A work unit or ''danwei'' () is the name given to a place of employment in the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. The term ''danwei'' remains in use today, as people still use it to refer to their workplace. However, it is more appropriate to use ''danwei'' to refer to a place of employment during the period when the
Chinese economy
The China, People's Republic of China has an upper middle income Developing country, developing Mixed economy, mixed socialist market economy that incorporates economic planning through Industrial policy, industrial policies and strategic Five- ...
was not as developed and more heavily reliant on welfare for access to long-term urban workers or when used in the context of
state-owned enterprises. Prior to
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. After CCP ...
's
economic reforms, a work unit acted as the first step of a multi-tiered hierarchy linking each individual with the central
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
infrastructure. Work units were the principal method of implementing party policy. The work unit provided lifetime employment and extensive socioeconomic welfare -- "a significant feature of socialism and a historic right won through the
Chinese Revolution."
Danwei system
Institutions such as industrial factories, schools and hospitals, and government departments are all part of the danwei system.
Among them, the heavy industrial work units, commonly viewed as the prototype of the socialist workplace, were granted priority for resources. During the Maoist era, the work unit served as multifunctional urban institutions that encompassed various aspects of urban livelihoods. Each ''danwei'' created their own housing, child care, schools, clinics, shops, services, post offices, etc. Workers' benefits were only partly in the form of wages, which significant benefits coming in the form of state-provided services and the like.
Therefore, work units provided essential social resources to its members when the market economy had not yet fully developed. The industrial ''danwei'' was a state institution.
Amongst other things, the work unit assigned individuals living quarters and provided them with food, which was eaten in centralized canteens. The ''danwei'' system was crucial to the implementation of the
one child policy
The term one-child policy () refers to a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1980 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. That initiative was part of a much bro ...
as the reproductive behavior of workers could be monitored through the ''danwei'' system. Workers not complying with policy could have their pay docked, incentives withheld or living conditions downgraded.
The increasing liberalization of
China's economy
The People's Republic of China has an upper middle income developing mixed socialist market economy that incorporates economic planning through industrial policies and strategic five-year plans.
—Xu, Chenggang. "The Fundamental Institutio ...
led to state owned enterprises being put into competition with
private enterprise and, increasingly, foreign
Multinational corporation
A multinational company (MNC), also referred to as a multinational enterprise (MNE), a transnational enterprise (TNE), a transnational corporation (TNC), an international corporation or a stateless corporation with subtle but contrasting senses, i ...
s. The "
iron rice bowl
"Iron rice bowl" () is a Chinese term for an occupation with guaranteed job security. The Chinese term can be compared to the similar (but not identical) English concept of a "job for life". Traditionally, people considered to have such position ...
", the policy of job security for large parts of the industrial workforce, continued to prevent work units from dismissing workers, while private enterprises were able to hire and fire workers as they saw fit. The decision by the central and provincial governments to offer tax and financial incentives to foreign investors in order to encourage them to invest in China led to further difficulties for the ''danwei'' system as the state run enterprises were increasingly unable to compete.
At the same time the role of the work unit has changed as China has moved from a
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
ideology to "
Socialism with Chinese characteristics". By 2000 much of the work unit's power had been removed. In 2003, for example, it became possible to marry or divorce someone without needing authorization from one's work unit.
Background
In the late 1950s, the Party-state gradually developed the danwei system as a way to organize and control urban areas. Some scholars believe that the social, economic, and political functions of the danwei could be traced back to the pre-communist financial institutions in the 1930s, the labor movement between the 1920s and 1940s, and the rural revolutionary models of organization in the
Yan'an
Yan'an (; ), alternatively spelled as Yenan is a prefecture-level city in the Shaanbei region of Shaanxi province, China, bordering Shanxi to the east and Gansu to the west. It administers several counties, including Zhidan (formerly Bao'an) ...
period.
In addition, some scholars propose that Chinese state planners borrowed heavily from the Soviet model of development, or
state socialism
State socialism is a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement that advocates state ownership of the means of production. This is intended either as a temporary measure, or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition ...
, in the design of party and state organs as well as the management of state enterprises. To accelerate the pace of industrialization and to create a new urban working class, the
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...
looked up to the Soviet experience and translated thousands of Soviet enterprise management literature.
The CCP used basic principles of industrial organization and management from the Soviet literature to draft its own industrial management system and create a new factory hierarchy of authority and administration. To follow the Soviet socialist economic model, which aimed to achieve full employment, the Chinese work unit system guaranteed permanent employment. This means that a factory could not easily fire its workers and the workers could not switch to another work unit unless they obtained special permissions.
See also
*
Dangan
Dang'an () is a Chinese word meaning "archived record/file". Used in the political and administrative context, it means a permanent dossier or archival system that records the "performance and attitudes" of citizens of mainland China. Together wi ...
*
Hukou system
''Hukou'' () is a system of household registration used in mainland China. The system itself is more properly called "''huji''" (), and has origins in ancient China; ''hukou'' is the registration of an individual in the system (''kou'' lit ...
*
People's commune
*
Production brigade
*
Production team (China)
A production team () was formerly the basic accounting and farm production unit in the people's commune system in People's Republic of China from 1958 to 1984.
Production teams were largely disbanded during the agricultural reforms of 1982–198 ...
*
Shequ
A residential community is a community, usually a small town or city, that is composed mostly of residents, as opposed to commercial businesses and/or industrial facilities, all three of which are considered to be the three main types of occu ...
, structural replacement for Danwei
*
Inminban
Inminban (; meaning "neighbourhood units" or "people's units") is a Neighbourhood Watch-like form of cooperative local organization in North Korea. No North Korean person exists outside the inminban system; everyone is a member.
History
The inminb ...
References
Bibliography
* Bjorklund, E. M. “The Danwei: Socio-Spatial Characteristics of Work Units in China's Urban Society.” ''Economic Geography'', vol. 62, no. 1, 1986, pp. 19–29.
* Chai, Yanwei (2014-09-24). "From socialist danwei to new danwei: a daily-life-based framework for sustainable development in urban China". ''Asian Geographer''.
* "Danwei -Work Unit Urbanism , Model House". ''transculturalmodernism.org''. Retrieved 2019-11-30.
* ''Danwei : the changing Chinese workplace in historical and comparative perspective''. Lü, Xiaobo, 1959-, Perry, Elizabeth J. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe. 1997
* Lin, Kevin. "Work Unit.” ''Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to Xi'', edited by Christian Sorace et al., ANU Press, Australia, 2019, pp. 331–334.
* Kaple, Deborah A. (1994-01-06). ''Dream of a Red Factory: The Legacy of High Stalinism in China''. Oxford University Press.
* Walder, Andrew G. ''Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry''. University of California Press, 1986.
* Whyte, Martin King and William L. Parish. ''Urban Life in Contemporary China''. University of Chicago Press. 1984.
* , 2000.
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Society of China
Economic history of the People's Republic of China