【Text by Observers Network, Wang Yi】"There has been a quiet but significant shift in the way China provides social welfare." The "Nikkei Asia Review" published an article on July 2nd, stating that two documents released by the Chinese government last month contain highly forward-looking provisions. They reveal China's plan to expand social welfare without significantly increasing expenditures — using data and algorithms.

The State Council announced the "Regulations on the Sharing of Government Data" on June 3rd, aiming to promote the safe, orderly, and efficient sharing and utilization of government data, enhance the government's digital governance capabilities and the effectiveness of government services, and comprehensively build a digital government.

Following this regulation, which aims to break down long-standing information barriers between government departments, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued "Opinions on Further Ensuring and Improving People's Livelihood and Focusing on Solving the Urgent, Difficult, and Painful Issues of the People" on June 9th, promoting more equitable, balanced, inclusive, and accessible livelihoods. It proposed promoting the deep integration of digital intelligent technologies with public services, accelerating the interconnection and sharing of information and data, and expanding the coverage of high-quality digital public service resources.

The article describes these contents as "forward-looking," noting that they allow outsiders to glimpse how China is supporting consumption and reducing inequality without significantly increasing welfare spending. For a long time, China has kept its distance from the welfare models of the West. The method of distributing money as aid is not only seen in China as likely to "encourage laziness" and fall into the "welfare trap," but also conflicts with the country's development path in terms of philosophy.

Therefore, China has chosen a path of "technological breakthroughs": achieving "targeted delivery" of welfare assistance through data and algorithms.

In the minds of many people, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data are still only applied in factory production lines and facial recognition cameras. However, China has already implemented these applications: smart manufacturing, urban traffic scheduling, customs supervision, AI-assisted diagnosis, and even "smart courts." Now, beyond these impressive scenarios, a more low-key "technology-driven welfare model" is taking shape.

On March 12th, China's first large model elderly care robot began working in Hangzhou. Visual China

The Japanese media pointed out that China has an advantage in this area. Over the past decade, China has established a vast administrative data resource database, and now it is striving to make these data interoperable and usable. Unlike Western countries where welfare expansion is usually constrained by political alliance struggles, China's system provides space for technocrats, allowing data governance tools to operate continuously and be widely implemented.

Imagine a system that can identify families suddenly hit by income shocks, children from low-income families struggling in school, or elderly people facing loneliness in real-time, then automatically trigger supportive measures without complicated procedures, no lengthy paperwork, and fewer bureaucratic bottlenecks. This is the core of "technology-driven welfareism" — spending smarter instead of spending more.

The "Nikkei Asia Review" said that this is also the importance of the two documents recently published by China. For years, data fragmentation between departments and localities has made public services difficult to integrate: qualification data in one department, income records in another, and project information in a third. The latest regulations "clearly state that all levels of government departments should carry out government data sharing work through the national integrated government big data system," and establish coordination mechanisms across departments and levels, laying the legal foundation for future algorithm-based social service infrastructure.

Some localities have already started trials. In Gansu and Guizhou, digital platforms use data from housing, medical care, and employment registration to proactively identify residents in need and provide them with corresponding services. In Chongqing, an AI-based monitoring system identified some low-income families who had fallen back into poverty due to illness and prompted local authorities to intervene promptly to provide assistance.

"Although these pilot projects are still limited to local areas and data quality varies, the trend is obvious: China's social security governance is integrating with AI analysis," the article stated. Of course, there are risks involved. Algorithms may introduce bias, automated systems may miss marginalized groups, data privacy remains a controversial issue, and legal safeguards lag behind. However, these issues are not unique to China. China's unique advantage lies in the scale and speed of its implementation, as well as its strong motivation to do more with fewer resources. If implemented properly, technology-driven welfareism has the potential to become a powerful complement to traditional welfare policies, making social assistance more adaptable, responsive, and cost-effective.

"For external observers, this transformation may be easily overlooked. It lacks fireworks or dramatic press conferences, but reflects a profound change in China's governance logic," the article concluded. China has not built a welfare state in the Western sense, but is building a more modest, algorithm-based, and uniquely Chinese welfare system. "In the long run, this is equally transformative."

This article is an exclusive contribution from Observers Network. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

Original text: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7523080881160045097/

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