Introduction: Why This Thesis by This Writer at This Time
Summary: This overview begins by defining the study
and its organization. It then lays out some general
theoretical concerns as it introduces the thesis.
Defining this Thesis
At some point, this thesis will come before the eyes
of the university library's cataloguers. Using but a few
keywords, the cataloguer must summarize the content into
a few somewhat distinct subject headings. Since
cataloguers are individuals and cataloguing is an art
(although some prefer to call the field "library
science"), cataloguers will not always agree among
themselves how the item should be classified.
Compromises must be reached. Cataloguers do not have the
luxury of reading the book; they usually do little more
than thumb through the table of contents. How,
therefore, to catalogue this thesis?
This study reports on how graduating seniors from
Shenzhen University (szu), an undergraduate institution
in the People's Republic of China (prc), find jobs. It
focuses on their use of personal relationships and
connections (which in Chinese is called guanxi) in
securing employment, and it discusses why, when and how
this occurs. Accordingly, several diverse topics are
covered:
"human resource development, or how governments plan the
movement of talent from education into the
workplace, also referred to with the less gender-
neutral term "manpower planning;"
"career development, or how institutions help potential
employees find their niches in the workplace;
"culture, or the learned behaviour that characterize a
people--in this case Mainland Chinese--and
manifested through their use of personal
relationships.
For decades plenty of books dealing with students,
economics and employment have been catalogued under these
first two headings. The third category, China--Culture,
is general enough to include anything that doesn't fit
under the first two rubrics. One of the themes of this
thesis is that some Western concepts, including those of
manpower planning and career development, apply only
vaguely to the subjects of this study. Manpower planning
lived briefly in the latter half of the twentieth century
in the newly formed state, the prc. It was, however,
completing its greying years when Shenzhen University
(szu), the school discussed here as a case study, was
conceived. Nevertheless, the mindset that surrounded
manpower planning theory and the social, political,
economic and bureaucratic concerns that supported it,
still influenced the policies affecting szu graduates.
Although the students studied in this thesis were not
directly subjected to China's job allocation policies,
manpower planning provides a necessary backdrop to the
study. The main concern of this study is not job
placement/development/counselling. The Western concept
of career development--that individuals consciously or
unconsciously move down career paths through ability
assessment, counselling, plans and decisions aimed at
achieving established goals--is, I will argue, anathema
to the realities of how szu students get their jobs.
Early aspirations in high school are confirmed or
destroyed by a rigid streaming system that permits few
changes along the way. Changes that occur in university,
such as switching majors, often result from the use of
relationships and less frequently relate to the objective
merits of the individual student's situation.
Furthermore, this work does not purport to give an
overall discussion of Chinese culture. Culture is an
amorphous term which has no generally accepted definition
and whose multi-definitional nature relates more to
perception than to an objective reality. The study at
hand deals with a narrowly defined group of subjects:
recent graduates from Shenzhen University. These young
men and women may or may not be typical of graduates from
other schools in or out of China. The thesis does not
purport to be generalizable. To say this study is about
Chinese culture is accurate, but to say so is to say
little more than this study is about life in China.
Still, our fictional cataloguers must fulfil their
mandate to produce keyword terms. What then is the topic
and purpose of this study? In the jargon of academic
theses: what is the research question? It is narrowly
focused on the students' job search. In addition to
being descriptive (how students get jobs), it is
concerned with the "why" question. Why do students use
relationships? There is much literature (as Chapter III
will explore) on the use of relationships in China.
Little of this, I argue, gets at "the why." This thesis
sheds some light on the complexity of relationships as
they pertain to Shenzhen University job hunters. To the
cataloguer, therefore, I submit my preference for four
narrowly defined key terms: 1. China--Shenzhen Special
Economic Zone. 2. China--Graduate Employment. 3. China--
Social relationships (guanxi). 4. China--University
students--Shenzhen University.
The qualitative method (See Chapter I) such as is
used here tends to build theory from data, rather than
finding data to support a previously developed theory.
Such studies sometimes explore virgin areas of research
and are among the first to discover these new worlds.
These types of studies tend to be quite descriptive, but
the good studies do not let description substitute for
analysis. The literature review sections of this thesis
suggest that much of the available ponderings on the
subjects covered in this volume fails to give insight
into WHY some students from Shenzhen University use
relationships to get their employment and, equally
important, WHY other students DO NOT use relationships to
get jobs. The answer lies somewhere in a bunch of
social, economic and personality variables heavily
influenced by students' environment. This has led me to
suggest an alternative way of looking at the issues,
presenting an alternative theory (Chapters IX and X).
