Social Policy under One Country, Two Systems: Institutional Dynamics in China and Hong Kong since 1997

Abstract

Hong Kong's 1997 reversion to Chinese sovereignty brought two hitherto distinctive social policy systems into one country. As Hong Kong is gradually assimilated into China in the coming decades, the two social policy systems will need to identify elements of convergence. In this article, we argue those elements can be found in parallel efforts to curtail the reach of the state, extend the role of the market, enhance individual responsibility, and in the development of a productivist social policy orientation in both societies. The social policy systems of the two societies remain strikingly different in many ways, reflecting their diametrically opposed starting points. But their reform trajectories appear to be pointing in similar directions.