The case of the People’s Republic of China challenges and extends welfare attitudes research, not as an outlier, but as a critical case.
Research on welfare attitudes has been typically anchored in thinking and evidence from Western democracies, where scholars identify self-interest, ideology, and social identity as the main drivers of public support for social policy. But as comparative social policy has expanded its consideration beyond the OECD, one question becomes urgent: How does this theoretical framework hold up in non-Western, authoritarian, and productivist contexts like China?
China is not an ‘exotic’ exception. Nor is it a blank slate. Rather, it is a critical case, one that both confirms and complicates established theories, revealing how culture, historical institutions, and state ideology interact with universal values like fairness and deservingness. Including China in welfare attitudes research doesn’t just ‘add diversity’; it forces us to refine our concepts, methods, and assumptions about how people relate to the welfare state.
Similarities and differences
Many of the same forces that shape attitudes in Western countries operate in China. Pro-social justice values strongly predict support for welfare expansion, even among those not directly benefiting. Conversely, when people attribute poverty to individual failings (such as ‘laziness’ or ‘poor choices’), they are significantly less likely to back anti-poverty programs, echoing the ‘deservingness’ logic well documented in the West. This shows that moral reasoning about welfare is not culturally unique and that it travels across political regimes.
Some socio-cultural dimensions do matter in specific, measurable ways. Traditional Chinese norms continue to shape expectations about who bears responsibility for social protection. For instance, patrilineal authority and the breadwinner ideal, though weakened by urbanization and women’s labor force participation, still influence welfare preferences in China. Men, who are socially expected to shoulder family economic burdens, express higher support for state welfare spending, not out of altruism, but because they perceive it as reducing their personal risk. Here, culture doesn’t replace self-interest; it mediates it. Similarly, Confucian ideals of filial piety reinforce the notion that families, not the state, should care for the elderly, which dampens demand for public eldercare services, even as demographic realities strain household capacity.
Institutional legacies matter
It is also worth taking a look at structural conditions. Since the 1990s, the Chinese state has dismantled the centrally funded, workplace-based health and pension systems of the Mao era and replaced them with contributory social insurance schemes tied to formal employment and local hukou (household registration). This shift has produced what scholars call a “cognitive lock-in” effect: citizens now widely accept that access to healthcare or pensions should depend on prior contributions. As a result, many oppose calls for tax-financed universal coverage, not because they reject solidarity, but because they have internalized contribution as a principle of fairness. In our research, interviewees often say things like, “I paid into the system, so I deserve benefits. Why should others get them for free?” This logic mirrors Western notions of reciprocity but is intensified by China’s fragmented, locally administered and implemented welfare system.
This institutional path dependency is reinforced by the state’s productivist ideology. President Xi Jinping has repeatedly warned against “welfarism,” urging citizens to “avoid laziness” and emphasizing that social protection must serve economic development, not replace work. This framing resonates in a society where low redistribution and low socialization of risk are structural features of the welfare regime. This regime is often portrayed as “transferring from the poor to the rich”, a mismatch between risk and protection. Unlike in highly developed welfare states, where the state de-risks life events (unemployment, illness, old age), China’s system offloads risk onto households and markets. Families become the default safety net. Elderly parents rely on children for care; unemployed youth move back home; rural residents depend on remittances. Consequently, China’s welfare state functions less as a redistributive engine and more as a stabilizer of labor markets and family units.
Testing and rethinking concepts
This makes China a critical case for testing the limits of existing theories. Consider the “welfare state as social investment” model. In many advanced economies, even conservative parties now justify childcare or education spending as investments in human capital. In China, however, productivism goes further: welfare is legitimate only insofar as it enhances labor productivity or social stability. Elderly care, for example, is promoted not as a right but as a means to free adult children (especially women) to participate in the labor force. Maternity insurance is expanded not to support gender equality per se, but to boost birth rates and secure future labor supply. The goal isn’t dignity or rights, it’s economic efficiency.
Crucially, this does not mean Chinese citizens passively accept inequality. But their critiques are often framed within the system’s own logic. A migrant worker might not demand universal pensions; instead, they ask, “Why can’t my contributions in Shanghai count toward my rural pension?”, a claim based on contributive justice, not citizenship. Similarly, urban residents may support expanding health insurance, but oppose covering “those who never paid in.” These are not irrational views; they are rational adaptations to a productivist, contributory regime shaped by decades of policy design and state messaging.
Testing and rethinking methods
Capturing such welfare attitudes, and especially its nuances, is difficult with surveys alone. Standard welfare attitude questions, “Should the government spend more on the poor?”, assume a shared understanding of “government,” “spending,” and “the poor” that may not hold in a setting like China. In authoritarian countries, respondents often calibrate answers to align with perceived state expectations. Qualitative methods can then reveal what surveys miss: the conditional support, moral tensions, and institutional reasoning behind public opinion. For example, people may support “more welfare” in principle but oppose it in practice if they believe funds will be wasted or misallocated, a concern rooted in real experiences of local corruption or inefficiency. Others express “satisfaction” not because they believe the system is fair, but because they see no alternative: “The state is doing what it can,” is a common narrative from our interviewees.
Therefore, in order to treat China as a critical case, a combination of methods is required. Large-N surveys can identify broad patterns, while in-depth interviews and ethnography can reveal the reasons behind them. Policy analysis can reveal how state discourse shapes public expectations. Together, these approaches can show that Chinese welfare attitudes emerge from a dynamic interplay between universal values, institutional legacies, cultural conditions, and context-specific constraints.
Outlook
Examining welfare attitudes in China is essential to extend our comparative toolkit. It reminds us that even seemingly universal concepts, like deservingness, self-interest, or fairness, are filtered through culture, history, and institutions. As global social policy confronts aging populations, precarious work, and rising inequality, the Chinese case offers crucial lessons: about the limits of productivism, the resilience of familial obligation, and the creative ways people navigate systems that offer protection, but not security. Including China isn’t about exoticism. It’s about building a truly global science of social policy, one that learns from all its cases.
