Covering whoever is eligible? An exploratory study on the eligibility of the Urban Minimum Living Standard Guarantee in China

Abstract

This article puts the policy goal of the Urban Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (UMLSG) in China into question and it aims to expose the assertion ‘covering whoever is eligible’ as a myth. An exploratory study of the implementation of the UMLSG eligibility criteria was launched in Guangzhou. Interviews were conducted with twenty-five poor people and local bureaucrats. In addition to people’s meeting the income requirement, it was discovered that there were three unwritten principles flexibly used by local bureaucrats in assessment: the ability to work, the family unit and clientelism. The prevalence of street-level bureaucracy in the UMLSG administration not only hampered state resources from reaching the families living in urban poverty, but also seriously contradicted the reformulated ideologies and undermined the party’s legitimacy. The findings of this study suggest that variations in UMLSG eligibility, which are causing a serious problem of under-coverage, should attract immediate attention from both officials and academics.

Keywords

street-level bureaucracy Urban Minimum Living Standard Guarantee urban poverty

Introduction

Since the economic reform in 1978, there has been growing attention in the literature of social policy to the welfare system in China (Chan et al., 2008; Whiteford, 2003; Guan, 2000; Wong, 1998; Leung and Nann, 1995). As one of the integral components of China’s welfare system, social assistance is considered the key to eliminating poverty. As declared by the former General Secretary Hu Jin-tao at the Seventeenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2007:

[By 2020], a social security system covering both urban and rural residents will be substantially established, and everyone will enjoy the security of a basic subsistence … with absolute poverty mainly eliminated. (Hu, 2007)

This study chooses the primary institution in social assistance – the Urban Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (UMLSG) – in Guangzhou as a case study. In an exploratory framework, the aim of this study is to evaluate whether this policy has achieved the original purposes as set out by the CPC, in terms of ‘covering whoever is eligible’ (ying bao jin bao) and maintaining social harmony. Although the levels of UMLSG thresholds have already been criticized as being set too low to acknowledge urban poverty (Gustafsson and Deng, 2011), this study provides an alternative perspective on the under-coverage problem by investigating variations in decisions about eligibility for the UMLSG. The first part of this article introduces the background against which the UMLSG was created and developed. The second part explains the rationale behind ‘covering whoever is eligible’ as well as the progress made so far in achieving this aim. A third section provides justifications of methodological issues. In the main body, the research findings in relation to the views of local bureaucrats and poor people on eligibility for the UMLSG will be presented as a contrast with the policy intentions. This article will conclude with compelling evidence that street-level bureaucracy in the UMLSG administration counteracts the CPC’s purpose of consolidating its legitimacy through social development.

Background of the UMLSG

The birth and development of the UMLSG is closely related to the socio-economic context of the current transition to a market economy. At the beginning of the economic reform, Deng Xiao-ping had to re-interpret the socialist nature of China in order to justify the introduction of capitalist methods of economic development. According to Deng (1978), ‘the fundamental demonstration of the superiority of socialism is to allow socially productive forces to develop … and to gradually satisfy people’s increasing needs for material goods and cultural life’. Therefore, ‘to allow some people to prosper first’ became the new prime goal of the development strategy.

On the other hand, the legitimacy of Chinese socialism and the leadership of the CPC rested on ‘common prosperity’. As Deng (1986) clearly pointed out, ‘We permit some people and some regions to become prosperous first, for the purpose of achieving common prosperity faster. Therefore, our policy will not lead to polarisation, a situation in which the rich get richer while the poor get poorer’. He even stated that ‘the reform would be judged to fail if polarisation were produced’ (Deng, 1985).

Regarding the promise of ‘allowing some people to prosper first’, there is no doubt that the excellence of economic development has generally improved people’s living standards in the past three decades. For example, based on the threshold of ‘$1.25 a day’, using 2005 Power Purchasing Parities, the World Bank (2013) tracked a national reduction in poverty from 835.1 million people in 1981 to 157.1 million in 2009. However, the other task – ‘common prosperity’ – has become more difficult to accomplish, because China is no longer a country of low inequality: the World Bank (2013) also indicated that the Gini coefficient of China rose from 0.291 in 1981 (income based) to 0.421 in 2009 (consumption based).

