Supporting Chinese-style Modernization with High-quality Population Development: Situation, Strategy, and Pathways
...........................................................................................................................................Yuan Xin, Jin Niu 3
Abstract: In the process of comprehensively building a modern socialist country, achieving the grand goal of supporting Chinese-style modernization with high-quality population development requires a scientific understanding of the new normal in population trends. This includes the intersection of declining birth rates and population reduction, the overlap of longevity and an aging society, the interaction of high birth sex ratios and gender imbalances, the intertwining of high-quality human capital and the \"dual ten-million era\" of higher education, the blending of active migration and regional population changes, and the parallel trends of simplified and shrinking family structures. Based on this, it is urgent to grasp integrated strategies such as aligning population with productivity, actively responding to population aging, prioritizing employment, and promoting urban-rural integrated development. Within the main tasks of \"focusing on the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly,\" we must explore policy pathways to improve the population development support and service system.
Social Comparison, Relative Deprivation, and Social Integration of Migrant Elderly: An Analysis Based on Survey Data from Shenzhen
..............................................................................................................................Chen Lei, Zhang Jiajing 15
Abstract: With the advancement of urbanization, the number of migrant elderly is increasing, and issues such as urban adaptation and social integration are becoming more prominent. Using survey data from Shenzhen, this study systematically examines the social integration of migrant elderly and analyzes the impact and mechanisms of social comparison on social integration. The findings reveal: First, unlike previous horizontal divisions, this study divides social integration into five dimensions from the inside out, finding that the overall social integration level of migrant elderly is moderate, with better family integration but extremely low community participation. Second, migrant elderly exhibits a high tendency for social comparison and a high level of relative deprivation. Third, social comparison negatively affects the social integration of migrant elderly, with relative deprivation acting as a mediator. Horizontal and vertical deprivation account for 42.7% and 22.9% of the total effect, respectively. Therefore, to further enhance the social integration of migrant elderly, individuals, families, communities, and the government should all play their roles in reducing social comparison tendencies and relative deprivation.
High-quality Development of Social Assistance Under the Strategic Goal of Common Prosperity: Handling Several Key Relationships
....................................................................................................................Ngok Kinglun, Zhou Daoyang 27
Abstract: Under the guidance of Chinese-style modernization and the strategic goal of common prosperity, the social assistance system not only undertakes multiple functions such as poverty reduction, promoting social fairness, and ensuring social stability but also faces multiple contradictions and tensions in practice. Although reforms such as raising standards and expanding coverage during the 14th Five-Year Plan period aimed to achieve the policy goal of \"ensuring all who should be covered are covered,\" policy practice has revealed paradoxes such as \"standards raised but coverage reduced,\" as well as issues like policy overlap, welfare cliffs, and uneven resource allocation. Based on the strategic requirements of solidly advancing common prosperity, this paper argues that the high-quality development of China’s social assistance system should handle the following eight types of relationships: expansion vs. raising standards, special assistance vs. living assistance, cash assistance vs. service assistance, identity vs. need, resource gatekeepers vs. helpers, absolute poverty vs. relative poverty, social assistance vs. basic public services, and maintaining tradition vs. innovation. Properly handling these can improve the precision, fairness, and sustainability of the social assistance system, thereby creating conditions for the high-quality development of social assistance during the 15th Five-Year Plan period and providing institutional guarantees for achieving the goal of common prosperity.
How Can Migrant Populations Share Social Assistance Resources: Focus, Constraints, and Pathways
............................................................................................................................Liu Luchan, Zhu Jianhua 41
Abstract: Currently, migrant populations face difficulties in sharing assistance resources in their places of residence. Macro-level constraints include the social assistance system being restricted by the household registration system and the principle of localized management, as well as an imperfect top-level design of the assistance system, leading to scarcity of assistance programs and imbalance in resource allocation, thereby creating \"assistance lowlands.\" Meso-level constraints include population mobility challenging the current social assistance system’s operational mechanisms, causing conflicts between fiscal authority and decision-making power, increasing the difficulty of fiscal transfers, and creating imbalances in fiscal expenditure responsibilities, thereby suppressing local governments’ motivation to provide assistance and reject in the assistance needs of migrant populations. Micro-level constraints include population mobility increasing the difficulty of eligibility determination, amplifying errors in household economic status verification, and increasing the complexity of dynamic management, causing grassroots management practices to continuously face new difficulties, ultimately leaving vulnerable migrant populations easily falling into protection vacuums. Therefore, it is necessary to improve policy concepts, institutional principles, and system structures in line with population dynamics, optimize the division of fiscal authority, fiscal transfers, and expenditure responsibility-sharing mechanisms in the assistance field, and strengthen grassroots assistance management practices throughout the \"application-verification-management\" process to solidly advance the full coverage of social assistance resources for the resident population.
