Forty-Year Development of Social Assistance System in China: Review and Outlook

This paper reviews the forty-year development of the social assistance system in China and discovers that under the leadership of the Chinese government, the basic framework of the social assistance system has taken shape and become a proud image of China’s social security system’s reform and development. The development of the social assistance system in China demonstrates the bottom-line thinking of state governance and its multi-tiered, cross-sector and community-focused characteristics. At its present stage of growth the social assistance system is actively developing multiple means of assistance and will be based on the objective of “supporting the vulnerable.”