The Enlightenment From The Reforms Of The British Welfare State To Chinese Social Security System

'Welfare state' can be regarded as a special phenomenon during the course of the development of capitalism in the twentieth century. A study of its rise and fall is helpful to our deeper understanding of capitalist societies. A historical appreciation of what has happened in Britain, the author believes, may provide valuable information as to the welfare construction in China. There is an extensive literature on this subject from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. This thesis aims to examine chronologically the evolution of British Welfare State, present an objective assessment of its achievements and crisis and provide some reasonable information to the evolution of China.This thesis consists of five parts. Part one is the prologue and introduction including the significance and level of the study in this field. The second part is about the history and existing position of Welfare State and forms an essential background to the rest of the thesis by clarifying some general theories about the welfare state. The third part analyses Welfare reforms of British government after the mid-1970s with crisis. The Thatcher administrations witnessed structural changes made to the Welfare state, which implied a more prominent role of the private sector in welfare provision. The consequence was a rapid acceleration of social divide. The Blair government also carries out a series of reforms with focus increasingly upon the 'mixed economy' and claims the Third Way that is the main growing trend of Western Welfare State. The fourth part gropes the limitation, origination and developing trend through analyzing welfare reforms of Thatcher administrations and Blair's government. In the final part the focus is on the comparison between Britain and China to explain the developing trend and future of Social Security of our country.