East Asian Studies lecture: Burak Gürel and Erdem Yörük

Description

Dr. Burak Gürel (Ph.D. 2015), an assistant professor of Sociology at Koç University, and Dr. Erdem Yörük (Ph.D. 2012), an assistant professor of Sociology at Koç University in Istanbul and an associate member in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford, will give a lecture entitled "Punitive Containment through Welfare Provision? Protests and the Implementation of the Dibao Program in Contemporary China" for the East Asian Studies Program.

Drs. Gürel and Yörük are alumni of the Johns Hopkins Department of Sociology.

Abstract:

By providing cash assistance to about 50 million poor people, the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee Scheme (Dibao) of the People's Republic of China is one of the largest social assistance programs in the contemporary world. Based on two panel datasets on protest events and Dibao provision, we address the question whether contentious politics plays a role in the expansion or contraction of Dibao provision. Our analysis shows that higher protests lead to less social assistance between 2013 and 2016, suggesting that during the Xi Jinping era the Chinese government punishes the protesting citizens by limiting their access to social welfare.