‘Welfare dictatorship’ in socialist China?: workers, popular opinions, and participatory state socialism, 1957–1958

Why did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) greatly reduce welfare benefits during the Rectification Campaign (1957–58) when workers demanded an increase in social care? The campaign encouraged them to publicly express their views within factories, and the CCP designed an institutionalized channel to survey such opinions for policy deliberation. Using reference bulletins, policy documents, newspapers, city archives, and factory gazetteers, this article challenges the ‘welfare dictatorship’ model that highlighted the socialist state’s welfare provisions in return for workers’ compliance. It shifts to examining the previously overlooked intersection of political participation and policy processes under state socialism. The CCP used popular opinion to remove some of the welfare benefits for factory managers and well-paid workers and carry out a more egalitarian redistribution of welfare provision. The reduction of expenditures helped promote capital accumulation for rapid industrialization. This article argues that this process ignored workers’ demands for more social care while responding positively to their criticism of unequal provision and manager privileges.