Study Of Zhejiang Province, The Minimum Living Security System

The system for Minimum Living Security is the product of the profound economic transforms and social relief system reform in the process of social transformation, and is the social policy implemented by the Party and our government to relieve the social problems as poverty and social contradictions. Its implementation is a symbol of having broken through the surplus pattern of the traditional social relief and established a new system for solving more effectively the basic living of the underpriviliged, and also it is a new step forward of the civil affairs.The present study, by evaluating and analysing the development status of the system for Minimum Living Security in Zhejiang, revealed the urban-rural integrated system for Minimum Living Security carried out throughout the whole province in January, 1997, and the history of construcing the new social relief system, summed up the Zhejiang Experience in social assistance, and the acomplishments that the experience has achiveed as well as the political and social significance were also affirmed in this paper. This research conducted an empirical study to investigate the issues of validity and fairness in the course of implementng the system for Minimum Living Security, and dwelt on the policy choosing and its implementation of Zhejiang Provincial People's Government and the eleven prefecural people's governments. Meanwhile, the position of the system for Minimum Living Security in the social insurance systems and its long-term efficiency mechanism were thoroughly and rationally exlored.This paper consists of four parts. The first part elaborated the history of the system for Minimum Living Security, and, based on the social relief system reform reflected in the three stages experienced by the system for Minimum Living Security in Zhejiang and the trace of unceasingly perfecting, summed up the Zhejiang Experience in social assistance. In the second part, an empirical study was made to probe into the operating model of the system for ensuring a minimum standard of living in Zhejiang and the overall status of the eleven prefectures. The third part, in terms of an inquiry into the problems in the key steps of the system for Minimum Living Security, revealed the enforcement of the government. The fourth and last section discusses the re-positining of the system for Minimum Living Security and the necessity of shifting the work focus of the social insurance systems in Zhejiang Province.