This thesis covers the development of pension schemes in the People's Republic of China from 1949 until now. The goal is to explain what is the structure of chinese pension schemes, why are the pension schemes divided between rural and urban areas and how are the migrant workers' pension schemes incorporated into the social security system. Furthermore the reforms and challenges of the current pension system are analysed as well as the linkage to the hukou reform and family planning reform.

PRC is no longer seen only as a "world factory". It gains on importace as an global trading partner and many foreign companies try to succeed in Chinese market as importers of their products. Also Czech businesses have already penetrated Chinese market, invested there or are seriously considering expansion to the market. Main objectives of the thesis are to review and characterize main risks, obstacles and barriers which Czech entrepreneurs have to deal with when entering the Chinese market and suggestions how to obviate them.

This study explores the changing nature of filial piety in contemporary society in rural China. With the economic, social and political upheavals that followed the Revolution, can 'great peace under heaven' still be found for the rural Chinese family as in the traditional Confucian proverb,"make yourself useful, look after your family, look after your country, and all is peaceful under heaven"? This study explores this question, in terms not so much of financial prosperity, but of non-tangible cultural values of filial piety, changing familial and gender roles, and economic migration. In particular, it examines how macro level changes in economic, social and demographic policies have affected family life in rural China. The primary policies examined were collectivisation, the hukou registration system, marketization, and the One-Child policy. Ethnographic interviews reveal how migration has affected rural family structures beyond the usual quantifiable economic measures. Using the village of Meijia, Sichuan province, as a paradigmatic sample of family, where members have moved to work in the cities, leaving their children behind with the grandparents, the study demonstrates how migration and modernization are reshaping familial roles, changing filial expectations, reshuffling notions of care-taking, and transforming traditional views on the value of daughters and daughters-in-law. The study concludes that the choices families make around migration, child-rearing and elder-care cannot be fully explained by either an income diversification model or a survival model, but rather through notions of filial piety. Yet the concept of filial piety itself is changing, particularly in relation to gender and perceptions about the worth of daughters and the mother/ daughter-in-law relationship. Understanding these new family dynamics will be important for both policy planners and economic analysts.