The Hutubi Model: what have we learned?

Abstract

Created to address some of the limitations in China's rural retirement insurance policy, the Hutubi Model represents an innovative approach to asset building. A key feature of the model, the Hutubi loan programme, operated in Hutubi County, Xinjiang, China, from 1998 to 2010. It allowed farmers in Hutubi to borrow against their rural retirement accounts, taking loans for investment in farming and other priorities. This study examines the institutional incentives and structures that enabled the programme to help farmers build assets. We also discuss the programme's implications for the development of asset-based social policy in rural China and consider recent policy developments there. Among these is a new rural retirement social insurance programme.

呼图壁模式被用来解决中国农村社会养老保险政策的局限问题。这种模式代表了资产建设的创新型方法。呼图壁模式的一个重要成果是呼图壁贷款项目，自1998 年至 2010 年在中国新疆呼图壁县运作。这个项目允许呼图壁的务农者借贷他们的农村社会养老保险帐户，并借款用于投资农务和其它重要领域。本文探讨了促使此项目帮助务农者进行资产建设的鼓励制度和结构。本文还讨论了此项目对中国农村基于资产建设的政策发展的启示，并参考了中国农村最近的政策动向。这些政策中有一个新的农村养老社会保险项目。

Keywords:

• asset building
• Hutubi Model
• loan
• policy development
• rural China
• rural retirement insurance programme

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the staff at the Hutubi Rural Retirement Insurance Office, Xinjiang, China, for their support for this research. This study is funded in part by the Levi-Strauss Foundation (Asia). We greatly appreciate the support from Mr Stanley Wong and Mr Daniel Lee. We are also grateful to Washington University Center for Social Development and Peking University Department of Sociology for sponsoring the conference on ‘Lifelong Asset Building: Strategies and Innovations in Asia’, where this article was presented and critiqued. Our thanks also go to Christopher Leiker for his careful and thorough editorial assistance.

Notes

1. In China, farmland is collectively owned by the state or by local communes. Families obtain the right to use a plot of land and then retain that right by paying rent. Families can lose the right of use by failing to pay rent or by migrating out of the local community (e.g. to work in cities).

2. Chinese law prohibits farmers from using their land as collateral.