This growing inequality has offset the impact of China’s economic growth on poverty reduction. This can be illustrated by an aggravating problem called ‘new urban poverty’ (Hussain, 2003). As reported by the Information Office of the State Council (2004), there had been 28.18 million workers laid off during 1998–2003 since the restructuring of national enterprises started in the mid-1990s. As this massive unemployed population was no longer covered by danwei welfare – a comprehensive welfare system based on work units (Gu, 2001) – they were the group most vulnerable to experiencing poverty in cities. It has been demonstrated that being ‘laid off’ and ‘unemployed’ were two of the most important factors in explaining or predicting urban poverty in China (Li, 2006).

The increasing income disparities contradicted the promise of ‘common prosperity’, and this forced the CPC to modify its dominant ideologies, starting from the CPC’s Sixteenth National Congress in 2002. Instead of solely ‘centring on economic development’, the newly-embraced concept of Scientific Outlook on Development (kexue fazhanguan) focused on ‘co-ordinating economic and social development’ (Wen, 2004). Similarly, it was argued that ‘a harmonious socialist society’ should be characterized by ‘fairness and justice’ (Hu, 2005), which required more state intervention in narrowing the income gap and developing the social security system. The report of the CPC’s Seventeenth National Congress in 2007 expressed the most positive view about social development so far. It was the first time in history that the CPC had written a separate chapter dedicated to social development, arguing for ‘accelerating society-building, with the focus on improving people’s livelihoods’ (Hu, 2007).

Acute urban unemployment, the legitimacy crisis of the CPC and the activation of social development all contributed to the evolution of the UMLSG. First trialled in 1993 in Shanghai, the UMLSG was originally designed as a safety-net for the ‘new urban poverty’ group, distributing benefits to laid-off or unemployed workers whose family incomes fell below a certain local threshold. Since its national institutionalization in 1999, the UMLSG has become the primary social assistance programme in cities and its function in supporting party legitimacy has been highly appreciated. As former Premier Li Peng (1997) commented, ‘This is a very effective policy for social stability, which has remarkably good consequences, but which also costs little money’. Similarly, former Deputy Minister of Civil Affairs Fan Bao-jun (1997: 1733) pointed out that: ‘This scheme is … a cohesion project and a big and good thing done by the government for the masses. … The money spent on the UMLSG not only reassures people and stabilises society, but also supports economic development’.

In summary, there are two very important functions for the UMLSG. On the one hand, the UMLSG is designed to alleviate the worsening problem of urban poverty. On the other hand, the improvement of the UMLSG can be used to demonstrate the CPC’s ambitions for ‘social development’, ‘focusing on people’s livelihoods’ and finally regaining the CPC’s popularity by remedying the broken promise of ‘common prosperity’. Accordingly, the question of how far the UMLSG can deliver state resources to the destitute urban population is critically related to the success of the reformulated ideologies upheld by the CPC.

‘Covering whoever is eligible’

In order to assess the coverage of the UMLSG, this study aimed to investigate how eligibility for the benefit is determined in reality. According to state regulations, nominal eligibility for the UMLSG should only be related to the income levels of applicants: those families whose per-capita incomes fall below the local UMLSG threshold (State Council, 1999). As the former Minister of Civil Affairs who established and promoted the UMLSG, Duoji Cairang (2001: 84), has pointed out, the significance of the UMLSG is ‘neither based on employment status, or occupational category, nor sex or age; it depends on actual living standards’.

According to Hong (2004), however, in the early development of the UMLSG, local authorities tried to minimize the number of beneficiaries by various methods. Firstly, laid-off or unemployed workers from state-owned enterprises directly under provincial and central governments’ control might not be considered to be eligible for benefits under the UMLSG because these national enterprises had previously contributed little of their taxes to local authorities. Secondly, whatever their financial situation was, able-bodied people of working age who applied were very likely to be rejected. Thirdly, laid-off or unemployed workers and retired personnel were all assumed to have claimed unemployment insurance or pensions, no matter whether they received these incomes or not in reality. Lastly, the family income might be estimated to be higher in assessment than it actually was, based on the applicants’ age, housing conditions, possession of consumer goods (e.g. mobile phone, television and air conditioner) or even pets.

In order to rectify these problems, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) set the goal of ‘covering whoever is eligible’ and relevant instructions were issued during 2001–2003. It was required that central and local governments should consistently increase fiscal funding, so that whoever was eligible for the UMLSG should be covered in local jurisdictions (Shang and Wu, 2004). As a result, the UMLSG funding started to increase significantly in 2001–2002 (the date of the CPC’s Sixteenth National Congress). The total funding in 2003 was about eleven times as much as in 1999, when the UMLSG was officially established (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Funding of the UMLSG (billion yuan).

