Challenging the economic reform paradigm: policy and politics in the early 1980s collapse of the rural cooperative medical system

Over the last two decades an economic reform paradigm has dominated social security and health research: economic reform policies have defined its parameters, established its premises, generated its questions and even furnished its answers. This paradigm has been particularly influential in accounts of the early 1980s collapse of China’s rural cooperative medical system (CMS), which is depicted almost exclusively as the outcome of the post-Mao economic policies that decollectivized agriculture. This paper draws primarily on government documents and newspaper reports from the late 1970s and early 1980s to argue that CMS collapse is better explained by a change in health policy. It shows that this policy change was in turn shaped both by post-Mao elite politics and by CMS institutions dating back to the late 1960s. The paper concludes by discussing how an explanation of CMS collapse that is centred on health policy and politics reveals the limitations of the economic reform paradigm and contributes to a fuller understanding of the post-Mao period

State self-earned income and welfare provision in China

Local governments in China in the 1990s relied increasingly on self-earned income, but little is known about the impact of this on the provision of public goods, especially in wealthy urban areas. This paper shows how departments charged with providing welfare and social services to the poor have been supplementing budgetary expenditures with other, self-earned, finance. Based on research in the city of Tianjin, it argues that although self-earned income can increase spending on welfare and social services, increasing reliance on such income, and variation in departmental capacities to generate it, exacerbate already inequitable welfare provision even within this wealthy city. It also creates conflicts of interest and problems for local government spending controls

Bureaucratic institutions and interests in the making of China's social policy

Explanations of China’s post-Mao social policy have concentrated on the political, social, fiscal, and economic goals of the state and its governing elite. In a study of urban health insurance policy, this article argues that bureaucratic interests and institutions within the Chinese state are also influenced. This article first shows how bureaucratic interests within the central government have influenced the adoption of a new national social health insurance framework. It then shows how that framework has been modified following local implementation experiences that have allowed other bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic interests to be expressed. This examination of both central and local interests helps explain the adoption of a basic social health insurance system that provides for only the urban working population, subsidizes civil servants, and is administered locally. The article also shows the policy process in this sector to have been particularly protracted and incremental and argues that further incremental policy changes are likely

Variable anodic thermal control coating

A process for providing a thermal control solar stable surface coating for aluminum surfaces adapted to be exposed to solar radiation wherein selected values within the range of 0.10 to 0.72 thermal emittance (epsilon sub tau) and 0.2 to 0.4 solar absorptance (alpha subs) are reproducibly obtained by anodizing the surface area in a chromic acid solution for a selected period of time. The rate voltage and time, along with the parameters of initial epsilon sub tau and alpha subs, temperature of the chromic acid solution, acid concentration of the solution and the material anodized determines the final values of epsilon/tau sub and alpha sub S. 9 Claims, 5 Drawing Figures

Improved data association and occlusion handling for vision-based people tracking by mobile robots

This paper presents an approach for tracking multiple persons using a combination of colour and thermal vision sensors on a mobile robot. First, an adaptive colour model is incorporated into the measurement model of the tracker. Second, a new approach for detecting occlusions is introduced, using a machine learning classifier for pairwise comparison of persons (classifying which one is in front of the other). Third, explicit occlusion handling is then incorporated into the tracker

Velocity measurements in the Langley 1-foot /0.305-meter/ hypersonic arc tunnel

Hypersonic arc tunnel velocity measurement