ABSTRACT
Prior to the economic reforms, employees in the urban areas of China were covered by a single package of labour insurance benefits established in 1951. Social security reforms in China have been moving along two directions since economic reforms started in 1978: One has been to convert enterprise-financed labour insurance into a unified social insurance pooling system with the government, enterprises and individuals sharing in funding. In this sense, while economic reforms have diversified the economy and the labour force, attempts to reform the labour insurance regulations system have been to bring employees belonging to different types of enterprises under a unified system. China has implemented a series of regulations and laws aimed at establishing, what the government described 'a socialist social security system with Chinese characteristics'. The chapter discusses the three-tier protection for the urban unemployed and reform of the traditional labour insurance system. It also discusses problems of the old-age pension system.