With levels of the average UMLSG threshold and the average UMLSG subsidy remaining intact, the soaring funding during 2001–2003 produced a rapid expansion in UMLSG beneficiaries. The average UMLSG threshold dropped from 157 yuan/month in 2000 to 147 yuan/month in 2001 and it remained nearly the same during 2001–2003 (147–149 yuan/month; see Figure 2). Similarly, the average UMLSG subsidy – which represents the actual expenditure for UMLSG beneficiaries – fell significantly from 45.3 yuan/month in 2000 to 29.6 yuan/month in 2001 and it bounced back to 58 yuan/month in 2003 only with an annual increase of approximately 4 yuan during 2001–2003. Because of a very low subsistence level but with hugely increasing funding, the number of beneficiaries nearly tripled from 4.03 million to 11.71 million during 2000–2001 and it reached 22.47 million in 2003, the largest number in the six years leading up to this point (see Figure 3). On the basis of this performance, former Premier Zhu Rong-ji (2003) announced in 2003 that whoever was eligible for the UMLSG had been covered.

Figure 2.

Average UMLSG threshold (◆) and average UMLSG subsidy (■) (yuan/person/month).

Figure 3.

Beneficiaries of the UMLSG (million persons).

After the announcement about ‘covering whoever is eligible’ in 2003, the development strategy of the UMLSG seemed to focus on improving the ‘quality’ of the UMLSG protection. As indicated by Figures 1 and 3, there was only a marginal rise in beneficiaries from 22.47 to 23.11 million during 2003–2010, while the funding amounted to 52.47 billion yuan in 2010, which was about 3.4 times more than in 2003. The continuing financial support was mainly used to enhance levels of the average UMLSG threshold and subsidy. For instance, it can be seen in Figure 2 that the average UMLSG subsidy which beneficiaries actually received grew by an annual increase of 18.7 yuan during 2003–2010 to 189 yuan/month in 2010. Other than this income subsidy, the UMLSG was also evolving into a comprehensive programme of social assistance, providing beneficiaries with supplementary benefits for medical care, housing, education or other living costs (Gao and Zhai, 2012).

Owing to the improving security of the UMLSG and a stabilized number of beneficiaries since 2003, the central concerns about the UMLSG shifted from ‘covering whoever is eligible’ to ‘welfare dependency’. It is generally believed that most of the UMLSG beneficiaries have been comprised of able-bodied people who prefer long-term dependence on the programme to working (Ngok et al., 2011; Leung, 2006). The fear of welfare dependency by able-bodied people forced welfare authorities to place much greater emphasis on the selection procedures of the UMLSG. It can be seen from official propaganda that after 2004 raising the thresholds of the UMLSG or enlarging its coverage was no longer the primary concern of the MCA. Instead, they encouraged local authorities to adopt specific measures (e.g. ‘strengthening the means test’ or ‘home inspection/intensifying public supervision’) to screen out undeserving targets (Zhou, 2012).

In order to tighten access to the UMLSG, an extreme method which distorted the eligibility criteria was reported again by recent empirical studies in Central and Northeastern China: ‘the ability to work’ was still being used as a principle in assessment (Cho, 2010; Solinger, 2010). It has been mentioned before that the MCA was strongly opposed to simply using ‘able-bodied’ as a reason to reject a UMLSG application. They also believed that this problem had been rectified after large amounts of funding were pumped into the UMLSG. Thus, these minor reports contradict the promise of ‘covering whoever is eligible’ and they have triggered the interest of this study in re-exploring the issue of eligibility in relation to the UMLSG: Is it true that the UMLSG covers whoever is eligible in reality? If not, what are the criteria that are being used in assessment?

Methodology

In order to evaluate the claim that ‘whoever is eligible is covered’, this study was conducted in Guangzhou from June to August, 2010. As the capital city, Guangzhou is the most developed locality in Guangdong Province which has the largest economy and generates the most government revenue in China. The solid foundation of its finances supports the determination of the Guangzhou authority to reduce urban poverty. When this study was launched, the UMLSG threshold in Guangzhou (410 yuan/month) was the third highest among 36 central cities in China, only lower than Shanghai (450 yuan) and Tianjin (430 yuan) (MCA, 2010).

Since fiscal capability is usually recognized as the primary factor accounting for the willingness of local authorities to allocate UMLSG assistance (Solinger and Hu, 2012), the prosperous Guangzhou city should be the most likely to strictly follow the nominal terms of eligibility for the UMLSG. In other words, there is convincing reason to believe that any problem with the assessment of eligibility for the UMLSG occurring in Guangzhou is also very likely to exist in other less developed localities.

