A Chinese-Style Kill Line? | by Yang Haiyan

"Rapid urbanisation, economic structural transformation, and the adjustment and slowdown of economic growth mean that China now also faces the latent risk of a systemic 'kill line' taking shape."

Today’s article is introduced by Dorothy J. Solinger, Professor Emerita at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the leading scholars of urban poverty, migrant exclusion and welfare change in reform-era China. Her long-standing work on laid-off workers, the urban poor and the politics of social provision, including her groundbreaking 2022 book Poverty and Pacification: The Chinese State Abandons the Old Working Class, makes her particularly well placed to introduce Yang Haiyan’s essay on the risk of a Chinese-style “kill line”—a rare and timely discussion of a politically sensitive subject, in a debate overwhelmingly dominated by the US case. Our thanks to Yang Haiyan for granting us permission to share this article. — Jacob

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Yang Haiyan’s piece offers an interesting comparison between the ways people descend into severe poverty in the US and in China. Its chief focus is those living on the brink of destitution, vulnerable to crossing a “kill line” if hit by a sudden large expense such as illness, job loss, or even a car breakdown.

In the United States, the group closest to this condition is often described as ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed. However, these individuals cannot easily be compared to the urban poor in China.

For one thing, Yang refers to Black people in the US, whereas poverty in China is not racially-based. Those in China apt to drop into indigence are also unlikely to be employed or even to possess assets. Instead of being tenants who might be evicted, they live in tiny apartments allocated to them before the 1990s.

Neither are there equivalent shelters and social rehabilitation programmes for people in dire straits in China. Yang mentions the dibao (minimum livelihood guarantee) as a “conventional poverty governance system”, but the numbers of dibao recipients have declined drastically, from 23.5 million urbanites in 2009 down to 6.25 million in 2024. It is no longer directed at the merely poor, but rather the totally needy, such as disabled people and elderly without other support.

That said, what poor people in the cities of the US and China do share is that they live on the edge and can be subject to surveillance. In both countries, social security provision is inadequate to sustain normal living conditions. Yang is also correct to note that those living on the margins in both countries are prone to falling into extreme need.

Yang identifies three groups of urban poor in China: the second generation of urban residents; landless farmers; and the new generation of migrant workers.

This typology is useful, but there are a few inaccuracies in her description of these groups. First of all, she writes that the parents of the first group “secured a foothold in cities through hard work” though urban residents up until the early 1990s were largely assigned jobs by the government. She is right, however, that their children have trouble finding employment, even though they are often better placed than others because their parents have pensions and could afford them reasonably good educations. The problem is that the labour market cannot absorb even all those who graduated from good high schools and colleges.

As for farmers, Yang is correct to say that they “lost their land as a result of urban expansion”, but the compensation they received did not “bring substantial cash income”. Farmers are often undercompensated when land is requisitioned. Instead they are frequently removed into high-rise housing in the city, where they are left at a loss. Returning to the countryside is therefore often not a viable “last-resort fallback”. Nor is it correct to say that rural residents in the past could move to cities only after securing stable urban employment: before the early 1980s, peasants simply could not move into cities without being recruited by a government office for a temporary project.

The offspring of migrant workers are indeed unlikely to find work beyond unstable, low-end service jobs or, at best, in manufacturing. But they are not alone: people in all three of these groups are likely to face similar fates.

Their children, in turn, face dim futures. They are unlikely to be able to afford senior high school (grades 1 through 9 are free) and therefore have little hope of obtaining a higher degree. Even during the earlier, free years of schooling, poor families are at a disadvantage, because they cannot afford the tutors that have become a necessity in China’s highly competitive education system and labour market.

Finally, Yang too lightly dismisses the wave of urban poverty produced by mass SOE lay-offs in the 1990s and early 2000s. Those once referred to as the “new urban poor” should not be so readily disregarded. Up to sixty million workers were laid off from state- and collectively- owned firms from the mid-‘90s to the mid-‘00s. They and their offspring remain among the very poorest in cities, limited to unstable service work and selling goods on the street.

