Rational Choice, Confucian Values and Welfare Demand: The Case of China
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Huang, Ching-Wei
Abstract
It has been thirty years since China start its economic reform and rapid development. However, with ""some people become wealthy first"", the issue of inequality and lack of welfare infrastructure turned into most social problem in modern China. Besides the ""building harmonious society"" propaganda, welfare demands from bottom also drew larger attention. Based on rational choice theory, scholars emphasize that personal economic endowment and related utility from welfare state determine demand to welfare state. Meanwhile, many scholars described welfare system in East Asia as ""Confucius welfare state"", and Confucian values had been deployed as reason for government ruler to keep low welfare supply. It means, culture values are determinant of welfare system in East Asia, including China. However, both theory has their theoretical vacancy. If culture really matters, then will they affect welfare demands in individual level? Also, from different interpretation to Confucian context, we found that Confucian values might possibly enhance welfare demand in individual level. This article provides different points of view that in China, Confucian values affect welfare demand individually and in positive way. The hypotheses above had been confirmed from our statistical analysis. First, Confucian values did affect welfare demand within Chinese people in positive way. Second, ""paternalism"" and ""familism"" aspects in confucian values are the main determinant to personal welfare demand. However, ""communitarianism"" aspect did not acheive statistical significant in our study. In the mean time, the significancy of economic variables confirmed that social policy preference theory is suitable for Chinese people. Influences of other variables showed the ""Chinese characteristics"", and the cause of the outcome is closely related to economic reform in the past thirty years. We confirmed the relationships between culture values and welfare demand in Chinese people. Nevertheless, there are many other factors in the causal chain from welfare demand to supply. The culture shift from fast transformation of China''s society may also affects Confucian value''s influence to welfare demand. The consequences of culture shift and the connection between demand and supply, are the most important features which deserve our focus.
Subjects
China study
Confucian values
Welfare state
Social justice
Redistribution
Rational choice
SDGs
Type
thesis
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