| The thesis mainly based on local archive, newspapers and other historical resources, discusses the evolution of Nanjing’s social assistance policy and corresponding practical effects.This article starts from how the city to deal with the refugee question. As a result of long civil wars and disastrous climate, there were more than 200 000 refugees that still stayed in Nanjing in the early years of PRC. The serious situation compelled the new government to evacuate population out from the city as the key work. Except that, the new government also launched a temporary assistance work for assuring the goal to achieve. But in light of public security and limited financial power, evacuating population was predominately, and the temporary social assistance mainly served this purpose. Thus, the social assistance work didn’t focus on institutional construction even though it had made a great achievement. It was temporary and utilitarian during the period from 1949-1951.At the end of 1950, the Chinese people’s relief association Nanjing branch was set up, which was a professional organization in social assistance field. Under its leadership, Nanjing enacted a series of social assistance policies, formed some far-reaching systems and ideas, made a great progress in social assistance work. The progress was embodied in three aspects. Firstly, the old social welfare agencies that presided by the government of the Republic of China, charity organizations and foreign religious groups were reintegrated. Secondly, lanched the social assistance work for the vulnerable groups, such as unban poor, beggars, the disabled, the old, the abandoned babies, orphans and prostitutes. The third one is a set of complete funds management system involving the make-up of funds, funds application and funds distribution formed. In this period of 1951-1953, the prominent features of the Nanjing’s social assistance work were that state intervention became more and more frequent than ever. But on the contrary,the civilian social assistance force was eliminated gradually. Finally, basically formed a social assistance structure with the characteristics of "big government and small society". This pattern, on the one hand, made the slogan "Concentrate Resources and Do Big Things" realize. On the other hand, it also made the government have to bear a heavy burden. Obviously, the social assistance policy would face a great adjustment with the change of social situation in the near future.The last chapter mainly discusses the adjustment of China’s social assistance policy. To focus on the China’s industrialization around the year 1953, the CCP government decided to cut state budget formerly located to the social assistance purpose. This policy adjustment had some negative consequences, such as a large number of social welfare agencies were shut down, the subsidy standard for the poor declined sharply and the medical assistances were canceled. When numerous suicide incidents happened and more and more poor people who were dismissed from the social welfare agencies come back for seeking help, the governments at all level took urgent measures to pilot China’s social assistance policy return to normal track.The conclusion of this thesis is that the destruction of the civilian social assistance forces result in a great financial pressure on our country during the early years of PRC. Although state intervention played an important role to a certain extent, due to the limited finance, the government could not take the responsibility of social assistance work well. In addition, the social assistance policy became to be easily affected by the national strategic intention. The history has proved it caused a lot of negative consequences. Therefore, the author suggests the government should better reduce unnecessary state intervention and expand the participation of NGO moderately in an underdeveloped country, which is the correct way to solve the serious social problems. It’s also a lesson that should be learned for today’s social assistance work. |
