Chack-Kie Wong

East Asian welfare regimes in transition : from Confucianism to globalisation

Part One - Introduction - Eastern welfare states - Alan Walker and Chack-kie Wong Is welfare unAsian? - Ruby C.M. Chau and Wai Kam Yu Part Two - Social welfare in China - Joe C.B. Leung Hong Kong - from familistic to confucian welfare - Sammy Wai Chiu and Victor Wong Managing welfare in post-colonial Hong Kong - Chack Kwan Chan The welfare regime in Japan - Makoto Kono Taiwan - what kind of social policy regime? - Michael Hill and Yuan shie Hwang The development of the South Korean welfare regime - Sang-Hoon Ahn and So-Cheung Lee The welfare regime in Singapore - Vincent Wijeysingha Conclusion - Chack-kie Wong and Alan Walker.

Rethinking the western construction of the welfare state.

This article employs case studies of China and Hong Kong to question the western ethnocentric construction of the welfare state that predominates in comparative social policy research. The authors argue that welfare regimes, and particularly the “welfare state,” have been constructed as capitalist-democratic projects and that this has the damaging effect of excluding from analyses not only several advanced capitalist societies in the Asian-Pacific area but also the worlds most populous country. If welfare state regimes can only coexist with western political democracies, then China and Hong Kong are excluded automatically. A similar result occurs if the traditional social administration approach is adopted whereby a “welfare state” is defined in terms only of direct state provision. The authors argue that such assumptions are untenable if state welfare is to be analyzed as a universal phenomenon. Instead of being trapped within an ethnocentric welfare statism, what social policy requires is a global political economy perspective that facilitates comparisons of the meaning of welfare and the states role in producing it north, south, east and west.

Conservative welfare state systems in East Asia

Introduction Japan South Korea Taiwan Hong Kong Singapore Mainland China The Future of Conservative Welfare State Systems in East Asia Bibliography Index

Economic Reform and Social Welfare: The Chinese perspective portrayed through a social survey in Shanghai

This article starts with a brief comparative analysis of China and East Europe in terms of their stark differences in approaching economic reform and social welfare. Perhaps China has the benefit of learning, from the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, of the undesirable social costs incurred by economic reform. Henceforth, it has adopted a pragmatic and gradualist approach towards economic reform. This article reports the findings of an attitude survey in Shanghai, which by and large are compatible with the gradualist approach of the Chinese Government toward economic reform and social welfare. The survey finds that the Chinese in Shanghai positively rate economic reform in light of the benefits that it has brought about, but they are also aware of the large income disparities caused as a result. In the light of the evidence, the article suggests that Chinas economic reform has not transformed peoples beliefs to be in line with the market system. The Chinese are still, in general, in favor of a large role for the state in welfare and they themselves are not willing to shoulder heavier welfare responsibility. In the concluding section, the article explains this mixed pattern of public perceptions and pinpoints the likely developmental trend of Chinas welfare system.

Popular Belief in State Intervention for Social Protection in China

The paper starts with a brief discussion of recent developments of economic restructuring of the State Owned Enterprises in China and their related reforms in social insurance and social assistance. It then reports the findings of an attitude survey of residents in Shanghai in 1996 towards the social and economic consequences of economic reform. It reveals that, despite the fact that most people feel better off with the reforms, there is still a need for the state to play a role in social protection.

Medical social workers in Hong Kong hospitals Expectation, authority structure and role ambiguity

Physicians and nurses were included in the study in order to see whether role ambiguity for medical social workers is related to the differences in role expectations. It was found that medical social workers had different expectations of their roles from those of physicians and nurses. A clear difference was also identified between the lines of authority in terms of medical social workers’ role relations with physicians and nurses. Role ambiguity of medical social workers did not merely arise out of misunderstanding or misperception, it was also affected by authority structure.

Social policy and social order in East Asia: an evolutionary view

This study contrasts two varieties of comparative analysis: on one hand, researchers may look to explain the historical development of the East Asian welfare systems (EAWS) with an eye towards delineating some common trends, while on the other hand, they may seek to recognize the institutional features of these systems through the cross-regime comparisons. We discuss problems in the operation of these two approaches, instead choosing to employ contextual analysis to illuminate developments in social policy in EAWS. This study proposes to understand the policy model of these systems as a two-phase evolution in policy, thus providing a new foundational approach for the study of EAWS.

State-funded social work projects for social reform: reflections from community organizing in Hong Kong

This article explores the paradox facing social work practitioners in the pursuit of social reform. Without the reform endeavour driving the idealism of the profession, social work is more likely to lose its traditional dual commitment to the individual and to society. As the chance of service recipients being able to pay for the services rendered by social workers is slim, social work services aiming at creating a significant impact on social equality have to rely mainly upon state funds. Paradoxically, social workers who are committed

Economic growth and welfare provision: the case of child day care in Hong Kong:

Introduction During the last two decades, among Western countries, ’there has been a marked move away from the traditional notion that parents should devote their lives to their children, making sacrifices in their own comfort and personal lives to ensure that their children have it better than they did’ (Clarke-Stewart, 1982: 16). This move has been fostered by changes in social values regarding women’s right to work and their roles in family and society (Hughes et al., 1980: 32-3; David, 1982; Kamerman,1985). Advocates for women’s rights argue that the issue of childcare should not be isolated from socioeconomic factors the social division of labour between genders, the right of women to work and the responsibility of the state regarding social care for children (David, 1982). To achieve recognition of the importance of childcare in women’s new role has not been an easy task. For instance, it is only recently that the British Labour Party, a political party which claims to fight for social equalities, has adopted in its policy review the right to childcare as a precondition for freedom and equality between sexes: ’for many women, fair employment legislation is meaningless without provision for child care to enable them to exercise the freedom to work’ (British Labour Party, 1988). The provision of child day care can illustrate the dilemma between social values and social change. In modern societies, the need for social care is fuelled by industrialization and urbanization, at the

Insured without moral hazard in the health care reform of China.

Public insurance possibly increases the use of health care because of the insured persons interest in maximizing benefits without incurring out-of-pocket costs. A newly reformed public insurance scheme in China that builds on personal responsibility is thus likely to provide insurance without causing moral hazard. This possibility is the focus of this study, which surveyed 303 employees in a large city in China. The results show that the coverage and use of the public insurance scheme did not show a significant positive effect on the average employees frequency of physician consultation. In contrast, the employee who endorsed public responsibility for health care visited physicians more frequently in response to some insurance factors. On balance, public insurance did not tempt the average employee to consult physicians frequently, presumably due to personal responsibility requirements in the insurance scheme.