Social policy learning and diffusion in China: the rise of welfare regions?

This article offers an account of the peculiar phenomenon of social policy learning in China, and illustrates the situations in which local policy learning can either facilitate, or constrain, the capacity of the central government to monitor social policy development. Based on analyses of the urban pension reform and the introduction of the Minimum Living Standard Scheme, the article concludes that local activism has become an eclectic tool for policy learning and diffusion leading to subnationalisation of social protection, which poses a challenge to the central government in its efforts of coherent social policy governance.