The article elaborates on issues and findings from research conducted under the auspices of the postgraduate research training group Risk and East Asia at the University of Duisburg- Essen, funded by the German Research Foundation 2011–2019. We cannot reflect the full scope of the doctoral research that resulted from this endeavour, which straddled politics, economics and sociology of Japan, China and Korea, and we therefore limit our attention here to three already completed dissertations that provide different perspectives on risk in Chinese developments in the last few decades. During the Chinese reforms since 1978, social change gave rise to new interlocking risks and processes of reflexive risk handling. The cases analysed by Ting Huang, Alison Lamont and Mei Yu represent, respectively, the rise of rural pension schemes in two different settings (northwest China and a rural part of Beijing), the restoration of normal life following the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake (in Sichuan), as well as the shifts between formal and informal development institutions in a coal-producing county in northwest China.