Still, it is striking that the Chinese government has recognised the quandaries of individuals and families perched on the verge of utter impecunity and Yang lays out three new modes of addressing the issue: the “Fengqiao experience”, which entails pluralistic dispute mediation in order to avoid the escalation of conflicts; the sealing of public security violation records, which can prevent minor offenders from being shut out of employment and allow them to begin again with a clean record; and a credit rehabilitation mechanism, which can restore a person’s ability to acquire loans, jobs and children’s education. All of these systems might keep people from falling into poverty-producing circumstances.

Nonetheless, many institutions in Chinese society still predispose people who are nearly abject to becoming more so, such that these intended solutions, even if implemented widely and fairly, may be insufficient to arrest the process of deepening penury. In that sense, there is indeed a fundamental similarity in the difficulty (or perhaps the impossibility) of preventing hardship from transforming into hopelessness in both China and the US.

— Dorothy J. Solinger

Key Points

1. The viral discussion of America’s “kill line” [斩杀线] in China points to a paradox of modern social governance: systematic social control measures produce unintended consequences that trap individuals in persistent poverty.

2. Illness, unemployment, or unexpected expenses can push individuals below a critical threshold, triggering a chain of institutional consequences—damaged credit, eviction, unemployment—that make recovery almost impossible.

3. Most discussion has focused on economic vulnerability and limited social security, highlighting how economically vulnerable groups face disproportionate exposure to financial shocks.

4. More fundamentally, America’s low fault tolerance means minor missteps are amplified through rigid institutional mechanisms that convert systemic failures into individual responsibility.

5. China has avoided large-scale urban slums thanks to the household registration system and collective rural land ownership, which gave rural migrants a fallback against destitution.

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6. With rapid urbanisation, structural transformation, and slowing growth, a “Chinese-style kill line” may be taking shape: distinct from America’s, but similarly rooted in precarity and low fault tolerance

7. The emergence of new cohorts of vulnerable urban residents signals that traditional support mechanisms are loosening, while systemic and structural risks are accumulating.

8. In response, China is exploring preventive and restorative governance policies: resolving disputes before they escalate into legal violations, sealing minor offence records, and enabling credit rehabilitation for small debts

9. Prevailing views in favour of harsh punishment risk undermining these efforts, while the perceived inconsistency of policies could damage government credibility, weakening policy authority and enforceability.

10. Good intentions require solid social consensus: broader public discussion and precise policy communication can clear the cognitive barriers to these necessary governance reforms.

The Scholar

Name: Yang Haiyan (杨海燕)
Position: Omitted at the author’s request
Research focus: Social governance and inequality; comparative social policy; culture and religion; development and governance of border regions
Education: BA (Ethnology), Lanzhou University; MA (Anthropology), Wuhan University; PhD (Sociology), University of Macau

HOW CAN CHINA AVOID THE “KILL LINE”?
Yang Haiyan (杨海燕)
Published by the Institute of Development and Governance (IDG) on 12 January 2026
Translated and annotated by A.H.
(Illustration by ChatGPT)

I. How the “Kill Line” Went Viral in China

Recent heated discussion of the “kill line” [斩杀线], a term borrowed from the language of video games, vividly illustrates the harsh reality of how individuals in American society, under systemic institutional pressure, fall into persistent poverty from which it is extremely difficult to climb out.

Many existing discussions focus primarily on two issues: the economic vulnerability of those who are “killed” and the inadequacies of the US social security system. This article, however, argues that the “kill line” in American society points directly to a paradox of social governance in the modern state—namely, the unintended consequences produced by systematic social control measures. In the US context, this is manifested in the fact that once economically vulnerable groups fall below a certain economic threshold, they are further constrained by the country’s various systems of social control. This makes it difficult for individuals to escape their predicament and causes them to sink ever deeper.

In the Chinese context, although reliance on the distinctive household registration and land systems has enabled us to effectively avoid the emergence of widespread urban poverty since the founding of the PRC, this social governance paradox nonetheless remains latent within our governance system. In particular, as China’s urbanisation deepens further and the prolonged period of high economic growth stalls, this paradox is highly likely to surface and erupt on a large scale, posing new challenges and tests for the transformation of China’s social governance.

