiong from Peking University, China. As part of the CRC 1342 Jour Fixe he gave a talk on "Social Security Reform in Transitional China. Post-pandemic Challenges and Policy Reformulations" on January 10, 2024.

Yuegen Xiong described China’s socio-economic scenarios after the pandemic and analyzed its impact on the social security system. Following up on this, he elaborated the answers to the questions, how China adjusted its social policies to respond to the changing international atmosphere and domestic situations and whether the rural revitalization will be a new policy drive for social security system integration.

In his talk he gave an overview of the complex interdependencies and goal conflicts between various agendas in social and economic policy in urban and rural China. He particularly focused on policy change in health policy, health insurance and hospital payment; pension insurance and social assistance; and unemployment, economic recovery and the rural revitalization agenda. Furthermore, he elaborated on important aspects of public opinion and the anti-corruption campaign that are relevant for social policy. His insights are of considerable importance for contextualizing the findings of ongoing research on Chinese social policy.

Yuegen Xiong is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Social Policy Research (CSPR) at Peking University, China. He is the author of Needs, Reciprocity and Shared Function: Policy and Practice of Elderly Care in Urban China (Shanghai Renmin Press, 2008) and Social Policy: Theories and Analytical Approaches (Renmin University Press, 2009). Xiong graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a PhD in social welfare in 1998 and joined Peking University as a faculty after completing two-year post-doctoral research in the Department of Sociology. He was the British Academy KC Wong Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford during November 2002-September 2003, the Fellow at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study (HWK), Delmenhorst, Germany during December 2003-February 2004, the JSPS Fellow at the University of Tokyo in October, 2005 and a visiting professor at Jacobs University Bremen during October-December, 2015 and visiting professor at the Center for Modern East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen, Germany in December, 2017. In the past years, he has published extensively in the field of social policy, comparative welfare regimes, social work, NGOs and civil society. He is the editorial member of Asian Social Work and Policy Review (Wiley), Asian Education and Development Studies (Emerald), the British Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (UK) and International Journal of Community and Social Development (Sage). Prof. Xiong has been acting as the Co-Director of the Academic Committee, LSE-PKU Summer School Program since 2018.

Contact:
Dr. Armin Müller
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3473
E-Mail: armmueller@constructor.university

Prof. John Gibson, University of Waikato

John Gibson, Professor of Economics at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, visited the Collaborative Research Center 1342 on Thursday, October 26, 2023, for a Jour Fixe in the winter term 2023/24. In his talk "Big Data gone bad: Effects of measurement errors in popular DMSP night-time lights in empirical political economy," he spoke about the uses and abuses of night-time light satellite data in the social sciences to measure economic activity and assess local inequality.

Abstract:
Economists and other social science researchers increasingly use satellite-detected night-time lights, as one of the most popular “big data” sources. The most widely used series of night-time lights data are from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), which was initiated in the 1960s to observe clouds to aid US Air Force weather forecasts. Initial use of these data by social science researchers was as a proxy for economic activity at the national or aggregated regional level but increasingly these data are used to evaluate local impacts of interventions and to estimate local inequality. When measurement errors in these data were originally considered it was in a framework that just required that the errors were independent of errors in conventional economic statistics. However, more recent studies use DMSP data directly as a proxy and so the nature of their measurement error becomes important because under certain circumstances these errors could cause bias that distorts conclusions.

This talk provides two such examples: first, when estimating local inequality in China and the United States the level of inequality is understated and a misleading trend is introduced, because of spatially mean-reverting errors in the DMSP data. Second, in a difference-in-differences evaluation of the impact of a sanction on North Korea the sanction impact is understated due to mean-reverting errors and bottom-coding in the DMSP data. These errors reflect some of the inherent limitations of DMSP data. Where possible, applied economists and other social scientists should switch to using newer, more accurate, night-time lights data that were designed for research purposes, even if that means they have to work with shorter time-series.

