The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village

Contemporary China Center, Australian National University The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village Author(s): Yunxiang Yan Source: The China Journal, No. 35 (Jan., 1996), pp. 1-25 Published by: Contemporary China Center, Australian National University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2950274 . Accessed: 30/04/2011 01:16 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ccc. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Contemporary China Center, Australian National University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The China Journal. http://www.jstor.org THE CULTURE OF GUANXI IN A NORTH CHINA VILLAGE* Yunxiang Yan Given the primacy of interpersonal relations in contemporary China and Chinese culture in general, the topic of guanxi, or networks of personal connections, has become a central concern among China scholars. However, most of the recent studies on guanxi in mainland China were conducted in urban settings and, as a consequence, little is known about the social phenomenon in rural communities.1 This paper aims to redress this imbalance through an in-depth study of one village. It shall be seen that the guanxi networks in Xiajia village, Heilongjiang province,2 differ substantially from those depicted in previous scholarly accounts. Xiajia residents are morally as well as economically bound I owe special thanks to Anita Chan, William Rowe, Jonathan Unger and three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on early drafts. The ethnographic material used in this article will appear in my forthcoming book, The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village, and all rights to that ethnographic material are reserved by the publisher, Stanford University Press. A noticeable exception is Andrew Kipnis' work in rural Shandong: 'Producing Guanxi: Relationships, Subjects, and Subcultures in a Chinese Village', PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1991. The paper is based on fieldwork that I carried out in 1991 in Xiajia village, a farming community with a population of 1,500, supported by the National Science Foundation. A brief history of Xiajia village is offered in Yan, The Flow of Gifts, ch.2. For information about the village during the post-reform era, see also Yunxiang Yan, The Impact of Rural Reform on Economic and Social Stratification in a Chinese Village', The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no.27 (January 1992), pp. 1-23. THE CHINA JOURNAL, N0.35, JANUARY 1996 vivian xiang 下划线 2 THE CHINA JOURNAL into exchange networks which reproduce themselves through an endless process of gift-giving. Villagers refer to these networks as guanxi; yet they perceive of their guanxi networks as the very foundation of the society in which they live, rather than merely as instrumental webs of particularistic ties. I will begin with a brief review of the existing literature on guanxi. Then I will unpack the villagers' own perceptions of guanxi and highlight the differences between the etic (scholarly) and ernie (native) views of the phenomenon. Next I will examine the costs of cultivating guanxi both in economic and social terms and show that economic gains constitute only part of the significance of guanxi in village social life. The discussion will then focus on the pragmatic functions of guanxi networks and the heavy reliance of villagers on these networks in daily life. I will conclude by offering a general model of the guanxi complex, which distinguishes between the primary and extended forms of guanxi and thus may explain the differences between my findings and those of earlier studies. The Notion of Guanxi in Scholarly Accounts Previous scholarly accounts of guanxi have adopted two different perspectives: the first has regarded guanxi as an element in a uniquely Chinese normative social order, and the second treats guanxi as a practical means for advancing specific personal interests. The first perspective can be traced to Max Weber, Liang Shuming, Fei Xiaotong, Talcott Parsons and, more recently, Ambrose King and Kwang-kuo Hwang,3 all of whom variously regarded the 'personalist principle' or 'particularistic structure of relationships' as the core of a Confucian ethics that dominated Chinese society.4 All of these authors have concentrated on the normative regulating See Max Weber, The Religion of China (New York: Free Press, 1968), p.236; Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Free Press, 1939), p.551; Liang Shuming, Zhongguo wenhua yaoyi [The Essential Features of Chinese Culture] (Hong Kong: Jicheng Book Company, 1963), p.94; Fei Xiaotong, Xiangtu Zhongguo [Folk China] (Shanghai: Guancha Press, 1947), pp.22-37 (the English translation of this book is entitled From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992]); Ambrose Yeo-chi King (Yao-ji Jin), 'The Individual and Group in Confucianism: A Relational Perspective', in Donald J. Munro (ed.), Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), p.64; Ambrose King, 'Kuan-hsi and Network Building: A Sociological Interpretation', Daedalus, vol.120, no.2 (1991), pp.63-84; and Kwang-kuo Hwang, 'Face and Favor: The Chinese Power Game', The American Journal of Sociology, vol.92, no.4 (1987),p.954. Some of the early studies, such as Liang's and Fei's, are critical of the particularism expressed through guanxi relations as an unhealthy aspect of Chinese culture, in contrast to the universalism which supposedly prevails in the West. More recently, the primacy of such personal relations has been reappraised as a positive feature of the Chinese model of capitalism. See, for example, Gary G. Hamilton and Kao Cheng-shu, 'The vivian xiang 高亮 vivian xiang 下划线 THE CULTURE OF GUANXI 3 power of guanxi and renqing [human feelings].5 A 1965 article by Ezra Vogel marked a switch of scholarly interest from this normative perspective to a view which concentrates on the practice of guanxi as a means of pursuing personal interests.6 He and other scholars shifted their focus from the legacy of Confucianism to the impact