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China Work Units
In some ways, Chinese work units (danwei) resemble the
large-scale bureaucratic organizations that employ most people in
economically developed societies. The unit is functionally
specialized, producing a single product or service, and is
internally organized into functional departments, with employees
classified and rewarded according to their work skills.
Professional managers run the organization, enforce internal
regulations and work rules, and negotiate with other work units and
administrative superiors.
Chinese work units, however, have many distinctive qualities.
Workers usually belong to the same unit for their entire working
life. The degree of commitment to the unit and the extent to which
the unit affects many aspects of the individual worker's life have
no parallel in other societies. Chinese work units are highly
corporate, closed, permanent, and all-embracing groups. In most
cases, people are either born into their units (villages count as
units) or are assigned to them when they enter the work force.
Units supply their members with much more than a wage. Housing
in the cities is usually controlled and assigned by work units.
Consequently, one's neighbors are often one's workmates. If childcare facilities are available, they will most often be provided by
the work unit. Recreation facilities will be provided by the work
unit. Political study is carried out with one's workmates. In the
cities many people meet prospective spouses either at work or
through the introduction of fellow workers. For most people, social
mobility takes the form of working their way up within the
organization.
If goods are in short supply, they will be rationed through
work units. This was the case with bicycles and sewing machines in
the 1970s. The same can apply to babies. As part of China's planned
birth policy, unit supervisors monitor the fertility of married
women and may decide whose turn it is to have a baby
(see Population Control Programs
, ch. 2). At the other end of the life
cycle, pensions and funeral expenses are provided by work units.
Travel to another city usually requires the written permission of
one's work unit before a ticket can be purchased or food coupons
for one's destination issued. Every unit is managed by party
members, who are responsible for personnel matters. Outside the
farm sector, a written dossier is kept for every member of a unit.
Units are often physically distinct, occupying walled compounds
whose exits are monitored by gatekeepers. The unit is thus a total
community, if not a total institution, and unit membership is the
single most significant aspect of individual identity in
contemporary China.
Since the 1950s the individual's political life too has been
centered in the work unit. Political campaigns have meant endless
meetings and rallies within the unit, and when individuals were to
be criticized or condemned for political deviation or bad class
origins, it was done within the work unit, by fellow workers. In
the post-Mao Zedong era, many people were working side by side with
others whom they had publicly condemned, humiliated, or physically
beaten fifteen or twenty years before. Much of the quality of life
within a unit derives from the long-term nature of membership and
human relations and from the impossibility of leaving. Members seem
most often to aim for affable but somewhat distant ties of
"comradeship" with each other, reserving intimate friendships for
a few whom they have known since childhood or schooldays.
The work-unit system, with its lifetime membership--sometimes
referred to as the
"iron rice bowl" (see Glossary)--and
lack of job
mobility, is unique to contemporary China. It was developed during
the 1950s and early 1960s with little discussion or publicity. Its
origins are obscure; it most likely arose through the efforts of
party cadres whose background was rural and whose experience was
largely in the army and in the disciplined and all-embracing life
of party branches.
The special characteristics of the Chinese work unit--such as
its control over the work and lives of its members and its strict
subordination to administrative superiors who control the resources
necessary to its operation--make the unit an insular, closed
entity. Units are subject to various administrative hierarchies;
reports go up and orders come down. The Chinese Communist Party, as
a nationwide body, links all units and, in theory, monopolizes
channels of communication and command
(see Chinese Communist Party
, ch. 10). Vertical, command relations seem to work quite
effectively, and the degree of local compliance with the orders of
superior bodies is impressive. Conversely, horizontal relations
with other units are often weak and tenuous, presenting a problem
especially for the economy.
Data as of July 1987
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