Hear, See, Go, Work and Learn
The objective of the EU-China Social Security Reform Co-operation Project is to bring European experience in the field of social security to the attention of the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. How best can this be done?
Educationalists tell us that it is possible to learn through hearing, but better through seeing, but much the best way of learning is by doing. The EUCSS project adopts all three methods of bringing European experience to the notice of the Chinese Ministry. Firstly, social security experts from Europe come to China and produce research reports on European practice or speak at training courses and seminars to explain aspects of European states’ social security systems. Secondly, Chinese Ministry and provincial officials visit European Union Member States to see how those states develop and implement particular aspects of social security, or study at, for instance, EN3S, the French Social Security Training Centre. Thirdly, Chinese Ministry officials go to Europe on internships of one, two or three months to work alongside their European counterparts.
In 2008 three Chinese Ministry officials who went to Europe on internships were able to bring back to their departments their experience of European and international practice. Liu Kai of the Actuarial Division of the Social Insurance Administration Centre went on an internship to the International Labour Organisation to work on the application of actuarial principles to European and other international social security systems. Two officials of the Ministry’s Work Injury Insurance Department went on internships: Sun Na at the International Social Security Association working on the operation of work injury insurance in Europe and elsewhere; Zhou Yongbo at Motability, a British organisation that enables persons disabled, whether as a result of work injury or otherwise, to use their social security benefit to obtain and maintain a suitably adapted car, powered wheelchair or scooter so as to be able to go to work and otherwise get around.
Future internships are likely to include Zhang Ran of the Ministry’s Pension Department who will work in the Pension Division of the British Department for Work and Pensions, Liu Ying of the Ministry’s Rural Social Insurance Department to work in the office of the British Pensions Regulator and Lin Zhichao of the Social Insurance Fund Supervision Department who will work at Standard Life, a leading insurance company.
Why cannot more Chinese officials be sent to Europe on internships? Obviously there is the question of cost, but a major problem is that only someone fairly fluent in the language in which a Ministry or other institution, or international organisation, works, can go to work on an internship. In practice, this usually restricts the locations to which interns may be sent to places where the working language is English. The more that Chinese officials become fairly fluent in other European languages, the more options become available for internships.
