China adopts first comprehensive law on social insurance

The PRC Social Insurance Law was considered and adopted at the seventeenth meeting of the standing committee of the eleventh National People’s Congress on 28 October, and will come into effect on 1 July 2011. This is the first piece of national legislation China has enacted which provides for a social insurance scheme. It establishes a fundamental framework for the creation of a social insurance scheme in both urban and rural areas.

Insurance types and coverage

The Social Insurance Law defines five categories of social insurance: basic pension insurance, basic medical insurance, industrial injury insurance, unemployment insurance and maternity insurance.

Different parties will join different types of social insurance. Employees should join all five categories; individual businesses and uninsured part-time employees, as well as other casual employees, can join the basic pension insurance and basic medical insurance; and urban and rural residents who do not join the basic pension insurance or basic medical insurance can join the social pension insurance scheme, basic medical insurance scheme for urban residents, new rural social pension insurance scheme or new rural cooperative medical care scheme.