Jennifer Pan, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers
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Jennifer Pan, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 225p. $99.00 hardback; $29.95 paperback Dorothy J. Solinger 1 # Journal of Chinese Political Science/Association of Chinese Political Studies 2020
Welfare for Autocrats, on the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (zuidi shenghuo baozhang, for short, dibao) is a marvel of scholarship, tireless research, ingenious analysis, state-of-the-art methodology, sparkling logic, and originality. Jennifer Pan introduces novel concepts that could illuminate the study of fields beyond authoritarian welfare, its primary arena of inquiry. It is well structured, a model of clarity and, despite its sophisticated techniques, almost entirely accessible. The book’s chief argument is that this program, devised initially to address urban poverty, morphed with time, as the Party grew alarmed at instances of unexpected public opposition (chiefly, Pan claims, the Falungong demonstration in Beijing in April 1999)). Instead of pure welfare, it became a mechanism of surveillance and control via “seepage” (a term Pan coined to mean a process by which a governmental goal infiltrates unrelated programs without altering the rules of the latter). To do so, the regime employs “repressive assistance” (Pan’s other neologism), whereby local officials extract information from recipients while extending aid, fostering dependence on providers and a sense of obligation in the process. The dibao scheme relies on neighborhood administrators to induce beneficiaries—especially members of the “targeted population” (zhongdian renkou)—previous protesters, former prisoners, drug dealers and such–to reveal the targets’ activities and desires. Ideally, from the government’s perspective, this interaction allows local cadres to ferret out recipients’ assumed propensity to make trouble. Contra policymakers’ intentions, the platform’s implementation enrages non-recipients, who perceive themselves (on the basis of their income) to be equally eligible for aid as those who do benefit from the stipends. Pan’s complex modes of inquiry enable her to show such anger to be higher in neighborhoods and cities where “targeted people” are prioritized for the dibao. The anger then forms the basis for complaints,
* Dorothy J. Solinger [email protected]
1
University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
D. J. Solinger
grievances, and loss of trust in the government among the non-recipients. The story is compelling: a plan meant to bolster stability by providing for the indigent ultimately produces the very disorder that the regime aspired to deter (though on a smaller scale). The range of research methods includes in-depth personal interviews with government and neighborhood officials and dibao recipients in four provinces in 2012 and 2013; surveying 100 neighborhoods in four cities; drawing on a nationally representative survey of 3500-plus urban citizens; and carrying out exhaustive documentary searches for a 15-year period of all relevant state policies and pr
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