Everyday Power Relations in State Firms in Socialist China: A Reexamination

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with 97 retirees from different cities, this article reinterprets power relations in state-owned enterprises during the Mao era, centering on an analysis of day-to-day interactions between factory cadres and workers and between the elites and the ordinary among workers. The main issues addressed in this study include how cadres exercised discretion in administrative activities that directly affected workers’ material and nonmaterial interests, such as wage raises, housing allocations, party membership, promotions, and political awards; to what extent workers developed personal dependence on their supervisors; and whether or not workers were split into two antagonistic groups of activists and nonactivists. Without denying the instances of favoritism and personal dependence in cadre-worker relations under certain circumstances, which became increasingly noticeable in the early reform years, this study underscores the constraints of formal and informal institutions on cadres and questions the validity of the clientelist model in explaining micro-political realities on the factory floor in Chinese industry before the reform era.