In response to this challenge, the state is actively exploring preventive and restorative governance policies, exemplified by diversified dispute mediation under the “Fengqiao experience” [method] [枫桥经验], the “sealing of public security violation records” [regulation] [治安违法记录封存], and the “personal credit rehabilitation” [policy] [个人信用重塑]. These measures aim to loosen structural constraints and to provide individuals who have temporarily fallen into hardship with a buffer zone and an opportunity for a fresh start. [Note: The “Fengqiao model” is a Mao-era approach to grassroots conflict resolution revived under Xi Jinping. Each of these three policies is discussed in greater detail below.]

However, this article also points out that, in the course of their implementation, these policies are confronted with potential challenges such as tensions arising from the public’s intuitive understanding of legal justice, the entrenchment of a “severe punishment doctrine” [重刑主义], and even potential damage to governmental credibility.

The “kill line” is not a rigorous academic term; its popularity originates from a socialised translation of gaming terminology. The term originally refers to a combat mechanic in games such as League of Legends and Honor of Kings, where a character whose health falls below a critical threshold (around 10%) can be killed in a single blow. In late 2025, the US-based blogger “Lao A” (Squishy King) used this concept during a live stream on Bilibili [B站] as a metaphor for American society: once an individual or family experiences a shock—such as illness, unemployment or unexpected bills—that pushes their finances below a certain “critical threshold”, a chain of institutional repercussions is triggered (including damaged credit, eviction, and difficulties in finding employment), leading to a rapid slide from the middle class into long-term poverty or even homelessness.

As the content of “Lao A”’s livestreams continued to circulate and his account’s following grew rapidly (his Bilibili follower count increased from five to over 500,000 within a single month), his identity as an international student and the prevalence of the “kill” phenomenon he described were questioned by many netizens. Nevertheless, the “kill line” in American society attracted considerable attention and discussion from academic institutions and official media. At present, most discussions of the American “kill line” focus on two aspects: the economic vulnerability of certain groups in the United States and the low level of social security provision.

II. The Social “Kill Line” in the United States: The Dual Strangulation of Economic Vulnerability and Systemic Punishment

In an article entitled “America’s ‘Death Line’ Goes Viral in China”, published in Newsweek in the United States, Micah McCartney points directly to the fragile financial situation of the American public and the inadequacy of institutional safeguards in basic areas of subsistence, such as healthcare and housing, as the reasons why Americans are so easily “killed”.

In the article, he notes that, according to PNC Bank’s 2025 Financial Wellness Report, approximately 67% of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck. “Living paycheck to paycheck” generally refers to a situation in which basic expenses are hard to cover between paydays and emergency savings are insufficient. It is not synonymous with poverty, but it does imply extreme sensitivity to surprise expenses and income fluctuations. Meanwhile, a 2025 survey by the financial services company Bankrate found that 59% of American respondents said they could not afford a surprise expense of USD 1,000, indirectly corroborating the financial vulnerability affecting more than half of the US population.

In addition, a survey released by the Federal Reserve shows that in 2024 nearly 40% of American adults were unable to cover a USD 400 emergency expense using cash or its equivalent. The group known as ALICE—those who are Asset Limited, Income Constrained, and Employed—are probably the most typical segment of this population. Although their incomes are above the federal poverty line, these households remain economically insecure. It is therefore easy to see why, for groups whose finances are already close to collapse, an accident, a bout of illness, or a single bill can be enough to “kill” them.

Economic vulnerability points to the surface-level factors that make Americans easy to “kill”. But some scholars argue that the fundamental cause lies in a “low fault-tolerant society” [低容错社会] shaped by the operating logic of American-style capitalism.

In a low fault-tolerant society, the absence of accountability on the part of multiple state agencies continuously turns deep-seated structural societal contradictions and public governance failures into personal responsibility. A large body of research on the American poor shows that once individuals fall below the “kill line”, they become primary targets of control of the social governance system. As soon as a person goes slightly astray, they are subjected to layer upon layer of the system’s suppression, making recovery almost impossible.

In his book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, sociologist Matthew Desmond powerfully exposes the process through which individuals were “killed” and pushed into the rental market by the US subprime mortgage crisis, forcing them into ceaseless mobility and driving them ever closer to the margins under the systemic constraints of housing market regulations, rental laws, and enforcement policies.

