中国政府在社会福利中的角色重建

Re-establishing the Role of Government in Social Welfare in China

政府在社会福利中应该扮演什么角色以及如何扮演,是社会政策领域的一个根本问题。无论如何处理,都会产生全局性的影响。过去20多年来,中国的经济取得了高速增长。但是,在“高福利的负面效应”和“市场机制的高效率”这两个西方经验的影响下,中国政府却在社会福利领域逐步退出,这是导致当前有目共睹的经济与社会发展失调和社会不公平的重要因素。为此,中国政府必须重视社会政策对可持续发展的积极作用,在社会福利中扮演更为积极的角色。

The role of government in social welfare and how it should implement this role is a crucial question and underpins many of the theoretical issues in social policy.Indeed,whether this question can be dealt with adequately can affect many areas.For instance,over the past 20 years, guided by two lessons learned from the West-“high level social welfare may lead to negative effects on the economy”and“the market is an efficient mechanism”-the Chinese government has steadily retreated from social welfare in the midst of rapid economic growth.This has led to the current widely acknowledged uneven economic and social development.The authors of this paper believe that the Chinese government needs to recognize the positive contribution of social policy to sustainable development and that it should play a more active role in social welfare.