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An exploration of dibao – China's minimum income guaranteeEvery day in the People's Republic of China 70 million people receive help from the state through the minimum livelihood guarantee (dibao). What began as a reform in the city of Shanghai in the early 1990s is now a key component in the measures used by the Communist Party of China to maintain social stability and legitimacy. While scholars regularly discuss how effective dibao has been in alleviating poverty very little addresses what influenced its development. This book argues that in order to understand dibao we need to look at how the programme emerged and how it has developed in the years since. Drawing on newspaper articles, government reports and interviews with key officials and researchers, the book also addresses debate on the policy process in China as a whole.Addresses a significant gap in current publications on Chinese social policy in the reform era, namely studies of the dibao programmeUsing fragmented authoritarianism as the main approach the text engages with topic of social assistance in China as well as bigger questions regarding the policy process in ChinaUses extensive primary Chinese language sources including newspaper reports, government speeches, government reports, government circulars, and interviews with officials and researchers in China

Recent studies of policy and policy actors inChina have made use of the policy entrepreneur concept that has been popular in studies of policy inNorthAmerica andEurope. These approaches have understood the concept in its traditional form dealing with agenda setting and nonstate actors. The policy entrepreneur has developed beyond these confines and now offers a broader descriptive framework within which to understand the successes and failures of particular initiatives.This article uses these new developments, specifically the framework outlined byMintrom andNorman, to describe the success of policy entrepreneurship in the development of the urban residentMinimumLivelihoodGuarantee. This case was selected because existing scholarship has ignored the entrepreneurial role of bureaucrats in its development. The use of this framework without adaptation to describe policy actors inChina demonstrates the further application of policy entrepreneurs outside of Western democracies.

From 1993 to 2002, the emergence of the urban resident Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (MLG) system saw a major reconfiguration and expansion of social assistance in the People's Republic of China. The development of the MLG has been a complex process. The initial emergence and design of the MLG reflect space in the Chinese state for innovations and feedback in the social assistance agenda. The expansion and development of the MLG can be explained by the interventions of key policy actors. These actors pushed the MLG for a variety of different reasons. The resources available to these actors and the outcomes of their interventions were a reflection of their institutional position in the bureaucracy. Contributing to existing studies of Chinese social policy reform, this article argues that the emergence, design, and development of the policy reflects institutional space, constraints, and feedback in the Chinese policy process.