Social work in the making: The state and social work development in C hina

Abstract

The instrumental role of government in the development of social work in China has led to questions about its political function. So far, little has been reported on how the government has “made” social work in China. To fill this gap, we first provide a brief chronological review of major policies and activities of the Chinese government in its making of social work in China. The state's intervention has indeed been massive and crucial although, politically, it may limit the mandate of social work in China. Yet, we argue that the development of the social work profession in China is generating institutional space for the emerging civil society to take a more active role in welfare service delivery. Situated and mediating between the state and the emerging civil society, the social work profession in China will need to constantly negotiate its mandate to meet the needs of both sides.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 88 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.