Pension Policy and Governmentality in China: Manufacturing Public Compliance

Dr Yan Wang is a Research Fellow in the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and joined the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Digital Sociology in January 2023. Her research focuses on state legitimacy and social policy, public opinion and political communication. She is particularly interested in how actors’ agency shapes authoritarian governmentality and the realisation of the public’s social rights, and how and why public opinion changes during state–society interactions. She has won several research grants, including from the Research Infrastructure and Investment Fund at LSE and a British Academy Small Grant. Her recent publications include articles in the Journal of Chinese Political Science and other journals. She received a BS in Sociology in 2013 and an MA in Management in 2015 from Tsinghua University, and a PhD in Sociology in 2020 from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

• List of figures and tablesGlossaryIntroductionChapter 1 Manufacturing compliance with rule by design1.1 Transitional scenarios in China and the state’s rule by design1.2 Manufacturing compliance in the state individual interactionCoercion or consent why coercion alone cannot do the workGenerating compliance a two actors model and the state’s optionsConstraints choices and state individual interaction in transitional situationsChapter 2 Who gets what and how governance based on subpopulations2.1 How do entitlements differ differentiation in benefit entitlement2.2 Pension reforms in China a de synchronised story2.3 Generosity and coverage segmented resource allocationThe pension plans for government employees PGE and public institution employees PPIEThe pension plan for enterprise employees PEEThe pension plan for urban non salaried residents PUR and rural residents PRRChapter 3 Who deserves benefits and why constructing fairness pension expectations and subjectivity3.1 Text analysis of state discourses3.2 Pension reforms as instruments of broader socio economic reforms3.3 Reconstructing fairness and deservingness in welfare redistributionRedistribution among different social groupsRedistribution between different generations3.4 A renewed state individual relationship the socialised selfUnfolding the locus of responsibility topic based promotionsPromoting shared responsibility the glory of being employed and the common interestChapter 4 Maximising support for pension reform using policy experimentation and the potential to backfire4.1 Risks in the pension reform and the statecraft of policy experiments4.2 Policy effects on how the public sees the locus of responsibility for pension contributions4.3 The concurrent effects of experiments and media campaigns on political trustChapter 5 Falsification of manufactured compliance and wider legitimation and governmentality issues5.1 Falsification and methods for exploring it5.2 Different faces of compliance the words in shadow5.3 The dual track of political knowledge5.4 Ignorance apathy and collective conservatism5.5 Heterogeneity of social groups education and generations5.6 Heading nowhere actions or agenciesChapter 6 Pension issues state governmentality and falsified compliance in a comparative perspective6.1 Government and legitimation issues in China6.2 Welfare reforms and state rationales in a comparative lensAppendix A Data explanation and model validationsAppendix B Data replication codebooksBibliography