The social security institution in developed countries faced confidence crisis, and must be reformed, after the breakout of"petroleum crisis"in 1970s. In such context, the East Asian social security model has aroused worldwide burgeoning interest.The study in this paper makes great efforts to avoid the technical issues of social security institution ,and emphasize more on such factors as history,tradition and culture, which lie deeply in the institutional model. In the perspective of history,cross-subject and cross-culture, the paper analysis the origin and construction of social security institutional model, and tries to make an induction of the differences between welfare models in different culture.Compared with the Western social security institutional model, the East Asian model has its own prominent characters. The East Asian social security institution has its own historical origin and heritage. Confucianism is held to be a key part of the shared heritage of East Asian as a whole. Both family and state play an important role in traditional East Asian society. Family is in the center of East Asian traditional social life, and consequently, the welfare value in East Asian is family-centered. At the same time, state plays an important role in the early social security system of East Asian. Its function lies in improving social anti-disaster system, making compensation for the imperfection of family protection. The unified function of family and state helps to build an efficient social security nets, and the effective running of this security nets preserves the stability of East Asian society.The transition of social security institution in East Asia is also different from that in western countries. In Hong Kong, traditionally; the development of social insurance is far lagging behind the economic development. Before World War Two, family protection and"mutual help and mutual assistance"in neighborhood and community, are the main aspects of social security system. The social welfare business is launched by altruistic organization and church. The colonial government began to build social insurance system only after 1970s, with the economic development and social transition. The development of social insurance institution in Chinese Taiwan region is also far lagging behind economic development. During the period of Guo Ming Dang party autocracy in Taiwan, the social insurance institution was neglected. It's only after the burgeoning democratic system that social insurance system made some progress in Taiwan, out of the needs of party political struggle.The end part makes some suggestions about building Chinese-characteristic welfare model. Emphasizing the role of family, social assistance and enterprise pension system in building Chinese characteristic social security system, and making some suggestions about unified urban-rural social security system in China. |