Upon arriving at such a theory, it is hoped the reader
will realize that the findings presented (Chapters VI
through IX) have found a common theme. An anatomical
metaphor provides insight. The spine of this study is
the research question--how do students get jobs? This
thesis, being somewhat ethnographic, tells a story, and
everything in the tale should find a linkage to the
spine.
Organization of this Thesis
This study has ten chapters. After the introduction, the
mixed methods of this research are discussed. Then, a
detailed history of Chinese manpower planning (II) is
presented. China's centrally planned human resource
development strategy was never used at szu. Rather, the
school developed an alternative approach, which sought to
address the failings of the centrally planned system. A
discussion of manpower planning is useful, however,
because it helps establish what szu's system attempted to
avoid. Next, a literature review (III) covers some of
the theories about the use of guanxi, especially as
relationships and connections concern the job search.
Guanxi is, if not the fabric of Chinese culture, at least
the thread that makes the fabric. The literatures
covered in Chapters II and III are rooted in various
academic disciplines, with little overlap. Chapter III
concludes with some of the expectations drawn from the
literature. The setting for this study--the Shenzhen
Special Economic Zone--and Shenzhen University, from
which the graduates come, is described in Chapter IV.
The next four chapters present the findings of the
research. Chapter V relates the job search to certain
external factors of the political economy that influenced
the job search. At the time of this study, much of urban
China was between plan and market, and the vestiges of a
planned economy--e.g., information control, residency
control, personal files, housing allocation policies, and
regional employment constraints--still affected how
students found jobs. Chapter VI discusses szu's career
counselling program and tries to explain its
metamorphosis and atrophy. Chapter VII looks at
academically underachieving students and the ways in
which they use relationships to secure employment.
Chapter VIII looks at the relevance of gender in an
attempt to understand why female graduates use guanxi
less than males. Chapter IX looks at various
perceptions, expectations and behaviours of job seeking
graduates. The final chapter (X) reflects back to what
has gone before. Did szu's job procurement process
address the deficiencies of China's centrally planned
manpower allocation program? To what extent did use of
guanxi negate the meritocratic elements of the school's
design for human resource development?
The Place of Theory
Conventional wisdom suggests that in many respects
the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (see Chapter IV) falls
somewhere between traditional China and the West, as
represented in neighbouring Hong Kong. Indeed, as first
established, the job procurement process for szu students
(similar to one now being implemented across China) was a
middle measure between planned allocation and free market
(a convergence of socialist and capitalist). But to see
the story as "China's approaching the Western model" is
erroneous. The theory of convergence (and its later
relative, globalization) is not supported by this study's
data, which themselves lead to a number of contradicting
conclusions.
In addition to the convergence theory, sociologists
and political scientists have explored exploitation or
dominance theories. Even today the West's relations with
China are sometimes cast in the shadow of a past in which
"bullying" and "humiliation" were words often used to
characterize the association. Earlier this century a
group of scholars and civil servants came up with another
theory that suggested how China could take advantage of
Western technology but still remain fundamentally
"Chinese." These "self-strengtheners" believed China
could import Western technology (to use against Western
military domination) and overlay it on a Chinese
foundation. It is this theory that also shapes the
funnel of the dissertation. I refer to this concept as
"adaptation without adoption." In the rhetoric of the
1990's political economy, this translates as building a
market economy "with Chinese characteristics." This is a
politically acceptable alternative to domination, but
still not equivalent to convergence. The case study at
hand, however, raises serious doubts about the efficacy
of adaptation, on the one hand, and the reluctance or
inability to adopt, on the other. It questions whether
the hybrid that results is really a hybrid at all, or in
fact the earlier body in a different set of clothes.
Not to give too much of the punch line before
telling the story, here I will present four conclusions
that go against contemporary wisdom and question the
validity of the "adapting, not adopting" thesis: First,
career development as practised in the West does not
exist for the subjects of this study. Graduates do not
search for jobs. Rather, they search for employers or
employer types (government, private, joint-venture,
etc.). The importance of the specific job to an
individual is a quite Western concept that finds little
support in this study. Second, the job search is driven
by factors that are only vaguely similar in nature and
substantially differ in detail from what exists in the
West. The desire to find a prestigious job and the
constraints placed on the applicant by gender
discrimination and merit consideratio exist in Shenzhen
as well as in the USA, for example. I will argue,
however, that they are fundamentally different. Third,
social relationships play a role, albeit a minor one, of
moderating discrimination (allowing entry for women) and
providing ways for those on the margins (e.g., those
rurally domiciled) to get into the mainstream of society.