For example, a single mother in the book, Arleen, was evicted on roughly five occasions. The first eviction occurred because her son angered a passer-by, who kicked in their door, prompting the landlord to evict the family of three. The second took place when the house she rented was deemed unsafe and she was ordered to move out by the relevant authorities. The third eviction happened because she used her only cash to pay for her deceased sister’s funeral, fell behind on rent, and was evicted by the landlord. The fourth eviction came after her friend (a co-tenant who had been helping her) reported that an upstairs tenant was being abused by her boyfriend. As a result, the property they lived in was classified by government departments as a nuisance and required the landlord to make corrections, after which the landlord evicted them. The fifth time, the landlord unilaterally broke the lease before she had even moved into the newly secured home, on the grounds that she lived with children, who might disturb neighbours and could attract the police, child welfare services, and other authorities.

As a result, tenants with children face severe discrimination in the rental market. The chain reaction triggered by eviction from the housing market thus includes the loss of property, relocation costs, credit ruin, and the reduction of benefits accompanied by penalties. In another form of low-cost housing—the trailer park—owners, in order to prevent closure by city councils, may choose to forcibly evict tenants who are behind on rent or have unstable incomes as a form of rectification plan [整改方案] to secure permission to continue operating.

Eviction not only reinforces the economic vulnerability of these individuals but also makes it more difficult for them to secure new housing, since a record of eviction is one of the key criteria landlords use when screening tenants. Individuals who are evicted repeatedly generally have little chance of recovery: they gradually move from the rental market into shelters and ultimately end up living on the streets, making stable employment and reintegration into society even harder to achieve.

In another work, Alice Goffman’s study of a poor Black community in Philadelphia finds that the tentacles [触角] of the US criminal justice system extend deep into impoverished Black neighbourhoods, fundamentally reshaping the micro-level social environment within these communities.

Her research found that in this community many young men were wanted for minor violations, such as failing to pay court fees, violating curfews, or failing to appear in court. In turn, the highly pervasive surveillance and policing practices of law enforcement agencies—where officers routinely monitor communities by checking databases for outstanding warrants rather than focusing solely on serious offenders—forced these men into a state of perpetual flight.

This condition not only led them to avoid public institutions but also deterred them from seeking formal employment. Even when they were harmed, they were afraid to call the police for assistance or to assert their rights. Such a system of law enforcement surveillance effectively excludes them entirely from normal social life and systems of protection.

In addition, in Down, Out, and Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row, Forrest Stuart reveals the relationship between high-density law enforcement practices and poverty governance in American slums. Drawing on the concept of “therapeutic policing”, he shows that police arrests and punishments for misdemeanours among slum residents—such as sitting or lying on the pavement or crossing the road in violation of traffic rules—are not merely aimed at maintaining public order, but are used to govern the poor. Individuals punished for misdemeanours may avoid detention if they choose to enter shelters and participate in social rehabilitation programmes.

The author points out that since the 1990s, US approaches to poverty governance have tended not to treat poverty as an economic condition, but rather as a quasi-medical symptom akin to addiction or dependency. The goal of therapeutic policing is to assist social shelter organisations in transforming residents into productive and self-sufficient citizens [具备生产能力及自我管理能力的公民]. However, frequent stops and arrests often cause slum residents to lose their already unstable jobs and housing.

These three studies powerfully illustrate how, in the US context, once individuals fall into a state of instability, they are progressively “killed” by different systems of social control and left with little or no possibility of recovery. This process thus exposes the paradox that America’s social control system is itself creating more social problems and more poor people.

III. From the American “Kill Line” to a Warning for China

By contrast, in China, thanks to the historical regulation of population mobility through the household registration system and the “last-resort fallback” [最后退路] provided to farmers by the system of collective ownership of rural land [农村土地集体所有制], the emergence of a large-scale urban poor has largely been avoided over the past several decades. [Note: Under this system, which originates in the process of collectivisation in the 1950s, agricultural land is owned by rural collectives from which individuals or companies can lease land for a limited period, usually 30 years.]

On the one hand, in the past the threshold for population movement between urban and rural areas in China was employment-based: rural residents could move to cities only after securing stable urban employment. As a result, urban registered populations were largely insulated from large-scale poverty.

