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The cities, for the most part, appeared up until the middle of the 1990s to be islands within the larger Chinese political economy in which job-secure workers could be certain that their livelihood, health, education, and living abodes would evermore undergird their and their children's sustenance. At least until the late 1980s, urbanites who stuck with the state sector even considered good treatment on the job a kind of birthright, an entitlement that was sure to be enforced. In the cities, true, there had always been the disadvantaged after 1949 – those without offspring or spouses, the disabled, and people unable to support themselves. But this relatively tiny batch of individuals generally survived in the shadows and out of sight, subsisting – but just barely – as members of the “three withouts” on a mere pittance, in the form of meager “social relief” disbursed by civil affairs departments.⁸