See also: Popular Big Data on Night-Time Lights Underestimate Inequality

John Gibson is Professor of Economics at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. He also is the Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Development Review, and non-resident Visiting Fellow at the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo. His research, inter alia, focuses on economic development and social inequality. Since receiving his PhD from Stanford University, he has worked in numerous countries including Cambodia, China, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, and Vietnam. 

Publications:

Using multi-source nighttime lights data to proxy for county-level economic activity in China from 2012 to 2019 (2022), with X Zhang, Remote Sensing.

Which night lights data should we use in economics, and where? (2021), with S Olivia, G Boe-Gibson, C Li, Journal of Development Economics.

Better night lights data, for longer (2021), Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics.

How important is selection? Experimental vs. non-experimental measures of the income gains from migration (2010), with D McKenzie, S Stillman, Journal of the European Economic Association.

Contact:
Dr. Armin Müller
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3473
E-Mail: armmueller@constructor.university

Lesson‐drawing under authoritarianism

Dr. Armin Müller and Prof. Dr. Tobias ten Brink from project B05 "Inclusion and Benefit Dynamics in the Chinese Welfare Regime" contributed an article in "Asian Politics & Policy".

In the article "Lesson-drawing under authoritarianism: Generosity and cost control in China's hospital payment reforms" (Asian Politics & Policy 2023), Armin Müller and Tobias ten Brink (TP B05) examine recent hospital payment reforms in Chinese cities against their historical background. Using process tracing, the authors reconstruct two waves of reforms from a lesson-drawing perspective, triangulating different data sources (expert interviews, administrative documents, academic studies, and newspaper articles).

Local governments were the driving force behind a first wave of reform in the 1990s. It was dominated by simplified versions of international models that did not include strong prospective payment components and thus protected the interests of local governments and hospitals. In a second wave beginning in the 2000s, the impetus came from central government, leading to greater adoption of syntheses of international models and adaptations with more prospective payment components – and a stronger focus on patient interests. It is noted that significant pressure from the central government was necessary to minimize the bureaucratic self-interest of local governments in more low-cost reform.

Contact:
Dr. Armin Müller
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3473
E-Mail: armmueller@constructor.university

Prof. Dr. Tobias ten Brink
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3382
E-Mail: ttenbrink@constructor.university

In "Social Policy & Administration", 7 CRC 1342 projects have presented case studies of social policy dynamics in the Global South. Their synthesis shows: The concept of causal mechanisms is particularly well suited for analysing such dynamics.

Seven projects of CRC 1342's project area B have published a Special Regional Issue of "Social Policy & Administration": Causal mechanisms in the analysis of transnational social policy dynamics: Evidence from the global south. The main research question the authors address is: Which causal mechanisms can capture the transnational dynamics of social policy in the Global South?

In order to find answers to this question, the authors present in‐depth case studies of social policy dynamics in different countries and regions in the Global South as well as different fields. All articles focus on the interplay of national and transnational actors when it comes to social policy‐making. (The papers of this Special Issue are listed below.)

The key findings of the authors are:

• Explanations of social policy‐making in the Global South will remain incomplete unless transnational factors are taken into account
• However, this does not mean that national factors are no longer important. In social policy decision‐making, national institutional settings and actors are key
• Mechanism‐based research can plausibly trace the interplay between transnational and national actors and its impact on shaping social policy outcomes. The articles identify a variety of causal mechanisms that can capture this interplay
• The output of social policy‐making is complex and can often not be explained by a single mechanism. Examining the combination and possible interaction of several causal mechanisms can provide more in‐depth explanations 
• The concept of causal mechanisms can also be applied in comparative analyses
• Mechanisms can be traced inductively in one case and then be applied to another case.

