The Fragmentation And Holistic Governance Of Chinese Elderly Welfare Provision

Nowadays,aging population has become a common trend in the world.It is especially significant in China that the proportion of the aged population and the elderly dependency ration have been extremely high.With the rise of aging population,the elderly welfare issues,including endowment insurance,elderly health,elderly care etc.,have become heated ones for public policies and academic research in China.Therefore,it has become our common pursuit for the whole society to enhance the well-being of the elderly livelihood and satisfy the need of their better life.However,during the process of welfare provision for aged,it is inevitable that issues of fragmentation of welfare provision will take place,for instance,regional difference and imbalance of the arrangement of elderly welfare,separation and conflicts among administration departments as well as the restriction and dispersal of providers.To a certain degree,these issuses will correspond to the analysis of holistic govermance.Based on the analytical framework of holistic governance,i.e.,hierarchical governance,functional governance and the construction of public-private partnership,together with the current states of elderly welfare provision,it is proposed in the present research that the analysis of the fragmentation of elderly welfare provision should be conducted in terms of the following three dimensions,i.e.,regions,departments and subjects.Document analysis,case study and semi-structure interviews are employed.In the present research,fragmentation issues in the elderly welfare provision as well as their underlying reasons have been elaborated.Besides,the plans of holistic governance have been proposed.Centering upon this objective,this dissertation is mainly composed of the following sections.Section One,i.e.,Chapter One provides the theoretically analytical tools for elderly welfare provision in China.Based on the origins of holistic governance theory,by reviewing the development of the theory and practice of western public administration,it is pointed out that the holistic governance theory is just the strategic response to the declining of traditional public administration and fragmentation issues brought about by the reforming of new public administration.Furthermore,this theory has become an efficient tool for analyzing the thorny public issues.Besides,three analytical dimensions for the issues of fragmentation of elderly welfare provision have been put forward in this section.Section Two,i.e.,Chapter Two is dedicated to analyzing the historical evolution and practical embarrassments of the welfare provision for the aged in China.The welfare provision for the aged in China is developing towards the direction of Social endowment for the aged led by the government after going through three different developing periods and has achieved significant achievements.However,the elderly welfare demands are always lacking the equivalent response during the interweaving process of industrialization,modernization and marketization.Meanwhile,it is obvious that the welfare levels and items enjoyed by the aged are unequal and unfair and that there is the fragmentation of elderly welfare provision.Section Three,composed of Chapters Three,Four and Five,is devoted to elaborating the fragmentation of welfare provision for the aged in terms of regions,administration departments and providers based on the three dimensions of holistic governance theory.Chapter Three is pointed out that the regional fragmentation of elderly welfare provision in China mainly focuses on the difference caused by the same system arranged in different regions.By analyzing the regional fragmentation of elderly welfare provision in China with concrete indexes,it is found that it is not only manifested in regional differences of system,but those of the welfare levels enjoyed by the aged.It is concluded that the regional fragmentation of elderly welfare provision in China is the dual outcome of the constant competition between the central and the local governments as well as the self-interests of the local government.Chapter Four is dedicated to discussing the conflicts among the horizontal departments in governments by focusing on the interior sections of government.It is a fact that duties of elderly welfare provision in China have been assigned to many different functional departments.The system of Meticulous division of labor will in turn result in the powers of functional departments and the fact that their abilities of resource integration will be limited.On the one hand,cooperation among different departments will be badly needed when more complicated issues are involved.On the other hand,conflicts and self-interests within departments will result in the fragmentation issues like barriers,conflicts and so on.Chapter Five mainly centers upon the subject fragmentation of elderly welfare provision in China.This chapter is mainly devoted to analyzing functions and limits of subjects such as government,market,social organization,family and so on.It is concluded that a single welfare supply subject has already not been able to meet the needs of the diversities of elderly welfare supply demands.It is further proposed that the cooperative supply between governments and markets will offer a new solution to this issue.Based on the field survey of Tian Si Nursing Center in Jinan and Shan De Nursing Home,it is found that the model of public-private cooperative supply has been widely applied.However,subjects of public-private cooperative supply are not in equal status and the benign partnership has not developed.Section Four,i.e.,Chapter Six mainly dwells upon the holistic governance of elderly welfare provision in China.The fragmentation of elderly welfare provision in China urges that government be reformed to improve the quality and response of service.It is pointed that fine tuning of systems has not been in a position to solve the fragmentation issues,instead,it may solidify the already existed routes.Therefore,it is badly needed that strategic objectives of holistic governance for elderly welfare provision be worked out and an overall plan for elderly welfare provision be made.It is proposed that fragmental welfare provision be integrated into a whole by reasonably assigning duties among different governmental sections.In this way can welfare resources can be optimized and the fairness in elderly welfare provision can be sought and extended.It is also put forward that on the condition that government takes the lead,functions of markets,social functions and families must be brought into full play.Based on the divisions of these subjects,public-private cooperative partnership should be constructed to achieve the objective of efficient provision of welfare resources.To summarize,centering upon the definition of elderly welfare in a broad sense,a holistic theoretical framework of elderly welfare provision has been constructed in the present research.Meanwhile,concrete reforming plans have been put forward.It is hoped that the present study will shed light on the further development of elderly welfare reform.