ABSTRACT
Being the capital city of the Guangdong Province, Guangzhou is the biggest coastal city in South China, covering a total area of 7,434.4 square kilometers. Hence, ever since the inception of the economic reforms in 1978, Guangzhou has always been the first, among the cities in China, to experiment with the reforms, and is also the first to have changed its social security provisions for the enterprise employees. The administrative structure of Guangzhou follows the national uniform pattern, with a two-level government system and a three-level administrative structure. Economic reforms in Guangzhou have been accompanied by a decline in the importance of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). And in the course of reforming the SOEs, policies that would facilitate the transfer of the SOEs from governmental agencies to independent market-oriented economic entities have to be brought in, which would often imply a revision of the social security provisions.
