Governance Logics of ECEC Integration under Demographic Contraction: A Comparative Analysis of Administrative Pragmatism in China and Institutional Normativism in South Korea

Against the backdrop of extreme demographic contraction, the early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems in both China and South Korea are confronted with severe survival crises, prompting successive waves of integration reforms. However, the policy trajectories of the two nations exhibit a striking divergence: China, grappling with a structural "resource mismatch" between surplus preschool seats and a deficit in 0–3 childcare, tends toward administrative mobilization via minimalist policy discourse. Conversely, South Korea’s reform is driven not by supply shortages, but by the need to resolve long-standing institutional fragmentation and educational inequities. This has prompted the South Korean Ministry of Education to release a comprehensive 31-page implementation plan aimed at a fundamental structural reconfiguration of administrative jurisdiction, teacher qualifications, and financial standards. Utilizing a Most Similar Systems Design (MSSD), this study systematically compares the policy texts and institutional backgrounds of both nations. The findings reveal that this policy divergence stems not from the level of administrative efficiency, but from two fundamentally distinct governance logics: Resource-Led Adaptation in China and Rights-Based Transformation in South Korea. The China model relies on administrative mobilization capabilities, activating grassroots "self-rescue" through fuzzy delegation to achieve adaptive resilience. The South Korea model, by contrast, centers on the equitable right to education as its core value, seeking transformative resilience through rigid legal regulation and institutional standardization. This study proposes that the type of state capacity—administrative mobilization versus rule-based governance—serves as a pivotal meso-level variable for understanding the bifurcated reform trajectories within East Asian productivist welfare regimes. These findings not only challenge the monolithic perception of the "East Asian model" but also offer differentiated governance insights for other nations navigating demographic transitions.