Have Policy Instruments Achieved Policy Values? The Evolution and Effectiveness of China’s Women’s Rights Protection Policies from 1978 to 2023
........................................................................................................................Wu Guangyun, Zhou Zhixin 53
Abstract: Gender equality and women’s development are crucial issues in the pursuit of fairness, justice, and equality in contemporary society. There remains a structural decoupling between the intended values of women’s rights protection policies and the actual policy instruments. The authors constructs an analytical framework of \"policy instruments-policy values-policy evolution\" to conduct quantitative and content analysis of 226 policy texts from 1978 to 2023, exploring the mechanisms of policy instruments in the evolution of China’s women’s rights protection policies and identifying the policy values they carry. The study finds that the evolution of women’s rights protection policies has gone through three stages: policy adjustment, institutional construction, and system improvement. The path of change has shifted from \"stateled society\" to \"state-absorbed society,\" with authoritative, incentive, capacity-building, and system-change policy instruments transitioning from \"heterogeneous equilibrium\" to \"preference selection.\" The policy values of gender equality, economic development, and social well-being have shifted from \"empowerment\" to \"enabling.\" While policy instruments have adapted to policy values to create a \"coupling effect,\" women’s rights protection policies have also fallen into a \"value dilemma.\" In the future, policy instrument combinations should be optimized based on China’s national conditions and social development laws, and a coordinated promotion mechanism for women’s rights protection policies should be established to build an\"individual autonomy-family embedding-social co-construction\" rights protection system.
New Employment Groups in the Digital Economy Era: Status Recognition and Income Security
........................................................................................................................Dang Shengcui, Wang Shidi 68
Abstract: The diversification of employment arrangements among emerging platform-based labor groups has intensified complexities in labor relations and occupational risks. As labor disputes between digital platforms and workers proliferate globally, ensuring income security for these workers has become a critical issue. This study employs comparative policy analysis to examine divergent approaches to status identification and income protection mechanisms for ride-hailing drivers and analogous platform workers in jurisdictions among EU, the U.S. and China. Findings reveal a regulatory paradox in Western contexts: Ambiguous legal classifications of platform workers under employment law frameworks—exemplified by protracted litigation over ride-hailing drivers’ status —have fueled adversarial labor-capital bargaining and systemic instability. In contrast, China’s state-led a Government-Unions-Platform income security net, grounded in socialist labor rights principles. However, this system faces implementation challenges including inefficiencies in minimum wage enforcement and structural imbalances in collective bargaining power. The study proposes policy innovations to address these gaps, notably a sectoral income benchmarking system based on activity-based cost accounting to establish government-guided earnings floors tailored to platform labor characteristics.
The New Social Stratum in the Process of Chinese Modernization: Research Topics, Contexts, and Approaches
............................................................................................Yang Chengchen, Wu Yiping, Zhang Haidong 80
Abstract: The new social stratum is a group that has emerged alongside reform and opening-up and the market economy, playing a significant role in the process of Chinese modernization. Its rise and development have exerted profound social impacts. This paper systematically reviews and critiques recent sociological research on the new social stratum, focusing on two dimensions: core research topics and contextual developments. It examines their social attributes, social mobility, participation in social governance, their influence on social structure, as well as their social mentality and political attitudes, presenting an overview of current academic research. Furthermore, this paper highlights the new questions and challenges posed to sociology by the advent of the information society and ongoing social transformations. Accordingly, it explores potential research approaches to studying the new social stratum within the macro-context of the information society and the practical process of Chinese modernization, providing valuable directions for future research on this topic
Educational Equity and Income Inequality: Estimating the Redistributive Effects of Implicit Educational Subsidies
..................................................................................................................Yang Sui, Zhao Xiaoman, Li Shi 94
Abstract: Based on data from the China Household Income Project (CHIP) and provincial education expenditure data, this study finds that since 2013, the urban-rural and regional gaps in basic education expenditure at all levels have generally narrowed, and the redistributive role of implicit educational subsidies has strengthened. However, international comparisons show that China’s current total education investment and per-student expenditure remain low, constraining the improvement of human capital and the realization of income distribution fairness. To enhance the breadth, depth, and intensity of educational equity, it is necessary to ensure multiple channels of educational resource investment, strengthen the redistributive function of implicit educational subsidies, and promote the high-quality development of education, comprehensively advancing the shared development of education.
State Capacity, Disaster Pressure, and the Development of Charitable Organizations in the Yangtze River Delta During the Qing Dynasty: A Study of Linkage Effects Based on QCA Methods
...............................................................................................................................................Zhou Jiahao 116
Abstract: Traditional welfare practices are highly embedded in state capacity and disaster pressure. Existing research lacks in-depth exploration of the conditions and mechanisms behind the formation of charitable organizations during the Qing Dynasty. By establishing a database of charitable institutions in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces during the Qing Dynasty, this paper explores the internal patterns of charitable organizations, proposes an integrated analytical framework for understanding regional differences in charitable capacity, and uses fs/QCA to conduct configuration analysis of the emergence of charitable institutions in prefecture-level administrative regions across the three provinces. The study finds that in regions with better charitable development, the allocation of bureaucratic and civil resources and the presence or absence of disaster pressure constitute two basic dimensions. The former can be divided into balanced development, bureaucratic push, and civil push, while the latter can be divided into disaster pressure and non-disaster pressure permanent, forming various existing types. Additionally, regions with fewer charitable organizations are also associated with specific combinations of state capacity and disaster pressure. Therefore, state capacity, including administrative, social, and extractive aspects, and disaster pressure are conditions for promoting charitable development in the Yangtze River Delta during the Qing Dynasty. The research conclusions of this paper contribute to a deeper rational understanding of the complex interactions among multiple factors behind the development of traditional welfare practices.