of the socialist state in trying to break the particularistic social ties of guanxi and renqing. Subsequently, in the post-Mao era of the 1980s and 1990s, studies have emphasized how particularism and instrumentalism increasingly have come to dominate behaviour, with gift-giving a primary means by which people gain access to desirable resources. Guanxi viewed from this perspective has a new, narrower definition: a strategically constructed network of personal connections selected from the body of all personal relations.7 Most of these latter analyses concentrate on instrumental exchanges of gifts and Institutional Foundations of Chinese Business: The Family Firm in Taiwan', Comparative Social Research, vol.12 (1990), pp.95-112; Cheng-shu Kao, The Role of "Personal Trust" in Large Businesses in Taiwan', in Gary Hamilton (ed.), Business Networks and Economic Development in East and Southeast Asia (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, 1991); Gordon Redding, The Spirit of Chinese Capitalism (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990); and Siu-lun Wong, The Chinese Family Firm: A Model', British Journal of Sociology, vol.36, no.l (1983), pp.58-72, and The Applicability of Asian Family Values to Other Socio-Cultural Settings', in Peter Berger and Michael Hsiao (eds), In Search of an East Asian Development Model (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1988), pp. 135-42. Renqing entails a basic emotional empathy and understanding of others and, related to this, a set of moral obligations and social norms. Ezra Vogel, 'From Friendship to Comradeship: The Change in Personal Relations in Communist China', The China Quarterly, no.21 (1965), pp.46-60. Also see Anita Chan and Jonathan Unger, 'Grey and Black: The Hidden Economy of Rural China', Pacific Affairs, vol.55, no.3 (Fall 1982), esp. pp.461-6; Thomas B. Gold, 'After Comradeship: Personal Relations in China Since the Cultural Revolution', The China Quarterly, no. 104 (1985), pp.657-75; Jean Oi, State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 131-54, 214-25; Andrew Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 179- 89, 210-12; and Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, The Gift Economy and State Power in China', Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol.31, no.l (1989), pp.25-54. For example, for guanxi practices in factories, see Dandling Ruan, 'Interpersonal Networks and Workplace Controls in Urban China', The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no.29 (January 1993), pp.89-105; in politics, see Cheng Li, 'University Networks and the Rise of Qinghua Graduates in China's Leadership', The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no.32 (July 1994), pp. 1-30. For the role of guanxi in foreign investment and private business, see Josephine Smart and Alan Smart, 'Personal Relations and Divergent Economies: A Case Study of Hong Kong Investment in China', International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol.15, no.2 (1991), pp.216-33; and David Wank, 'Private Business, Bureaucracy, and Political Alliance in a Chinese City', The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no.33 (January 1995), pp.55-74. 4 THE CHINA JOURNAL favours without adequately taking into account the institutions from which most ordinary guanxi networks are drawn and in which they are embedded, such as the family, kinship, neighbourhood and community. In an interesting recent discussion directly related to the differences between urban and rural China, Mayfair Yang adopts both perspectives. According to Yang, in rural areas the expressive renqing rules tend to govern villagers' behaviour more than the instrumental guanxi rules, and thus there is a dichotomy between the rural renqing gift economy and the urban art of guanxi.8 Whether such a binary opposition exists between rural renqing and urban guanxi shall be explored in the last section of this paper. The Notion of Guanxi in Xiajia Village Throughout my field research, I was intrigued by the way Xiajia villagers perceived their guanxi networks. Whenever I discussed the subject of guanxi, renqing and gift-giving, the term shehui (meaning 'society') almost always came up in the conversation. An informant explained the expansion of the guanxi network in his family as a sign of 'moving up in society'. Personal connections are referred to as shehui guanxi [social relations] and people who actively participate in situations that involve social exchange, such as community ceremonies or personal weddings, are called shehui shang de ren [people in society]. There are three local categories that define the nature of various personal relations in each person's network of guanxi: i) A 'personal core' of close relatives [shizai qinqi]: one's immediate family and close agnates and affines such as siblings, first cousins and wife's siblings. All of the families within this central circle are related by consanguinity as well as by mutual duties and rights. ii) A 'reliable zone' of good friends and less close relatives who can always be counted on for help [kao de zhu de ren]. The distinction between the personal core and reliable zone is not always clearcut, because best friends may be regarded as closer than relatives and thus enter into the core of one's personal connections. iii) An 'effective zone' of relatives and friends in a broader sense (yiban qinyou). This normally embraces a large number of people and is more open to recruitment. All distant relatives and colleagues and some other fellow villagers are included in this effective zone. Because guanxi is not a static structure but a dynamic process embedded in social interactions in everyday life, all of the relational boundaries in one's guanxi network have to be defined and redefined repeatedly through active participation in social exchanges. Gift-giving in its own right constitutes an important part of these interactions among related people and gives meaning Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), p.320. vivian xiang 高亮 vivian xiang 高亮 vivian xiang 高亮 THE CULTURE OF GUANXI 5 to their