This is one important title in the series of Handbooks of Research on Contemporary China. China's great transformation in the past four decades has roused increasing scholarly interest in examining all aspects of the country's development and changes. To search for the roots of China's successful transformation and its problems and challenges, scholars also often go back to the country's modern history and trace the process of different aspects of modernization. The series is thus useful not only for the scholarly community, but also for the general audience who are interested in China.

This title on China's welfare is particularly significant for the students of contemporary China from several perspectives. First, the three editors have brought together Western and Chinese scholars and presented a very balanced analysis. In conducting research on China, more often than not, scholars tend to be either West-centric or China-centric. This title has effectively avoided this pitfall. It is a fruitful cooperation between scholars from different cultural backgrounds. Second, the title covers almost all key aspects of China's welfare system. Each chapter focuses on a particular area of welfare such as health, education, housing, urban livelihood guarantee and rural-urban integration. While most chapters are in the nature of case-studies, all contributors have a common theoretical theme in organizing and interpreting their materials. As a whole, the handbook constitutes a body of knowledge in the area of welfare. Third, the editors have put the contemporary Chinese welfare system into its historical and comparative context. This is especially useful for the readers to understand China. A historical perspective enables the readers to see how modern “welfare” that was introduced into China from the West differs from the Chinese traditional system, and how the idea and its institutions have changed over different historical periods. A comparative perspective places China in the context of international development, particularly welfare in the West, and thus enables the readers to understand how an alien “welfare system” has changed according to China's national and cultural conditions. Fourth, many chapters focus on the agents of changes in the evolution of the welfare system. Here the contributors are particularly interested in changing state-society relations. The role of non-governmental organizations is highlighted, and the impact of changing welfare system on gender, minorities, and disabilities are examined.

More importantly, the handbook has explicitly addressed a key question: that is, the legitimacy of China's ruling party – the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – from a social perspective. In search for the sources of legitimacy of the CCP, economists tend to highlight economic growth and development while political scientists tend to focus on the development of democratic elements such as rural elections. However, these sources are very problematic. While in the West, democracy is the source of legitimacy of the ruling party, democratic experiment never goes beyond the village level. While rapid economic development has drastically increased the living standard for most Chinese, it has also created tremendous and serious problems such as inequality and environmental disasters. In this context, the development of the welfare system indeed provides a missing link in explaining the legitimacy and thus the sustainability of the ruling party. Scholars often predict the collapse of the CCP, but no effective explanation has been developed to answer the question: Why has the CCP sustained and consolidated itself along with rapid modernization? Welfare matters in providing a solid base for Chinese society.

As a handbook, this volume has performed its mission. The readers will find it extremely insightful and useful in understanding welfare contemporary China and its historical roots. Nevertheless, scholarly speaking, the volume has its own weaknesses. These weaknesses are not vital, but can be improved and avoided in the future studies. First, as mentioned above, the volume does not address the issue of political legitimacy. This issue is important in addressing many important developments in China, including welfare. An obvious question is how the ruling party has the incentives to develop a welfare system. In answering this question, the contributors have focused too much on the rhetoric surrounding the “China dream.” While there is nothing wrong to highlight this ideology, the rise of this ideology per se needs to be explained. Here, legitimacy matters. Second, while most chapters are solid, with tables and figures, some other chapters tend to focus on what the Chinese propaganda has said, and not enough attention was paid to the actual policy performance. China remains a mobilization society, and the regime's capability of mobilization is no comparison with other types of regime. While state mobilization often leads to the over-propaganda of policy, the gap between policy propaganda and enforcement is sometimes unusually big. Without taking account of policy enforcement, it will be misleading in understanding a given policy.

A more important matter is related to the concept of “citizenship” in China. In the West, the development of welfare has been closely associated with the concept of citizenship. One can argue that the process of welfare development is the process of development of citizenship, both as an idea and a set of national institutions. However, it is in these areas that China has not developed a modern welfare system. Welfare, as an idea applicable to everyone, does not exist. The institutions based on that idea continue to be fragile and highly decentralized. Despite great efforts in building welfare in the past decades, as discussed in this volume, there is no intention and dynamics for the current system to be unified at the national level. Chinese welfare so far is unified only at the city level. In other words, a Western type of universal citizenship is still absent in China. One can assume that if China does not develop welfare as a universal right for everyone in society, it will be extremely difficult for the country to develop into a modern welfare system.