The aim of this book is to provide an up-to date, accessible and critical account of the welfare regimes of the main East Asian states and China. It puts the spotlight on the Chinese and East Asian welfare regimes – the so-called ‘Confucian Welfare States’ – in order to provide an assessment of their nature and development, their current dilemmas and their future prospects. It is also important that all the contributions to this book are either authored or co-authored by indigenous experts. Much has been speculated about the nature of the so-called ‘East Asian Model of Welfare’ by western scholars but, until recently, very little has been available in English by Asian researchers (Aspalter, 2001, 2002). As all students of comparative social policy know, it is a long and difficult task to become so immersed in the language and culture of a foreign country that you can claim expertise in aspects of its culture and development. By the same token, of course, it is sometimes equally difficult for indigenous scholars to gain sufficient perspective to enable critical analysis of their own societies. This may be especially problematic in cultures where critical scholarship is not common. Well, the proof of the pudding in this case lies in the following chapters: the authors have drawn on a variety of critical perspectives to analyse the past and future development of the welfare regime in their society.

Following two introductory chapters, the bulk of the book consists of case studies of six countries: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. Our key themes are the factors that account for the development of welfare regimes, especially the influence of Confucianism, the current pressure points towards change, including globalisation and the East Asian financial crisis triggered by the devaluation of the Thai baht on 2 July 1997, and the likely future path of development. The chapters in this book provide the reader with an understanding of how Confucianism, an important internal component of the East Asian welfare regimes, is being analysed by local experts predominantly as a means for political legitimisation. So, our approach is not so much about what is Confucianism and how Confucian are East Asian welfare regimes, but about how Confucianism is used by the Chinese and East Asian states to justify restrictive social policies.