In these respects, social relationships provide for more,
not less, equal opportunity. Fourth, perceptions seem to
be more important than reality. I will argue that the
importance of social relationships is overperceived by
the public in China (and conversely underacknowledged in
the West). This falsely constructed view of reality
feeds back into the behaviour of job-hunting students in
Shenzhen.
Theories are mostly associated with disciplines--
economics, sociology and the like--and new theories are
built on existing theories, or on the vestiges of
debunked theories. Some dissertations create their own
theories. My study began by taking materials and
findings from different theories and from several
disciplines. It then applied these to a case study;
finally, it will theorize from the data presented.
Indeed, the fields of education and planning are
inter-disciplinary, composed of many rather disparate
elements. A study of the transition from education to
employment could be done in any of several disciplines,
using separate approaches, supported by different
theories, relying on dissimilar methodologies. In the
current study I draw inspiration from many of these
theories and methods. Sociology provides helpful insight
in social resources theory,1 social network theory,2 and
exchange theory.3 From social psychology comes resource
theory.4 Cross-cultural psychologists provide a
plethoric literature.5 Manpower planning and economics
of education literature combines planning and economics.6
Political scientists offer their own perspectives.7
Taken together, anthropologists have provided the most
insightful comments on guanxi.8
The Sinologists, the Globalists, and the Culturalists9
The approach of this thesis is comparative, relating the
Shenzhen case of job procurement with what might be
referred to as "the Western model." Most of the
literature reviewed for this study, however, is not
comparative (manpower planning reports being the major
exception). Most material reviewed which is published in
China does not evidence an informed view of the outside
world. The Western literature on China that is reviewed
usually does not comment on China in a comparative sense.
The authors do not share a single discipline. They have
but one thing in common: they are China experts,
dedicating their academic careers to the study of China,
individually using the approaches of their various
disciplines to study some aspect of China. Taken
together, this body of work is called sinology. In
another sense, China studies (from outside China) are by
their nature inter-disciplinary because often sinologists
have more in common with colleagues from other
disciplines who study China than with academics in their
own fields who share workspace under the same
departmental roof. Thus, an examination of the
references and footnotes to most Sinologists' studies
finds citations from works of a variety of disciplines.
Their common theme is China.
A quite different breed of individual can be
referred to as "the globalists." What unites these
people is the common notion (I am careful not to use the
term theory) that the world is becoming one. This belief
(which also reflects wishful thinking) is held by many in
the areas of business, marketing, media and advertising,
as indicated by the more than one thousand citations
found through a CD-ROM search.10 To many of its
proponents, globalization is a synonym for
internationalization or Westernization, as many of the
elements they study (e.g., marketing, communicative
media) were developed in Western Europe or North America.
A few academics also inhabit this group. Leslie Sklair's
Sociology of the Global System11 and his more recent work
on consumerism12 suggest that the world is being united
by a system that crosses nation-state borders.13 Other
theories in the human sciences are not culture specific.
A notable one is, itself, called Cultural Theory,14 an
interdisciplinary approach that permits the analysis of
divergent cultural systems along a standardized
framework. The theory, however, is moot on whether
culture is being globalized; it merely allows for the
comparison of different cultures.
While sinologists get their hands dirty in their
research (and spend years learning the language and
culture), globalists use an approach that is not China-
oriented. They develop a theory, applying the deductive
approach, and then argue about how well their data on
China fit it. But it is more than method that separates
the two. The conflict between globalists and sinologists
can be found in opposing arguments at the most
unsophisticated level:
Sinologist: That can't be true for China. China is
unique.
Globalist: No. China is like anywhere else...only
bigger.
What underlies these beliefs is an assumption by
globalists, on the one hand, about China's (a) ability to
import, (b) inability to import, (c) willingness to
import, or (d) unwillingness to import foreign ways, or
the opposing assumption by Sinologists, on the other
hand, about China's resistance against importing these
foreign ideas. J. Spence15 and Heidi Ross16 discuss this
use by Chinese of Western ideas. They conclude that
Chinese want Western ideas to serve China, which may not
in fact be what the Westerners who brought in the ideas
had in mind. Today's Globalists tend to view China as
absorbing others' ideas, technologies and products.