On the other hand, even after freer movement between urban and rural areas was permitted, rural migrants who moved to cities could still return to the countryside if they lost their jobs. China’s system of collective rural land ownership ensures that mobile populations retain access to land to farm and a roof over their heads, preventing them from becoming a population of impoverished people stranded in cities and from forming urban slums.

But times and circumstances have changed [时移世易]. Rapid urbanisation, economic structural transformation, and the adjustment and slowdown of economic growth mean that China now also faces the latent risk of a systemic “kill line” taking shape. While the specific form of this “kill line” may differ from that of the United States, its essence similarly lies in two aspects: the economic vulnerability of individuals or households, and the low tolerance for individual development embedded in systemic institutional environments.

First, China is highly likely to develop its own ALICE population in the future, composed primarily of three groups.

The first group consists of the hidden poor within the second generation of urban residents. Among the descendants of early urban hukou holders, there is a cohort that has long lacked stable employment in the labour market. A legacy of urbanisation, they bear structural pressures accumulated across generations: while their parents once secured a foothold in cities through hard work, they now find themselves at a disadvantage in an increasingly competitive [environment] due to limitations in education and skill sets.

During my research, I encountered a highly representative [case of a] man born in the 1980s. His father was a primary school teacher in a county town, and his mother was not formally employed; in the early years, the family of three was able to maintain a decent life on just the father’s salary. He himself holds only a junior college degree [大专学历] and is in unstable employment. After getting married, for a time the household relied on his father’s pension to make ends meet. After his father’s death, the combined burden of mortgage payments and childcare costs pushed the family’s finances to the brink of collapse. His wife lamented: “In this day and age, not being able to afford meat should be rare, but in our family, eating meat is a luxury”. This group lacks the rural fallback [option], struggles to secure stable income in cities, and faces soaring housing and childcare costs, leaving them extremely vulnerable to risk. As his father’s death illustrates, any episode of unemployment or serious illness could push them over the “kill line”.

The second group consists of “landless farmers” who lost their land as a result of urban expansion. While compensation for land requisition can bring substantial cash income in the short term and significantly improve housing conditions, numerous studies have found that many landless farmers fall into a predicament in which their resources are squandered [坐吃山空] following intensive consumption (such as purchasing property or vehicles) or attempts at self-employment (such as opening shops), due to a lack of market experience and long-term planning.

More critically, they have completely lost land as a livelihood resource—once the final safety net—becoming wholly dependent on the urban labour market for survival. When compensation funds are gone and they gradually lose competitiveness in the labour market due to ageing and skill deficiency, they fall into a dual dilemma that is being “unable to put down roots in the city, with no way back after losing their land” [进城后难扎根，失地后难回头], potentially becoming the new urban poor. [Note: The term “new urban poor” was originally used to refer to a wave of urban poverty in the 1990s and early 2000s triggered by mass SOE lay-offs as a result of market-oriented reforms. It is now used more broadly to denote urban populations experiencing persistent economic precarity.] Although some provinces, such as Jiangsu, have attempted to replace cash payouts with pension subsidies as a long-term safeguard for landless farmers, the sustainability of such measures still faces real challenges.

The third group consists of the “new-generation migrant workers” [新生代农民工] whose outlook has become fully urbanised and who have no intention of returning to the countryside. They are the classic “generation that cannot go back to rural life”. Unlike their parents, who moved back and forth between town and countryside like migratory birds, they grew up in urban settings, lack an emotional attachment to rural life, and have no traditional farming skills. Some may still have homesteads and farmland in rural areas, but their inclination has clearly shifted to living permanently in the city.

However, constrained by structural barriers such as the household registration system and educational resources, most are confined to low-end and unstable service or manufacturing jobs. For new-generation migrant workers, the threat of the “kill line” is particularly acute: once unemployed, they can neither retreat to the countryside, as their parents once did, to secure a livelihood, nor attain a decent standard of living in the city. Ultimately, they may become a “floating” group [悬浮群体] living on the city margins, having lost both the support of an economic foundation and a sense of social belonging. [Note: 悬浮 literally means “suspended” or “hovering,” describing people unanchored in urban life but unable or unwilling to return to the countryside. Distinct from the more familiar “floating population” (流动人口), which refers broadly to internal migrants.]