To reveal the experiences of poor people and local bureaucrats during the application process, the method of interviews was adopted. The term ‘poor people’ refers to interviewees from three groupings: UMLSG families; those designated ‘low-income families’; and potential users. The first category included those families with per-capita incomes lower than the threshold of 410 yuan/month; while the threshold of the second was set a little higher, at 490 yuan. These ‘low-income families’ may be entitled to the same welfare in kind or exemption from fees as the UMLSG families, but they could not receive the UMLSG subsidy, which would top up their per-capita income to the threshold level of 410 yuan. The third category, ‘potential users’, refers to those families who once applied for the UMLSG but were unsuccessful; and these families were not even recognized as falling into the ‘low-income’ category. The inclusion of ‘low-income families’ and ‘potential users’ was intended to show why some poor people might fail in the application process.

‘Local bureaucrats’ refers to both the staff in Residents’ Committees (RCs) and their supervisors in Street Offices (SOs). Although RCs are nominally self-organized, they are actually treated as a branch of the SO and they carry out all the administrative work assigned by the SO. In the administrative practice of the UMLSG, it is an RC staff member who initiates the assessment. Usually their supervisor in the SO would not express a second opinion about the result, because they believe that the RC staff member should be the most familiar with the grass-roots circumstances. In short, RC staff and SO officers constitute the interface linking the UMLSG to its beneficiaries.

Lastly, since the aim of this study is to inquire into the official claim that ‘whoever is eligible is covered’, the fieldwork had to abandon the common strategy of identifying interviewees through formal referral by the RCs. Instead, the researcher relied on snowball sampling and purposive sampling to find appropriate interviewees using informal contact. This turned out to be very helpful for the research findings because poor people were more willing to share their experiences when officials were absent.

In total, there were twenty-five interviewees in this study: eleven UMLSG cases, two low-income cases, two former UMLSG cases, two cases who failed the application, three SO officers and five RC staff members. All the names in the following report have been changed to ensure anonymity.

Research findings

Far from supporting the claim that the UMLSG ‘covers whoever is eligible’, the following research findings, derived in Guangzhou in 2010, showed that eligible applicants could actually be turned down for benefits under the influence of three unwritten principles: the ability to work; the family unit; and clientelism.

The ability to work

The first unwritten principle of eligibility is related to ‘the ability to work’. All the interviews with poor people and local bureaucrats indicated that ‘the ability to work’ was the most crucial criterion. As shown below, eligible beneficiaries defined by local bureaucrats were only those families with members who were old, weak in health, or physically or mentally disabled.

We will not approve applications from couples capable of working, young or healthy. We will not consider unless they are over 50, disabled or sick. (Mr. Hao)

The beneficiaries are mainly mentally ill, handicapped or physically unfit for work. (Ms. Tang)

How can local bureaucrats deter those applicants capable of working, if there is not a condition called ‘the ability to work’ in the regulations? Firstly, local bureaucrats will inform the applicant misleadingly that the UMLSG is mainly designed for people without the ability to work. Therefore, they will strongly advise applicants to look for a job first:

Although the condition written in the regulations is only about per-capita income in the family, it can be changed. From our perspective, if a couple has the ability to work, we will try to sort out the problem of employment first. (Ms. Mo)

Generally, I will ask them to try to find a job first. After that, they will normally not come back any more. (Ms. Tang)

If the applicant still returns to the RC and reports their failure to find a job, the second step for local bureaucrats is to present some jobs to them. This is a very ‘effective’ way to turn down the application. On the one hand, the applicant is very likely to be disqualified for the income criterion once they accept the job. For example, the income threshold for a three-person household was 1,230 yuan/month in 2010 (410 yuan*3), while the then minimum wage of Guangzhou was 1,030 yuan/month.

On the other hand, according to local UMLSG regulations in Guangzhou, able-bodied applicants must provide justification for their reluctance to accept job offers. Local bureaucrats interpret an ‘acceptable’ justification only as rejection by employers. Therefore, they would disallow the application if it were the applicant who decided not to attend the interview or take the job offer.

We would have an excuse to refuse the application if an applicant with the ability to work did not accept our referral. (Mr. Hao)

Generally, the jobs referred by the RC are low-paid, temporary and involve intensive labour, such as ‘household helpers, door guards, car guards, newspapermen, milkmen’ (Ms. Tang) or ‘security guards and kitchen helpers’ (Mr. Gan). More importantly, job referral actually serves more as a means of deterring applicants.

