社會保障的地域化：中國社會公民權的空間政治轉型

Sub-nationalization of Social Protection: The Spatial- Politics Transformation of Social Citizenship in China

在1990年之後，中國大陸各項社會福利改革腳步隨之加快。但是，現有的相關探討文獻對於這些快速轉變的福利制度和政策，在福利理論面仍然缺少整體性的思考。本文有兩個目的：一方面藉由文獻整理，指出當前討論中國社會福利與社會公民權發展的觀點局限性，同時從這個討論出發，試圖提出一個從社會公民權的空間面向切入視角，用來解析近年來由於戶籍制度鬆動所引發的福利改革與政策意涵。作者認為地方政府（尤其是省）行政區域成為社會公民權重新劃分的主要新界線，尤其是沿海地區的城鄉一體化趨勢，轉變了傳統戶籍制度對於「城／鄉」身分的嚴格劃分，取而代之的決定因素是「本地／外地」身分區隔。另一方面，這種社會公民權的界線移動也意味地方政府在社會保障領域的主導權提升。作者從近年來地方政府在社會保障與養老保險的積極創新作為，說明這些區域政策創新對於地方政府之間、乃至全國的社會政策發展所帶來的改變。從這兩個面向的分析，作者認為中國大陸社會福利改革的方向有很明顯的地域化現象，反映出一種在空間政治層次的新形態社會保障重組過程，從而對於社會公民權的賦予有深遠的意涵。

The pace of welfare reform has accelerated in China since the 1990s. A closer look at current literature on Chinese social welfare reveals that it still lags far behind the progress of fast-changing welfare institutions and policies; and an adequate theoretical account to accommodate these institutional changes is still lacking. Departing from this observation, this article has two purposes: First, it identifies the limits of current literature on Chinese social welfare and social citizenship and proposes a perspective that emphasizes the spatial dimension of social citizenship to interpret ongoing welfare reforms as a result of the loosening Hukou system in China. An increasingly blurred boundary between 'urban' and 'rural' has given way to a new parting line, 'within/without,' which demarcates the scope and extent of social citizenship within a region. In this process, local governments (especially provincial governments) have become an emerging administrative body setting the new demarcation line of social citizenship. Second, this article identifies the trend towards a subnationalization of social protection, which implies that local governments play an increasingly important role in the institutional design and innovation of social security. I use the example of local governments' pension insurance policy experiments to illustrate changes set in motion by these rising local policy innovations in terms of their influence on social policy-making at the national level. As a whole, the ongoing subnationalization of social protection is transforming the spatial politics of social welfare, which has profound implications for the development of social citizenship in contemporary China.