“Task-Based Relations” and the Sustainable Provision of Rural Neighbor-Assisted Eldercare Services in China*

In the practice of rural neighbor-assisted eldercare, phenomena such as “hot beginnings, cold endings” 热启动、冷收尾 and operational contraction are common, rooted in the nature of services—dispersed providers, embedded processes, contextual needs, and the challenges of effective supervision, all of which make periodic external resource inputs difficult to translate into stable service provision. Taking Village H in North China as a case study, this article analyzes how neighbor-assisted eldercare has achieved long-term, stable operation under resource constraints. Village H established a two-tier network of “centers and neighbor-assisted sites” 驿站—互助点, restructuring rights and responsibilities: The village party branch committee and the village committee adopted a strategy of “providing administrative guarantees without taking full control,” while establishing rules, verifying eligibility, and coordinating procedures. Meanwhile, the “Happiness Eldercare Center” 幸福晚年驿站, as a semi-formal hub, translates external directives and funding into sustainable everyday care through micro-level organization and process coordination. At the level of process governance 过程治理, simplified record-keeping and follow-up visits ensure minimal traceability, while word-of-mouth evaluations and social pressure inherent in rural communities fill supervision gaps. The article further argues that Village H’s success lies not in resource inputs or “capable individuals” but in generating a stable structure of “task-based relations” 事缘关系 centered on eldercare. This structure couples formal bureaucratic rules with local informal networks. By identifying this underlying mechanism, this article contributes to our understanding of the sustainable provision of process-oriented public services in transitional rural China and identifies broader policy implications.