After the applicants fail one, two or three interviews, they will give up their applications, as they think it is too difficult to apply for the UMLSG. (Mr. Gan)

Thirdly, local bureaucrats will not approve the application until detailed proof explaining why the applicant has been rejected is issued by employers.

Those applicants who are able to work and have tried hard to find a job, must show some proof from employers to explain their failure at the interview, such as ‘they are over 50 years old’. (Mr. Shen)

The principle of ‘the ability to work’ grounded in the assessment is connected to local bureaucrats’ concern about welfare dependency. They are wary that the current UMLSG practice would ‘raise lazy people’:

If everyone with the ability to work can make an application, there will be many beneficiaries and this will add a great burden to the government. These people will choose not to work because they can receive money by just staying at home. (Ms. Tang)

Voices from people experiencing poverty

How did poor people respond to local bureaucrats’ imposition of ‘the ability to work’? Mr. Zhao was 56 and without any income source. After his wife was laid off in 2004, he attempted to seek assistance from the RC. However, the staff there told him, ‘The UMLSG is designed for those people with physical disability or severe illness’. The staff also questioned him, ‘Why do you not go to work since your body functions well?’ In the end, Mr. Zhao’s family could only be recognized as a ‘low-income family’ even though their income was lower than the UMLSG threshold. Mr. Zhao felt angry about this result. He pointed out that being ‘able-bodied’ did not necessarily secure a job position.

I know ‘the ability to work’ is not mentioned in any policy document. It is just added by the SO and the RC. … They do not understand what age, physical strength and education are needed nowadays in society.

In some cases, ‘the ability to work’ is implemented in such a harsh way that even the disabled applicants may be excluded. Ms. Zhuo was unemployed in 2002 and her husband was long-term unemployed. Despite her being blind in one eye, her application was rejected in 2003 because she was assessed as ‘fully functioning in limbs’ and ‘as young as only 40’. Regarding this, Ms. Zhuo said in a resentful tone:

It is unreasonable to behave like this. You should assess according to the actual situation. It is impossible for employers to hire someone disabled like me.

The family unit

The second principle in practical assessment is ‘the family unit’. According to both the state and local regulations, the eligibility of the UMLSG is determined by the ‘average income of family members living together’. There are two elements in the definition of ‘family’: 1) the members ‘living together’ must be indicated by the Household Registration Record; 2) these members must satisfy one of three legal relationships with the householder: partnership (e.g. husband or wife), supported (e.g. parents) or reared (e.g. dependent children). The following discussion focuses on two categories of extended families which often stimulate controversies in assessment.

Those households named as ‘Type 1 households’ by this study, are ones in which it is the second generation and their children in the household that need UMLSG support. However, the first generation (the older people) must be counted in the assessment unless they are not living together. This assumes that because they are living together in the same household, the first generation should be capable of relieving the household’s hardship to some extent. However, as will be discussed in later analysis, this assumption over-estimates the capacity of the resources in a household and thus creates tensions in the intergenerational relationship.

By contrast, ‘Type 2 household’ refers to the circumstance in which the first generation (the older people) needs to apply for the UMLSG, in which case their adult children must be included no matter whether they are living together or not. Local bureaucrats explain that according to traditional culture, adult children are obliged to look after their parents. Therefore, they will only accept the application if the first generation’s children are also poverty-stricken.

Adult children should take care of their parents, unless their incomes are lower than the UMLSG threshold or their parents are very sick. (Mr. Gan)

Considering that the actual situation may differ from case to case, local bureaucrats admit that they will define ‘the family unit’ with flexibility. For instance, Mr. Shen and Mr. Gan would allow a disabled or sick member into the UMLSG as a single beneficiary, even if other family members had income sources. It can be noted that ‘flexibility’, as the bureaucrats always call it, mainly depends on the ‘difficult situation’ of the applicant, which again means ‘the ability to work’. As Ms. Mo said:

In fact, ‘the family unit’ is only an excuse for us. If we think he can work, we will tell him ‘your father has a pension and both of you belong to the same family unit as indicated by the Household Registration Record’. If he is living in a difficult situation – without the ability to work, we may do it differently.

Voices from people experiencing poverty

Ms. Zhang’s story can be used to expose the myth of the Type 1 household, about which there is a false assumption that resources can be distributed between generations, simply because they are living in the same household. Before being admitted to the UMLSG in 2007, Ms. Zhang was employed as a temporary worker. After her husband was laid off in 1997, he could not go to work again because he had to look after his 90 year old mother, with whom they were living. Since then, the couple constantly appealed to the RC for help, but their application was always turned down. The staff believed that the couple was fit for work and the pension of the old mother raised the household income above the UMLSG threshold. Regarding this imposition of ‘living together as a family unit’ in assessment, as Ms. Zhang pointed out, ‘living together is different from sharing life together’.

