Since the 1990s, China has made great progress in developing its social security system, achieving the goal of universal coverage for various segments of the population. Nevertheless, it is urgent to improve the quality of coverage, specifically in tackling the problems of inadequate participation and reduced contribution levels in the private sector. This paper examines the changes in social security coverage over the past three decades, focusing on the basic pension insurance for employees of urban enterprises and analyzing it in terms of employment structure. A regression analysis of provincial panel data from 2001 to 2019 indicates a negative correlation between the adequacy rate of social security contributions and the number of employees in private entities and self-employed individuals. Additionally, an empirical analysis using micro-level data from enterprises further confirms lower contribution levels in private enterprises. In light of the present circumstances, it is important to focus on private enterprises, flexible workers, and self-employed individuals as key target groups for expanding social security coverage. Consequently, reforming the social security system should proactively adapt to the requirements of emerging employment formats, striving to achieve comprehensive coverage and enhance the quality of participation across various groups of people.

The funding and payout system of social insurance has a significant impact on both the welfare of individuals and the national governance. Budget performance management can optimize fiscal resource allocation and enhance the quality of public services. The inclusion of the social insurance fund budget in the national budget in 2013 as one of China’s “four budgets” underscores the public value orientation it represents and shapes. The main challenge in enhancing the social insurance fund budget system lies in balancing the insurance attribute and the welfare attribute of social insurance, using an inclusive approach to achieve actuarial balance and budget balance, address potential imbalances, forecast and prevent future risks, and alleviate operational pressures. In the future, it is vital to raise the level of budget performance management for social insurance fund through scientific and reasonable performance evaluations, promote high-quality and sustainable development of China’s social security programs, and realize shared development in the new phase of Chinese modernization.

Urban-rural integration serves as a pragmatic strategy for developing social security in China, while promoting common prosperity represents a value-driven choice. Moving from urban-rural integration toward promoting common prosperity, the social security system faces several practical challenges, including limited medical and healthcare resources, disparities in social insurance benefits, inadequacies in social assistance levels, and deficiencies in social welfare expenditures. To overcome these challenges, a gradual practical approach has been formed based on three institutional logics: the institutional integration logic for bridging the gap, the institutional adaptability logic for enhancing resilience, and the institutional enhancement logic for empowering prosperity. This approach involves a progression from management integration to institutional alignment and system integration. Promotion of common prosperity through urban-rural integration not only provides a practical perspective and realistic depiction of China’ s unique social security system but also encompasses the institutional civilization and value implications associated with the development of social security in China.

In January 2022, China introduced a national pooling system for pension insurance fund, with the objective of inter-regional fund surplus and deficit adjustment. With the ongoing trend of population aging, can the national pooling and adjustment system operate sustainably? What level of fiscal obligations does it entail? This is related to the long-term stability of pension insurance fund and the whole social security system. This paper employs econometric and actuarial models to assess the sustainability of the national pooling and adjustment system under five scenarios: (1) not introducing any policy interventions; (2) implementing parameter reforms such as expanding pension insurance coverage, progressively extending retirement age, and enhancing collection rates; (3) transferring state-owned capital from central state-owned enterprises to strengthen the social security fund; (4) transitioning the national pooling and adjustment system from turning over current surplus to accumulated surplus; and (5) implementing all parameter reforms, transferring state-owned capital, and turning over accumulated surpluses. The results suggest that a coordinated implementation of reform measures like pension insurance parameter adjustments, reallocation of state-owned capital to enhance social security funds, and leveraging the national pooling and adjustment system for turning over accumulated surplus can ensure the sustainability of the system and significantly alleviate fiscal pressures.

In rural China, the trend of population aging and family hollowing is becoming increasingly severe. Traditional elderly care methods are no longer adequate to meet the growing demand for elderly care, leading to the emergence of mutual-support elderly care as a new approach to elderly care. Mutual support has gained widespread practice and has become a vital component of the rural elderly service system. However, rural mutual-support elderly care encounters development bottlenecks, including local cultural resilience, disembedding of social relationships, gaps in policies and regulations, and multiple coordination challenges. Embeddedness theory emphasizes the need for social behavior to be embedded in the network of social connections, providing a valuable theoretical framework for mutual-support elderly care. Drawing on embeddedness theory, this paper investigates the accessibility of mutual-support elderly care in rural areas by examining cognitive embeddedness, relational embeddedness, systemic embeddedness, and structural embeddedness. By addressing the development bottlenecks of mutual-support elderly care in rural China, this paper aims to propose ideas for achieving high quality development in rural mutual-support elderly care.

Under the background of China’s accelerating high-quality development, whether expanding domestic demand can promote the improvement of the core competitiveness of local enterprises is still lacking support of theoretical and empirical evidence. Using micro-data at the level of Chinese industrial enterprises, this paper empirically examines the impact mechanism and effect of domestic market demand on the enhancement of local enterprises’ core competitiveness. The research shows the following three findings. First, domestic market demand will help local enterprises to increase investment in R&D and design and brand marketing, so as to promote value-added activities to shift from tangible activities in production to intangible activities before and after production, thereby improving their own core competitiveness. Second, further deconstructing market competition factors from the perspective of ownership shows that, driven by domestic market demand, non-state-owned enterprises can enhance their core competitiveness better than state-owned enterprises. Third, China’s regional industrial distribution and development have the typical echelon characteristics, which leads to the geographical heterogeneity of the promotion effect of domestic market demand on the local enterprises to enhance their core competitiveness, showing a ladder-type declining trend from the east to the middle and then to the west. These findings provide a useful decision-making reference for better implementation of the strategy of expanding domestic demand under the background of accelerating the construction of a new development pattern.