Following broader recentralization efforts under Xi Jinping, recent scholarship suggests that this decentralization of social welfare is changing in favour of large-scale recentralisation of social welfare. Yet, at the same time other studies continue to regard decentralization as the root cause for insufficient welfare provision and regional inequality. This study seeks to shed light on this empirical puzzle. To contribute to our understanding of central-local relations and their impact on social welfare in China, this study employs “political steering theory” to analyse eldercare service development in local China. By comparatively studying eldercare service development in Shanghai and Beijing, we argue that local variations in policy implementation are determined by 1) the interplay of central steering efforts and local-level responses and, borrowing from historical institutionalism, 2) the timing and sequence of these efforts and responses. Consequently, the timing and sequence of local-level responses, impacts the resulting welfare mix. The ongoing use of the binary of “decentralization versus recentralization” thus blurs the complexity and at times antithetical processes underlying central-local relations, which can include a mix of both processes at the same time.