Welfare for Autocrats

Dorothy J. Solinger, Professor Emerita, University of California, Irvine and author, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China Pan has produced an exceptionally researched, brilliantly and imaginatively conceptualized study of the scheme initiated in China in 1999 to placate millions of then lately laid-off members of the proletariat. Using sophisticated computational and statistical work, in addition to exhaustive documentary study and a large range of field interviews, Pan demonstrates that the regime has been using this policy as a form of what she coins 'repressive assistance,' meaning
that the government relies on local agents' allocation of benefits and home visits as a means of surveillance. The book flashes with arresting insights and often uncovers new interpretations.


Peter A. Hall, Professor, Harvard University Built on intensive micro-level research and a deep knowledge of Chinese politics, this book is immensely revealing about ways in which the Chinese regime distributes social benefits and more generally about the processes whereby policies fashioned for one purpose can be diverted to serve others. With sparkling insight, the book advances our understanding of how the Chinese regime mobilizes networks of social relations and a digital economy to maintain its power with
important implications for many authoritarian welfare states.

Jennifer Pan is an Assistant Professor of Communication, and an Assistant Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford University.

Chapter 1: Introduction: The Primacy of Political Order Chapter 2: Becoming Fixated on Political Order Chapter 3: Reacting at the Hint of Disorder Chapter 4: Distributing Social Assistance to Preempt Disorder Chapter 5: Repressing with Social Assistance Chapter 6: Triggering Backlash Chapter 7: Becoming a Digital Dictatorship Appendices Supplementary Materials