Tobias ten Brink participated in the conference "Expanding Social Policy in China" at the China Center for Social Policy at Columbia University. In a roundtable discussion, ten Brink presented the CRC project "Dynamics of Chinese social policy. Interplay of national and international influences".
"Over the past fifteen years, the Chinese government has invested heavily in expanding the social system, and many citizens have gained access to social services for the first time," says Tobias ten Brink, who is deputy director of the Center for the Study of China & Globalization at Jacobs University Bremen. Although the level of Chinese social services is low compared to the West, it is higher than in other emerging countries such as India.
Ten Brink and Tao Liu from the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen are jointly directing project B05. In addition to national factors such as economic growth, demography and internal migration, the scientists want to investigate how international factors influence national policy. “The Chinese government and experts have for decades been watching what is happening in other countries, including Europe, and have since then linked international role models with their own social policy traditions and created their own social security system,” says ten Brink.
"Via the presentation in New York, we were able adress parts of the US social policy community, especially those interested in China/East Asia, and channel their attention to our China project and the SFB as a whole," says ten Brink. "The SFB was received with great interest, especially as such extensive funding for social policy research currently seems impossible in the USA, according to the participants." The conference also served to deepen cooperation relations with researchers from the Anglo-Saxon region.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Tobias ten Brink
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy, Research IV and China Global Center
Campus Ring 1
28759 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 200-3382
E-Mail: ttenbrink@constructor.university
