Globalization, Development Strategies and Social Welfare for the Rural Sector in China since the 2000s

Through a case study of China, this study investigates the impact of globalization on social welfare to the rural sector. This study provides support to the claim that globalization leads to social welfare expansion. In China, this was not conducted through a compensation mechanism in which volatility in globalization increases the societal demand for government welfare expenditure. This study finds that in countries with potentially huge domestic markets, an alternative mechanism is through the state’s change of its development strategy to a domestic consumption-driven one. I found that the volatility of exports during the global economic crises led Beijing to change its development strategies from an export-oriented to a domestic consumption-driven one. With this shift, central leaders gained incentives to extend social welfare provisions to the rural sector in order to increase consumption.