It was not necessary for her to support us even though we were living together. We cooked separately. Living together is different from sharing life together. In addition, she was very old and needed to save the pension and the allowance from her daughter for herself. I understand this. To help us or not depends on her conscience. In reverse, we cannot ask her for money, as after all, she is our senior.

Elderly poverty, which can be hidden by the mask of the Type 2 household, can be uncovered in the case of Ms. Cai. There were six people living in Ms. Cai’s old, crowded and messy accommodation, including her mother, second eldest brother and the eldest brother’s family, while her third eldest brother was in jail. At the age of 73, Ms. Cai’s mother did not have any income source. The two eldest brothers were low-paid casual workers in the community. Ms. Cai was currently unemployed and joining her mother in the street to gather and sell dumped paper and cans for a living. She tried to submit an application for her mother several times, but none were approved, based on the judgement that all four children were healthy and able to work. Ms. Cai felt angry about the RC’s reply:

It is unreasonable. How can they say we don’t want to care for our mother? Our mother is the one who gave birth to us! But you can see from our accommodation and financial situation that we cannot afford to look after our mother. (Ms. Cai)

Clientelism

It has been shown in the previous sections that local bureaucrats are quite likely to turn down an application by flexibly adopting the principles of ‘the ability to work’ and ‘the family unit’. In relation to this tendency of local bureaucrats to bend the rules, this section identifies ‘clientelism’ as the third principle which is actively used in considering eligibility for the UMLSG.

Owing to the increasing emphasis on the UMLSG by central government, the authorities of Guangzhou at different levels are actually encouraging SOs and RCs to enrol potential beneficiaries into the UMLSG.

To speak frankly, all the supervisors in all kinds of meetings emphasise: ‘Please don’t be too strict about the UMLSG. The funding is “public”. Just approve the application as long as all the required documents are provided.’ (Mr. Gan)

In reality, RC staff members provide an alternative view. They are worried that more approved cases will cause greater workloads in future administration, including reassessment every six months, regular family visits or reimbursement of all kinds of costs. Much worse, the UMLSG workload is only one of the many tasks for the RC staff. Accordingly, the staff tend to set up various barriers to application, especially utilizing ‘the ability to work’ and ‘the family unit’.

The worst of all is reassessment. Beneficiaries are required to resubmit all the proofs and they have to be reviewed again. How can it be finished only by me? Therefore, I am quite bored with the UMLSG work. I feel upset when I know that someone is coming to apply for it. The instruction from the district requires that eligible applicants must be guaranteed entry. But our practice is to ignore it if possible. The instruction is ‘dead’ and it depends on the person how it is carried out. (Ms. Mo)

However, there is one possible way for poor people to overcome the barriers to a successful application, which is to develop a ‘patron–client’ relationship with the staff. This means that in order to be considered for the UMLSG entitlement, poor people have to flatter local bureaucrats or carry out personal favours in relation to their daily work. For example, Mr. Shen and Mr. Gan would consider flexibly assessing ‘the family unit’ if applicants were showing the ‘right’ attitudes, such as being respectful to them. More evidence of how clientelism works in assessment will be shown by the voices of poor people below.

It must be mentioned that ‘clientelism’ would possibly be unnecessary if the applicant could complain or defend their rights at a higher level. Although expressing the idea unwillingly, local bureaucrats admit that ‘complaining’ could cause pressure from their supervisors and they would have to assess the application in accordance with the original eligibility criteria.

Babies who can cry may be fed. Our supervisor does not support us in complaints. They tell us harmony in society is the most important. Anyway, there is no difference in enrolling one more, because the resources of the UMLSG are not capped. (Mr. Gan)

Voices from people experiencing poverty

As mentioned in the earlier section about ‘the ability to work’, Ms. Zhuo was first assessed as ‘fully functioning in limbs’ and ‘too young’, despite blindness in one of her eyes. After that she volunteered to help the RC for a year. Ms. Zhuo did all the cleaning for the offices three times a week. She was also responsible for publishing the RC’s propaganda board. Furthermore, she was always ready to hand out leaflets or pick up litter in the street when asked. According to her testimony, ‘The RC finally issued me the UMLSG because they thought I was working hard for them.’