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Johanna Kuhlmann & Tobias ten Brink (2021). Causal mechanisms in the analysis of transnational social policy dynamics: Evidence from the global south. Social Policy & Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12725

Armin Müller (2021). Bureaucratic conflict between transnational actor coalitions: The diffusion of British national vocational qualifications to China. Social Policy & Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12689

Johanna Kuhlmann & Frank Nullmeier (2021). A mechanism‐based approach to the comparison of national pension systems in Vietnam and Sri Lanka. Social Policy & Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12691

Kressen Thyen & Roy Karadag (2021). Between affordable welfare and affordable food: Internationalized food subsidy reforms in Egypt and Tunisia. Social Policy & Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12710

Monika Ewa Kaminska, Ertila Druga, Liva Stupele & Ante Malinar (2021). Changing the healthcare financing paradigm: Domestic actors and international organizations in the agenda setting for diffusion of social health insurance in post‐communist Central and Eastern Europe. Social Policy & Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12724

Gulnaz Isabekova & Heiko Pleines (2021). Integrating development aid into social policy: Lessons on cooperation and its challenges learned from the example of health care in Kyrgyzstan. Social Policy & Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12669

Anna Safuta (2021). When policy entrepreneurs fail: Explaining the failure of long‐term care reforms in Poland. Social Policy & Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12714

Jakob Henninger & Friederike Römer (2021). Choose your battles: How civil society organisations choose context‐specific goals and activities to fight for immigrant welfare rights in Malaysia and Argentina. Social Policy & Administration. https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12721

Contact:
Dr. Johanna Kuhlmann
Prof. Dr. Tobias ten Brink
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3382
E-Mail: ttenbrink@constructor.university

B05 member Tao Liu has co-authored and published a paper stating that for the first time social policy in China has acted as a major player for coping with the negative outcomes of a pandemic.

Tao Liu co-authored the article "Social Policy Responses to the Covid-19 Crisis in
China in 2020" with his Chinese colleagues Quan Lu, Zehao Cai, and Bin Chen. It was published open access in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

The article focuses on how Chinese social policy has responded to the COVID-19 crisis until June 2020. "The explosiveness and severity of the pandemic crisis and its unpredictable as well as astronomical social costs have strengthened the model of 'big government' in the Chinese case with massive state intervention in society and the economy," Tao Liu and his co-authors state. The crisis "has further legitimated hyper-normal and, in some cases, nationwide and large-scale extralegal intervention policy." In order to mitigate social suffering and to guarantee political stability, different types of social policy programmes have been combined and synthesized, including social insurance, social assistance, and social welfare arrangements. "For the first time, social policy in China has acted as a major player for coping with the negative outcomes of a pandemic," the authors conclude.

The authors state that China is making a great effort to overcome the crisis. Nevertheless, they criticise the measures. For example, not even half of the urban working population is insured against unemployment. Moreover, the amounts paid out are low despite a surplus of 82 billion US dollars accumulated over the years. In the area of social assistance, many domestic migrant workers had problems registering because they could not travel to their home towns in time.

The full paper can be read and downloaded here free of charge.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Tao Liu

The team of authors identifies three causal mechanisms that have led to the development of contribution-based social security systems in China.

Since the initiation of reform and opening policies, social protection for urban workers in the People’s Republic of China has transformed massively. Before the 1980s, state-owned enterprises were responsible for protecting workers from social risks such as old age, accidents, and illness. Today, these three areas are organized as contribution-based social insurance systems with Chinese characteristics.

In their paper "Causal mechanisms in the making of China‘s social insurance system: Policy experimentation, topleader intervention, and elite cooperation" Tobias ten Brink, Armin Müller and Tao Liu identifie the causal mechanisms that led to the introduction of insurance schemes in the 1990s and early 2000s. they find three causal mechanisms: (neutral and strategic) policy experimentation, top-leader intervention, and (consensus-based and enforced) elite cooperation. Moreover, the thre authors demonstrate that the presence or absence of complementarity between the international environment and the domestic actor constellation had a decisive effect on how those mechanisms played out in the policy fields of urban pension, health and work accident insurance.

"Causal mechanisms in the making of China‘s social insurance system: Policy experimentation, topleader intervention, and elite cooperation" is the seventh Socium SFB 1342 Working Paper that has been published since October 2019.

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Tao Liu
Dr. Armin Müller
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3473
E-Mail: armmueller@constructor.university

Prof. Dr. Tobias ten Brink
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3382
E-Mail: ttenbrink@constructor.university