Social insurance ideas in the People’s Republic of China: A historical and transnational analysis

Abstract This article provides a historical analysis of the transnational diffusion of social insurance ideas in the People’s Republic of China (1949–present). Based on rich primary documents, this article argues that China’s social insurance policies in the 1950s were heavily influenced by Soviet ideas and institutions of social insurance, which were nevertheless abandoned with the prevailing of Mao’s ideas of “continuing revolution” in the 1960s and 1970s. After China reopened to the world in the late 1970s, China’s social security reforms were first influenced by social insurance ideas of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in the 1980s, then by neoliberal social security models (Singapore’s Central Provident Funds and the World Bank’s three-pillar system) promoted by the World Bank in the 1990s, and finally by the ideas of “social security for all” promoted by the ILO in the new century.