These three groups are highly likely to emerge as China’s future ALICE population, signaling that the traditional structures of stability based on household registration and land are loosening, while systemic and structural risks are accumulating. If handled improperly, this will not only make individuals and families highly vulnerable to being “killed”, but also test the resilience of society as a whole.

At the same time, Chinese society is entering an era of governance focused on minor offences and petty crimes. For example, data show that serious violent crime in China declined from 162,000 persons in 1999 to 61,000 persons in 2023, while cases involving minor offences (punishable by less than three years’ imprisonment) increased substantially, with their share rising from 54.4% in 1999 to 82.3% in 2023.

In addition, the number of public security violation cases has continued to rise. Authoritative data show that between 2019 and 2023, China investigated and handled 40.35 million public security cases, averaging 8.07 million per year. At a more granular level, I observed that in a natural village [自然村] in western China with 42 households, almost every household has had a public security violation on record over the past 20 years.. When confronted with the social reality of the continued rise in minor and petty offences, if we continue to handle them according to the traditional social governance principle that every offence must be punished, then China’s judicial system will also become a systemic mechanism for “killing”.

IV. China’s Policy Response: Prevention, Mediation, and Credit Rehabiliation

It is, however, particularly fortunate that China’s multifaceted transformations in social governance in recent years have demonstrated a concerted effort to avoid the formation of a society characterised by institutional “killing”. Beyond conventional poverty governance systems and mechanisms, such as the dibao [minimum livelihood guarantee] programme [低保] and policies aimed at preventing large-scale poverty backsliding, China is actively constructing a safety net designed to prevent social “killing” arising from low fault tolerance. The development of this network is driving a shift in China’s governance paradigm from a previously “control-oriented” model focused on ex post punishment towards an “empowerment-oriented” approach that emphasises ex ante prevention, mediation during disputes, and post-event restoration.

One example is the “Fengqiao experience” and the system of pluralistic dispute mediation that have been vigorously promoted in recent years. Originating in Fengqiao, Zhejiang, the “Fengqiao experience” aims to reduce the occurrence of “incidents” at their source. Its core principle is to “mobilise and rely on the masses, prevent conflicts from being escalated up the ranks, and resolve them locally”. In the new era, this experience has been elevated to the level of national governance and developed into a multi-agency, coordinated dispute-resolution system characterised by “early detection, comprehensive intervention, and diligent mediation”, involving procuratorates, public security organs, and other departments. By organically integrating people’s mediation, administrative mediation, and judicial mediation, a large number of civil disputes are resolved before they reach litigation.

Its enormous effectiveness lies, on the one hand, in greatly alleviating pressure on the judicial system. On the other hand—and more importantly—it prevents large numbers of people from acquiring criminal or violation records by going through the court system. A single record can become the final straw that crushes a vulnerable family. Successful mediation means no record, no subsequent employment discrimination, and the preservation of an individual’s social capital and channels for upward mobility. This is both the most economical and the most humane pre-emptive measure against “killing”.

Another widely discussed recent measure is the sealing of public security violation records, which opens a “door to rebirth” for those who have committed minor missteps. If we say that pluralistic dispute mediation mechanisms strive to reduce the occurrence of incidents at their source, then the sealing of records of public security violations is a form of repair for faits accomplis. These records are like moral stains, subjecting individuals to employment discrimination and social judgement. They may even lead them to “self-exile” [自我放逐], choosing to hunker down at home and becoming a negative asset to both their families and society.

The policy of sealing records of public security violations is, in essence, an embodiment of the principle of restorative justice. It recognises that for a large number of minor offences, the social costs of perpetual punishment, such as loss of labour, family breakdown, and potential crimes, may far outweigh its disciplinary benefits. Sealing records aims to break the vicious cycle of “violation—discrimination—difficulty finding employment—reoffending”, giving minor offenders an opportunity to “erase the past and start anew”. It also prevents them from being permanently pushed off the normal track of society and falling below the “kill line” for a single misstep.

The third measure is the personal credit rehabilitation mechanism that the central bank recently announced. In a modern credit-based society, an individual’s credit record is comparable to an “economic identity card”. Once tarnished, it can restrict access to loans, travel, employment, and even children’s education, leaving people with no room to move.

