18th party congress Preview

One of the unheralded successes of the last decade has been the development of China's social security system. The nationwide social security system was in its infancy in 2002, with participation mainly limited to workers from the State-owned enterprise sector. The numbers in the main enterprise pension scheme then had hardly reached 100 million compared with 284 million today. And people in the urban medical scheme in 2002 were barely 15 percent of the 2011 total of 473 million.

Expenditures in 2002 were similarly low with pension and medical insurance payouts being about 20 percent and 10 percent of the 2011 total. The vast majority of the workers, let alone the rural labour force, were not covered and had virtually no protection from the catastrophic risks of ill health and industrial injury.