guanxi networks. Unlike the all-too-familiar art of guanxi in urban China that is described in various studies, and which involves an exchange of gifts for favours, gift-giving in village society in most cases entails an endless exchange of gifts for gifts, and the exchange is usually ritualized or routinized. According to the social contexts of this gift-giving, a distinction can be drawn between ritualized gifts, such as those for weddings or funerals, and non- ritualized gift relations, such as the mutual visits between relatives or friends or the exchange of food between two good neighbours. Ritualized gift exchange provides the best way to map one's guanxi network. The number of gift-givers in a person's family ceremony indicates the size of this person's guanxi network, because everyone within the network is obligated to offer a gift. The value of the gift presented by each gift-giver symbolizes the social distance or degree of closeness between the giver and the recipient, as there are unwritten codes about who should present what kind of gift to whom in accordance with the relational distance and the ritual context. In Xiajia, as in most rural communities in China and some other East Asian societies as well, villagers always write a gift list for each ceremony they host ? a document that records the names of the gift-givers next to a description of the gift received from each. Families carefully keep their gift lists and use them for future reference when reciprocal gifts need to be offered. From a researcher's point of view, a gift list may serve as a repository of data on the changing nature of interpersonal relations and a social map which vividly displays guanxi networks. During my fieldwork I collected fifty gift lists for various rituals and used the lists as social maps to specify my informants' guanxi networks. Based on these lists and interviews, I was able to establish a classification of gift exchange which contains twenty-two kinds of gift-giving relations: eleven of them occur on ceremonial occasions, eight occur in non-ritualized contexts, and the remaining three are both non-ritualized and strategically instrumental.9 Figure 1 summarizes these activities. Symbolically, Figure 1 represents the social space of guanxi, and several interesting points deserve discussion. First, the de facto boundaries of the relational zones are maintained in the dynamic relations of gift exchange. The closer to the centre in a given guanxi network, the more that gift-giving relations are involved. The personal core ? the primary and most important part of one's guanxi networks ? involves all kinds of gift-giving activities except instrumental ones, while gifts that are solely instrumental and strategic are employed mainly beyond the community boundary. Second, an elastic area lies somewhere between the reliable zone and the effective zone, where people may adjust their mutual relations. The size of a guanxi network can vary depending mostly on an individual's effort to expand his or her reliable and effective zones. For a detailed classification and description, see Yan, The Flow of Gifts, ch.3. vivian xiang 高亮 THE CHINA JOURNAL Figure 1: Gift-Giving Relations and Guangxi Networks Gift-giving occasions Personal core Reliable zone Effective zone Village society Beyond village c 1 P c o c e-2 rs o Vi O c o Child birth Abortion Female sterilization Engagement Wedding House construction Birthday celebration Funeral Ancestor worship Occasional celebration Yang ge dance1 Mutual visits Bai xinnian2 Guanxian3 Xiaojing4 Yasui money5 Visits to patient Food exchange Love gifts Indirect payments6 Flattery gifts7 JLubricating gifts8 1. The annual parade during which Xiajia villagers offer gifts to the parade participants. 2. A local custom which requires newly married couples to visit their close relatives during the lunar New Year period. 3. A local custom that the new couples visit their close relatives after the birth of their first born. 4. Gifts offered by the junior generations to their parents or elder kinsmen. 5. A gift given by elders to their children or junior kin. 6. An immediately-returned gift for a received favour, without a previously existing gift exchange relation between the gift giver and recipient. 7. Gifts with ulterior motives that are offered to someone in a higher social position. 8. Gifts given stragetically as a pre-condition to receive a favour. THE CULTURE OF GUANXI 7 Third, there are clearly defined boundaries in some situations, which are reflected by the neat bars in Figure 1. Gifts of love are mostly associated with marriage and thus indicate the boundary of the conjugal family; gift-giving for ancestor worship is strictly confined to close agnates, or within the circle of the five-grade mourning system; while the yangge dance as an annual parade involves all villagers and thus stands for the village community. In other words, these gift-giving relations respectively define conjugality, patrilinity and community, and thus represent one's fundamental social relations: affinity, agnation and co-residence. Fourth, all of the forms of purely instrumental gift-giving transcend the village boundary, while most of the expressive gift-giving activities take place within the village, which draws a symbolic line between the village community and the outside world. Indirect payments and lubricating gifts provide opportunities to link the villagers with people beyond the village. Outside the village, market transactions are mingled with gift exchanges, and monetary gifts are offered both as payment and as tokens of gratitude, as in the hiring of a band of folk musicians or to see a doctor who practices traditional Chinese medicine. This symbolic line between village community and beyond cannot always apply to expressive gift-giving relations, because affinal relations and friendships often connect Xiajia residents with people in other villages or even cities. These relations belong to either the personal core or reliable zone, depending on the closeness between two persons. Thus, most gift-giving relations in Figure 1 are symbolized by arrow