Likewise, Ms. Pan was 45 years old with mental health problems. Although she had been unemployed for many years, her application was at first rejected because she was living with her brother. However, Ms. Pan believed that she could express the ‘right’ attitudes to local bureaucrats. She volunteered to direct traffic two days a week. As she said, ‘I just worked without complaints and never said “no” or “why” to the staff.’ Eventually, Ms. Pan’s application was ‘flexibly’ treated after her brother moved out of the accommodation, even though their names were still shown in the same Household Registration Record.

Without the patron–client relationship, it is very hard for applicants to overcome the principles of ‘the ability to work’ and ‘the family unit’. Considered as living in a Type 2 household, Ms. Cai’s mother never succeeded in her application and she did not attempt to establish an informal relationship with the RC staff as others suggested. When Ms. Cai submitted the application, the staff would point out ‘flaws’ every time. For example, instead of referring to the evidence, the staff arbitrarily judged the reported incomes of the four adult children in the household to be ‘false’, because they all had the ability to work. After being rejected by the RC more than three times, Ms. Cai was deeply disappointed and withdrew the application.

Lastly, it must be pointed out that discretion might be eradicated and clientelism might be unnecessary if poor people chose radical actions instead to protect their social rights. Mr. Chang, 46 years old, was unemployed in 2004 as he became blind. However, his application was declined at first because he had been sharing accommodation with his ex-wife after their divorce. This was treated as suspicious by the RC staff, who claimed he was ‘cheating about the family unit by pretending divorce’. Mr. Chang was enraged about the reply and spent two months protesting to the District Government. Finally, Mr. Chang was reassessed and his application was approved after he proposed serious threats:

I know their principles about the UMLSG: ignore it if possible. So, I was very angry at the RC then and I told them I would light up a gas tank in front of the District Government if they did not accept my case.

Conclusion

Based on the case study in Guangzhou, this research discovered that meeting what is nominally the only criterion for acceptance into the UMLSG programme: the income requirement, does not guarantee the success of UMLSG applications. Instead, there were three unwritten principles flexibly used by local bureaucrats for discretion. The primary principle refers to ‘the ability to work’. Only those families with significantly old, sick or disabled members could possibly be admitted, while able-bodied applicants were deterred from the programme by pressure to earn their living in the market. The second principle was constituted by two controversial definitions of ‘the family unit’. This principle assumed that resources could and should be shared between generations; wrongly, according to the testimony of the poor people who shared their experiences in the research. The flexible use of ‘the ability to work’ and ‘the family unit’ was closely related to the concern of local bureaucrats about heavy workloads generated by those on the UMLSG, and this concern produced the third principle: clientelism. This principle demanded that poor people should develop a patron–client relationship for guaranteeing their UMLSG entitlements. This principle is so important that it can even rule over the principles of ‘the ability to work’ and ‘the family unit’.

The conclusions above were based on twenty-five interviews with poor people and local bureaucrats in Guangzhou. Some may question its representativeness of China as a whole, but there were at least three factors in the research design that could maximize the validity of this study. Firstly, the informal contact for identifying interviewees helped them to express their opinions more freely than usual. Secondly, the inclusion of both poor people and local bureaucrats as interviewees enabled this study to use their views to corroborate or contradict each other. Lastly, since Guangzhou has been the city most dedicated to the UMLSG development, the variations in eligibility found in Guangzhou are very likely to exist in other cities with less government support for the UMLSG. Actually, the discovery of the misuse of ‘the ability to work’ in the UMLSG assessment in Guangzhou – a southern city – echoes earlier reports from Northeastern and Central China (Cho, 2010; Solinger, 2010).

If the findings in this exploratory study could be further supported by follow-up research, they would strongly refute the mainstream arguments about the UMLSG coverage. Firstly, the task of ‘covering whoever is eligible’ is far from accomplished. Other than having their incomes lower than a certain local threshold, the actual eligible UMLSG beneficiaries are confined to those people who also are without the ability to work, are without a family to support them or have been forced into patronage arrangements with local bureaucrats. Secondly, the imposition of the criteria of ability to work, family unit and patronage into the assessment of eligibility for the UMLSG contradicts the official definition of this institution: ‘neither based on employment status or occupational category, nor sex or age; it depends on actual living standards’ (Duoji, 2001: 84). Thirdly, this study suggests that welfare dependency in China is probably no more than a myth. According to the findings, it is actually very difficult for able-bodied applicants to successfully apply for the UMLSG. On the other hand, the fear of welfare dependency facilitates local bureaucrats in implementing ‘the ability to work’ and ‘the family unit’ as the prime principles in assessment. Therefore, the common belief that the UMLSG beneficiaries are mainly comprised of able-bodied people remains very questionable. This study argues, on the contrary, that instead of worrying about the welfare dependency created by the UMLSG, it is the prevailing shortcomings in ‘covering whoever is eligible’ in the current practice that should draw more attention from officials and academics.

