[This is a certified Communication-intensive (Ci) Course which meets all of the requirements endorsed by HKU’s Senate, including i) the teaching and assessment of visual and digital communication ‘literacies’; and ii) at least 40% of the course grade assigned to communication-rich assessment tasks.]

Course Description

Starting in the late 1970s, the Open Door Policy ushered in an era of privatization, decentralization, modernization, and the dismantling of the Mao era’s ‘iron rice bowl’. The reforms have had a profound impact on Chinese society, creating a rising quality of life and income, but also contributing significantly to rising inequalities, environmental degradation, and retrenchment of social welfare entitlements.

Is inequality a necessity to motivate social development? Who are the emerging urban poor, and how can China achieve poverty reduction? Why is it expensive and difficult to obtain quality health care? How can welfare policy help to achieve social integration? How is China’s social development status compared with other Asian economies and the world? This course focuses on the nature and magnitude of key social development challenges in China, and how Chinese policymakers and the emerging civil society are addressing them. Key questions explored will include indicators and frameworks of social development, the limits of market power in providing social goods, trending social issues, and the progress and challenges of policy and social service in the Chinese institutional context in a globalizing world.

The course relies extensively on current information including news reports, video clips, in-class discussions, and group activities to explore the topics.

Course Learning Outcomes

On completing the course, students will be able to:

1. Define the concept of social development and explain the surrounding controversies.
2. Enhance understanding the nature and magnitude of the social challenges facing current China.
3. Examine the role of the government and civil society in addressing social problems in the context of modernization and globalization, and analyze these responses within the historical, economic, and cultural contexts.
4. Recommend viable reform directions for China’s social development.

Offer Semester and Day of Teaching

Second semester (Wed)