The COVID-19 pandemic has immensely affected economic and social order in not only China but the entire world, seriously threatening peoples’ lives and property. In China’s fight against COVID-19, the community is at the front line of joint prevention and control of the disease, yet it faces the problem of insufficient resilience. We explored the manifestations and formation mechanism of the problem of insufficient resilience in community public health crisis governance, based on the complex adaptive system theory, which emphasizes interaction among subjects and between subjects and the environment to improve the adaptability to the environment. Questionnaires and in-depth interviews were conducted in 28 counties (districts) of 14 cities of 7 provinces in China; 2345 questionnaires and 71 interview data were collected, and we conducted descriptive statistical analysis on questionnaire data. It is found that some communities faced insufficient resilience problems such as “simply isolating households and communities”, “blindly setting limits”, “layer-by-layer law”, and “rejecting and repelling all individuals from or even related to Hubei”. These problems are due to the fact that the community have a non-interactive relationship, which is a one-dimensional linear governance model to some extent. The legal content of the building of a “comprehensive disaster-reduction demonstration community” implemented by the Chinese government is compelled to stay at the level of system design to some extent, with its existence playing an ornamental role but lacking a substantial one. In this regard, this study suggests that a resilient governance model of community pluralistic cooperation be established based on the theoretical framework of complex adaptive system. This model is designed to increase the resilience of community public health crisis governance. The authoritative role of central and local policies is expected to be truly developed and played in dealing with the grassroots community public health crisis.

China’s rapid urbanization can be attributed, in part, to the contribution of female migrant workers. However, they are a socially vulnerable group. In order to explore the vulnerability of female migrant workers and its reasons, questionnaires and in-depth interviews were conducted with female migrant workers in Guangdong and Hubei provinces, China, and 992 questionnaires and 147 interview data were finally collected as the research object. The descriptive statistical analysis was conducted with the quantitative data to reveal the livelihood vulnerability of female migrant workers and its reasons, and qualitative data were used to corroborate and consolidate the argument. “Ritualistic institution” is the key to understanding the livelihood fragility of female migrant workers. The policy on migrant workers has weakened the concept of family, making it difficult for families, which are on the fringes of the national policy vision, to benefit from the system. Therefore, the livelihood costs of female migrant workers have increased. Traditional gender norms also make it difficult for migrant women to enjoy the limited benefits and resources of the policy. This weakens the authoritative role of the policy in solving the problem of livelihood vulnerability for migrant workers, particularly women. This shows that China’s policy on migrant workers is somewhat symbolic. Through “family separation” and “ritualistic institution”, it can be seen that China’s urbanization is a modern development activity that carries urban bias and lacks humanistic care value. This is bound to result in the neglect of human development, gender differences, and family, making it difficult for rural migrant women to survive. This in-depth study seeks to find solutions to the problems prevalent under the cover of contemporary Chinese modernity.

This research addresses a challenging issue, employment protection in China, including unemployment insurance, work accident insurance and the concept of co-determination. Although the ideology of Sino-communism seems to share some elective affinity with the comprehensive arrangements of labor protection in modern welfare capitalism, in reality, the mainstream economic elites of post-Mao China enthusiastically embraced neoliberal ideology in the 1980s and 1990s, maintaining a critical attitude towards employment protection policies through the lens of economic efficiency and productivity. However, since the millennium, the ruling elites of China have started to promote a certain version of an inclusive and social market economy, and Western ideas and discourses on employment protection have become prevalent. This paper outlines the institutional reforms, dynamics, mechanisms and constraints in the development of employment protection arrangements in China since the millennium. Further, emphasis is placed on the ideational level, with a special focus on domestic discussions, debates, discourses and interpretations of “co-determination” from several major Western nations including Germany, the Nordic countries, the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan. Through the academic “barometer,” the future development of employment protection in China is discussed.