ABSTRACT
The widening gap between the rich and the poor has caused some concern among the party leaders and government officials. As early as the middle 1980s, social security systems independent of the work units were introduced to deal with problems in urban employment. In the 1990s, more policies were developed to reduce and eliminate urban poverty. Some of the new policies were based on existing practice while others modelled on other countries’ practice. Though these social support systems were still in their infancy, they had made some important contributions to maintaining social stability and reducing the extent of urban poverty. This chapter reviews some of these new social support systems and highlights their main characteristics.