On 22 December, the central bank issued a notice stipulating that for the period from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2025, a one-off credit repair will be granted to single overdue payments of up to RMB 10,000, provided that they are fully repaid by 31 March 2026. This policy is intended to provide a pathway for restoring credit for those whose defaults were caused not by malice, but by temporary difficulties such as illness or unemployment. It acknowledges that people may encounter adversity, but that society should offer opportunities to restore credit and turn over a new leaf [改过自新]. This is logically consistent with the sealing of public security violation records: both seek to loosen overly rigid structural constraints that, once formed, are difficult to remove, and to provide individuals with a route to escape institutional “killing”.

Together, this series of policies outlines a roadmap for China’s response to new challenges in social governance: shifting from ex post punishment to ex ante prevention and mid-event restoration. It seeks to soften various institutional barriers and to provide greater buffers and second chances for individuals and families on the brink of peril, with the aim of reducing, at a systemic level, the risk that individuals will fall below the “kill line”.

V. The Balancing Act of Good Social Governance with Chinese Characteristics

However, as with any profound transformation in governance, it is inevitably accompanied by growing pains and tensions, much like walking along a high-difficulty balance beam. At one end lies the need to prevent systemic structural risks from producing a vast underclass that is unable to recuperate; that is, to avert the formation of a “Chinese-style kill line”. At the other end lies the need, while advancing the modernisation and humanisation of governance paradigms, to properly address clashes with traditional ideas and existing policies in order to safeguard governmental credibility. In the course of their implementation, the aforementioned preventive policies designed to ease restrictions have already been at risk of losing public buy-in and government credibility.

First is the conflict between the public’s “intuitive view of justice” [朴素正义观] and the internalisation of messaging on a “severe punishment doctrine”. Chinese society has long been influenced by a concept of retributive justice—“an eye for an eye” and “what is owed must be repaid” [杀人偿命、欠债还钱]—and past messaging on the rule of law has often stressed the principle that every offence must be punished. This has made [the idea that] “mistakes must be punished” a deeply ingrained consensus among the populace.

When the state promotes measures such as the sealing of violation records and credit rehabilitation, some members of the public regard this as tantamount to “letting offenders off” or “granting mercy outside the law” [“为违法者开脱”、“搞法外开恩”]. Despite official explanations emphasising that sealing records is not the same as erasing them, the more immediate public perception is that “the stain has been covered up”. This mismatch between policy intent and public understanding directly challenges the public’s common-sense belief that “if you do wrong, you must be punished”.

Second is the potential erosion of government credibility caused by a perceived “policy flip flop” [政策摇摆]. Whether it is the sealing of public security violation records or personal credit rehabilitation, the inconsistency of these policies risk damaging credibility. What many members of the public have primarily experienced is that emphasis was previously on “zero tolerance” and “harsh crackdowns”, and now it has turned to “sealing” and “repair”. Even if this shift is well justified in practical terms, it can still easily create the impression that “government policy constantly changes” or that “standards are inconsistent”. If this impression is not addressed through effective communication, it will weaken policy authority and enforceability, and may even lead people to the mistaken belief that the government is no longer trustworthy.

In sum, China’s unique land and household registration systems, together with social security measures such as the dibao programme and policies to prevent large-scale poverty backsliding, can, over a certain period, provide a safety net for economically vulnerable groups and ensure that they do not involuntarily become homeless. Meanwhile, measures such as sealing violation records, the Fengqiao experience, and personal credit rehabilitation signal that China is actively exploring a more resilient and forward-looking path for social governance.

These measures no longer simply attribute problems to individuals; instead, they examine whether the institutional environment has invisibly set too many “traps” that push more people into difficulty. This shift in thinking—from “controlling people” to “optimising the institutional environment”—is an important element of people-centred good governance.

However, good policy intentions must be supported by a solid social consensus. In formulating similar policies in the future, it will be necessary to consider how, through broader public discussion and more precise policy communication, the ideas of “restorative justice” and “empowerment-oriented governance” can be translated into broad public consensus, thereby clearing cognitive barriers to these necessary governance transformations and consolidating a foundation of trust. This path of exploration concerns efficiency, but even more so fairness and justice, and tests the wisdom and creativity of China’s social governance.

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