This paper explores the factors that influence redistributive preferences in the context of significant economic transformation, focusing on the transition premium and growth. Using an online survey experiment with a nationally representative sample from China, we find that priming getting rich via relatively less meritocratic, yet representative ways under market transition in post-reform China reduces redistributive support, specifically for policies that aim to take from the rich and the belief in the government’s duty to redistribute, indicating the presence of a set of fairness views in China that deviate from the conventional meritocratic paradigm. Heterogeneous treatment effects analyses reveal that such non-meritocratic fairness views are a general phenomenon, and self-interest in the form of subjective economic pressure only serves as a secondary concern. While people feel that the rich are more deserving and demand less redistribution regardless of subjective economic pressure, only those under less economic pressure exhibit decreased support for policies that aim to help the poor. These representative ways of getting rich under market transition are similarly fair compared to winning a lottery, far less fair than a self-made entrepreneur, but much more legitimate than acquiring wealth through corruption. Priming China’s growth story does not result in statistically significant changes in redistributive support. Additionally, we rule out the influence of three relevant confounders: low tax salience, preference falsification under authoritarianism, and misperceptions about relative income positions and intergenerational occupational mobility. We argue that such non-meritocratic fairness views are particularly salient in societies that break away from a centrally-planned economic system in the past and transition towards a high-growth market economy, where economic opportunities are becoming more inclusive.

Despite the lack of electoral accountability, China has built an expanding welfare system that is set to include most citizens. Why does China defy the conventional prediction of an exclusive autocratic welfare state? This paper looks at the critical time when China first established its social security system in the 1990s and argues that the state adopts a “demand-driven strategy” where the redistribution effort varies with the expected collective action of economic losers. Analyzing an original granular county-level dataset of China’s laid-off workers and social security taxation, the paper finds that a group of newly-emerged economic losers, precipitated by state policy, drives the local states’ efforts to redistribute. In particular, the number of laid-off state-owned enterprise workers explains 46% of the variations in social security collection among non-state-owned enterprises. Instrumental variable estimation, with legacy state-owned enterprises established in historical contingencies as the instrument for laid-off workers, shows consistent results. Further analysis on mechanisms demonstrates that layoffs lead to an increase in SOE protests, which in turn foster greater redistribution.