Manifested in the three unwritten principles, the discretion of local bureaucrats in the UMLSG assessment can be linked to a wider literature of ‘street-level bureaucracy’. It has been generally revealed that owing to ambiguous policy goals, limited funding and low levels of management control, frontline workers in public organizations tend to use substantial discretion and autonomy in distributing welfare resources (Evans, 2010; Hjörne et al., 2010; Ellis, 2007; Evans and Harris, 2004; Lipsky, 1983). Meanwhile, the micro behaviours of street-level bureaucrats have been an important theme in the literature of public administration in China, with previous research mainly focused on the deviation of policy implementation from policy goals designed by the central government through the actions of local governments (e.g. Zhou, 2010; Edin, 2003).

Similarly to instances in the UK (Spandler and Vick, 2005) or in the US (Riccucci, 2005), this study found that ambiguities in policy (e.g. the lack of definition of ‘the family unit’) and the decentralization of power to RC staff contributed to creating discretion by local bureaucrats in the UMLSG. However, this research identified two unusual and significant characteristics. It happened in the context of a clear national goal of ‘covering whoever is eligible’ and of increasing funding from higher authorities. Furthermore, the discretion of local bureaucrats has led to clientelism and ultimately the informalization of social rights: the UMLSG entitlement may be gained by the means of pleasing local bureaucrats or doing personal favours for them. These two characteristics of street-level bureaucracy in the UMLSG are not reported either from Ngok et al.’s (2011) application of street-level bureaucracy in the UMLSG or from other fields of social policy in China, such as environmental protection (Zhan et al., forthcoming).

Although it cannot be ignored that the discretion of local bureaucrats might be helpful for poor people in some cases, such as in flexibly measuring the family unit, most of the time its function was more linked to deterring potential beneficiaries. This study provides two directions for eliminating the negative effects of street-level bureaucracy. An institutional framework of the UMLSG with clear policy goals, concrete procedures and the full commitment of administrators to service delivery should be established. In particular, a ‘just’ role for state administrators and civil servants in fulfilling their responsibility to deliver welfare services should be highlighted in the interaction with service users (Chan et al., 2008: 23–24). As well as the top-down design of the institution, welfare users should be advocated to defend their social rights. The findings have demonstrated, from both local bureaucrats’ and poor people’s angles, that ‘complaining’ to a higher authority is an effective way to break down the discretionary power of local bureaucrats, especially when the authoritarian regime is currently being responsive to improving people’s livelihoods in order to maintain social harmony.

The practice of street-level bureaucracy in the UMLSG not only hampers state resources from reaching those urban families in desperate need, but also seriously contradicts the reformulated ideologies and ultimately undermines the legitimacy of the CPC. As has been pointed out, the CPC has changed its guiding ideologies to emphasize ‘co-ordinating economic and social development’, and ambitious measures such as the UMLSG were carried out to improve people’s livelihoods. It is undoubtedly true that the UMLSG is the last resort for those people living in poverty after they have exhausted all sources of social support. However, this study demonstrates that the intention of ‘covering whoever is eligible’ using the UMLSG may be failing in its fundamental mission. This is not only because eligible applicants can be rejected without legal basis, but also because resentful poor people may confront the authorities with radical actions for the purpose of defending their legitimate rights (see Mr. Chang’s story).

Based on the findings, this study provides the following implications for policy and research. Firstly, future research should focus on the problem of the distortion of UMLSG eligibility by local bureaucrats. Secondly, in order to fight against street-level bureaucracy, social rights should be embraced in the future development of the UMLSG. This not only demands a just role of the state and its public servants in service delivery; it also advocates resistance of poor people to the malpractice of the UMLSG, in order to protect their entitlements. Finally, researchers in poverty studies in China should work with poor people from a bottom-up approach.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Alan Walker for his helpful comments as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers from Critical Social Policy for their assistance.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author biography

Jie Lei is a Lecturer in Social Work at the School of Sociology and Anthropology, Sun Yat-sen University, China. He is interested in studying China’s welfare regime, urban social assistance programmes and the professionalization of social work.

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