Research On Social Policy Change Of China: An Evolutionary Perspective (1978-2008)

China opened a historical transformation era when changing economic policy tosocial policy in2003. In the government’s important documents, social policy relatedto society occupies more and more proportion, as well as the important position. In amanner of speaking, social policy has become a key part of scientific developmentand harmonious society constructing. To enhance the efficiency of social policy isinseparable from the thorough understanding of social policy change. So the study onreasons and logic of social policy change under30years of China’s reform andopening up, is helpful to perfect the theory system of social policy, which has certaintheoretical exploration significance; also it will contribute to tide over "a key ofeconomic and social development stage" smoothly, which has strong practicalsignificance.China’s social policy change contains in the transformation of social system tomodernization. Social system is a hypercycle system. Modern transformation is aprocess that social system steps forward from order to more advanced order. Socialpolicy change is a subsystem of social transformation; its change affiliates in theprocess, as well as service and reaction in this process. Social policy change, from themacroscopic view, is a development of hypercycle system, with social, economic andpolitical common co-evolution; from the meso-scopic view, is a subsystem of socialevolution; from the microscopic view, is the product of actors’ strategy behavior.Therefore, only when we consider the social policy changes under the background ofentire social development, can we get more comprehensive insight into the meaningof vicissitude. Individualization is one parameter of the development of social system. Accordingto Slaving Principle of synergetic theory: The dominant role of development of socialsystem is not fast variable, but slow variable at last. Increasing fast variable onlyreflects short-term prosperity. In contrast, increasing slow variable represents thedegree of development of social system. Consequently, for transformation, or for thetendency of social hypercycle system developing more advanced and ordered, thedegree of individualization is one of important standards for measuring and confiningthe degree of social development. Due to change of social policies belongs to theprocedure of transformation of social system; change of degree of individualizationwill necessarily bring about harmonic changes of social policies. On the other hand,social policies can reversely change the degree of individualization by power whichgenerated by unequal exchanging. In that sense, social policies are the policies ofcoordinating marketization to fulfill decomposition of old social connected structureand construction of new social connected structure and its function is sustaining orpromoting the degree of individualization.For the individualization point of view, this paper believe that logical origin ofchange of Chinese social policies in text is lower degree of individualization under theplanned economical system, its migrated logic is sustaining individualizationreproducing and propelling specialization of individualization.On the one hand, firstly, lower degree of individualization severely restrictsdevelopment of productive forces under the planned economic system, which is thebasic reason for reform of the economic system under the pressure of finance. Fromthe system theory point of view, the planned economic system is a closed simplesystem. When stimulation caused by ideology is gradually consumed, the restrictionof individual initiative from the planned economic system will remarkably restrict thedevelopment of productive forces. And the huge population pressure make centralgovernment after the cultural revolution to face serious situation. In this case,government choose reform and opening up after experiencing the failure of “YangYuejin”.Secondly, as core and emphasis of economical system reform, the essence of reform of state-owned enterprises is gradually propelling de-organizing, in otherwords, incessantly developing individualization. It is not hard to view from that“Activating state-owned enterprises” is always emphasized reform topics and reformis carried out by people and active people.At last, As complements and pillar of reform of state-owned enterprises, reform ofsocial policies is sustaining individualization of propelling reform of state-ownedenterprises in essence, even appeared as methods of propelling individualization.To actors, the change of social policies is social actors’ tactical behavior of feelingchange of economic and social daughter system, adopting corresponding actions andbeing influenced by these actions. Social policies are incessantly migrated during thisinteraction.Change of social policies in text propels individualization, but development ofunofficial social policies falls into traditional stereotype. The reasons of causingtradition instead of modern mechanism are too much, such as segmentation of labormarket, responsibility of welfare expense going down, capability of family welfaredecreasing, excessive education and morcellation of social policies, etc. These factorscoupled to each other to jointly lead to traditional welfare of human nature is stillexist, so appearing de-organizing the objective that oppose trend of social policies intext. The competition between two trends is appeared in the form of evolved trends ofcompetition of two hypercycle systems. Due to violent transformation is still going on,the choice of two hypercycle systems to external circumstance is continuouslychanged, we don’t want to make a decision of trends, only point out that the better oneis decided by completion of hypercycle systems.