As it was not "an accident at work" - Zhang tumbled on his way home - his work unit would not cover his medical care. But it keeps him on the payroll and gives him 332 yuan (US$40) per month.

Yet Zhang complains that the money cannot do very much for his family of three.

Since Zhang cannot even move and needs full-time care, his wife Wei Shuqin, who used to make about 1,000 yuan a month as an un-contracted worker, quit her work to take care of him.

What Zhang receives from his work unit "can hardly make our both ends meet," says Wei, so she has to borrow money from relatives or friends from time to time.

"Even so, we can only go with the cheapest food," says Zhang.

To help families like the Zhangs have a lifeline, the Chinese Government launched a program in 1997 known as the basic living allowance. It is targeted at urban residents who become vulnerable during the economic transition.

"This program is designed to ensure that a family's income would not drop below the minimum living standard of a locality," says Wang Zhikun, head of the Social Relief Department at the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

This minimum living standard varies from city to city, which is around 250 yuan (US$31.2) per person in Beijing. So if a family's per capita monthly income is below 250 yuan (US$30), it is eligible to get support.

Thanks to the program, Zhang's family can get 267 yuan (US$32.2) per month from Beijing's Civil Affairs Bureau. The family also gets 120-yuan worth of food stamps (vouchers). Zhang regards the allowance as his family's "lifeline".

China's social security network used to target the elderly who had no income, the disabled, orphans, and the families of revolutionary martyrs, who were regarded as vulnerable groups. Such groups were mostly rural dwellers.

"Urban workers were guaranteed their employment, which is known as the 'iron rice bowl'," says Wang Zhikun.

But the iron bowl is no longer reliable as the economy has been restructured and enterprises focus on efficiency and profits.

In Southwestern China's Chongqing, Li Jigang, a 48-year-old engineer with a bachelor's degree, was laid off in 1997 as the armory he used to work for shifted to making civil products.

"All my skills became outdated," says the senior mechanic.

He became one of the "buyouts", - the factory paid him a lumpsum in settlement.

"The sum was eaten up in two years, and my wife became jobless as her textile mill also went bust," Li says.

The experiences of the Zhangs and Lis indicate that China's social security system has lagged far behind the country's economic and social changes.

Having worked well under the planned economy for almost half a century, this system is confronted by "a sharpened contradiction between an acute shortage of money and the growing demand for social welfare and pension services," notes Wang Zhikun. The current social welfare service, he admits, can roughly meet only 5 per cent of the demand.

Guaranteed employment became a casualty of China's overhauling its state-owned enterprises to make them efficient and profitable.

More than 4.9 million people were laid off by the end of last March in the restructuring. Of them, at least 4.7 million failed to be re-employed, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

The actual figure should be higher, says Zhu Lin, deputy director of the Economic Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). "Official statistics only count those formally registered as the laid-offs," she says. "Millions of jobless farmers and furloughed employees are neglected."

A major flaw in China's social security system is rooted in the blocked access to health and education, observes Sarah Cook, a researcher with the Beijing office of Ford Foundation.

China's poverty reduction polices target poor people on the basis of their productive capacity to increase economic activity, she says. "While they are supported by measures which improve access to productive assets, these measures inevitably fail to reach the elderly and disabled who lack labor or other productive resources."

China's old security system largely covered wage-earners only, says Wang. "It kept a larger, poor population away. That's why it must be reformed."

But it is no easy task. There are too many imponderables to formulate regulations which will please all.

Li, the out-of-job engineer in Chongqing, for instance, is not considered eligible to draw the basic living allowance.

"I was turned down because I have opened a store," he says. "But they totally ignore that what I have earn from the store is very low."

Li says he set up the store with borrowed money. But the business does not bring in enough money to support his wife and a daughter in high school, he says.

Chongqing regulations stipulate that six kinds of families such as those with motorcycles, mobile phones, airconditioners or computers, are not eligible for support.

"In general, such stipulations are reasonable and necessary," says Wang Zhikun. "But it should be more flexible. Otherwise our social security system might fail to guarantee the basic living standard for the new vulnerable groups."

Li Changjiang, a laid-off worker in Northeast China's Shenyang Province, was turned down for the basic living allowance only because the family has an electrical appliance: an old TV set.

According to Wang, on average, the amount of basic living allowance for a household is 152 yuan (US$18.3) per month, while it can be 200 yuan (US$ 24.1) for those in the 12 coastal cities. About 13 million poor people received basic living allowance by the end of February 2002.

Sarah Cook considers that the current "basic living allowance is only the Chinese government's short run response to social unrest."

Wang agrees. Whether in China or elsewhere, he says, "urban poverty and unemployment could foster unrest, thus jeopardizing the country's social stability."

The central government will allocate 4.6 billion yuan (US$550 million) for the basic living allowance program in 2002, twice that of the 2001 allocation. A further 51.2 billion yuan (US$ 6.2 billion) will be allocated to subsidize pensions and living allowance for retirees and laid-off workers.

This may be good news to those in need. But the disabled Zhang of Beijing has a new problem. His daughter Zhang Wei is studying at a private vocational school, which charges 5,150 yuan (US$643) for tuition and living for each academic year.

"My biggest dream is to have a job again," says Zhang's wife Wei Shuqin. "I wish someday soon I become a bread earner."

(China Daily HK Edition June 18, 2002)