Digital welfare for children in China: Human needs and sustainability.

This article examines the potential of digital welfare policies and practices to enhance the wellbeing of children in China, and the congruencies and contradictions of such policies with sustainable welfare. Can child welfare be supported digitally in ways that are not environmentally destructive? The rapidly diffusing concepts of digital welfare and sustainable welfare are presented, emphasising aspects of precarity, connectivity, surveillance, polarisation and environmental degradation. The context of child welfare and digital welfare policies in China is outlined and considered from the perspective of sustainable welfare. Given the underlying contradictions between digital welfare and sustainable welfare, and the inconsistencies between practices associated with these policy fields, the prospects of applying digital welfare policies to achieve sustainable wellbeing of children, in China and elsewhere, are deemed problematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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