Legal globalists believe, for example, that China should
and will inevitably develop rule of law, a point disputed
by Carol Jones,17 who herself takes the sceptical view of
a Sinologist.
The globalists' argument, on its face, seems valid
enough. China is now exposed to all sorts of outside
influences: Western media, fast food development, discos
and karaoke. But is this adapting just superficial? Is
it just confined to the urban new-rich? G.C. Chu & Y.N.
Ju18 paint a picture of a cultural great wall in ruins.
But work from other sinologists and especially
ethnographers suggests that only superficially do the
particular Chinese systems they study resemble those in
the outside world. Close examination of several sub-
systems questions how much adoption is really taking
place. Ross19 presents a picture of a Shanghai high
school that in many aspects has little in common with the
Western counterpart. O. Bruun's study of private
businesses in Chengdu paints a detailed picture at the
micro-level.20 The structure, characteristics and
operation of these businesses resemble their counterparts
in North America and Western Europe only in a shared
broad concept. The individual systems are qualitatively
different. They resemble one another as closely as an
Australian aboriginal cave drawing looks like a canvas by
Jackson Pollack. Andrew Nathan's Chinese Democracy21 is
one of numerous examples of a detailed description of a
Chinese national sub-system that has little resemblance
to its American counterpart.
In sum, the level of analysis and degree of detail
one takes often defines one as a Sinologist or a
globalist. For globalists, paintings are paintings, and
businesses are businesses. For Sinologists, who deal
more in detail, the characteristics of the brush strokes
and numbers in the accounting ledgers are important.
A third prototype of researchers--distinct from the
two above--includes those who examine the influence of
environment or culture on behaviour. Culture itself is a
difficult term to define and, similar to such terms as
pornography and intellectual, is usually defined in the
mind of the beholder. The culturalists, however,
recognize an importance to culture that the globalists
play down and which the Sinologists seem to take so much
for granted that they need not discuss it. The
culturalists appear in the field cross-cultural
psychology.22 Because they tend to be comparative in
nature, their work forms a middle path between the
Sinologists and the globalists. Although historians and
anthropologists continue to do detailed work that omits
comparative analysis, it is worth noting that many
Sinologists themselves seem to be moving to the
comparative cultural mode, a view articulated by
Nathan.23
This thesis takes a cultural perspective as it
examines the case of Shenzhen in regard to the school-to-
work transition for Shenzhen University graduates. The
globalists, in their most extreme rhetoric, might
comment: "These students get jobs just like Americans.
They learn about opportunities from their friends."
Sinologists might argue that whatever the job seeking
process that szu graduates employ, it is unique and
reflects Chinese culture, history, politics and
developmental stage in a way that distinguishes it from a
Western model. Which of these presents a valid
appraisal? Data from a variety of disciplines can
facilitate an understanding of these dynamics.
The sinologists-globalists' conflict is not one of
inconsequence. The same data can be construed quite
differently depending on which approach is taken. In the
social sciences, a synthesis of different theories is
often necessary.24 Consumerism illustrates how different
approaches can produce different results while observing
the same phenomenon. In 1994 I attended three talks on
consumerism in Chinese communities. One, by a
Sinologist, an ethnographer whose Ph.D. dissertation
focused on the gift-giving aspects of guanxi in a
village, examined consumption in the 1990s prc as a
struggle for prestige and power, shopping as a dominant
use of leisure time, and consumerism as a means to
upgrade one's social status.25 The second talk, by a
globalist, placed China in a world theory of
globalization based on a "culture-ideology of
consumerism."26 China was seen as less a unique entity
excluded from the world, but linked to the rest of the
globe through consumerism. A third talk, by a Hong Kong-
based lecturer in business, looked at consumption among
Hong Kong Chinese and attempted to draw out some cultural
patterns.27 These were three very different views of the
same basic phenomenon: the development of China's
consumer market. Each, by itself, presents only part of
the picture. None of the presentations is wrong, as far
as each goes, but none goes far enough. The point here
is that China cannot be accurately studied ONLY from
inside or ONLY from outside.
Sinologists from abroad as well as Chinese academics
within China provide incomplete analyses if they view
Chinese events separately from the context of global
influences. Such a view dominated scholarship when China
was closed off from outside influences. That is not the
case today. Chinese policies are heavily affected by
external forces. By the same token, globalists need a
more complete understanding of China if they are to
understand how their theories apply to a land that
accommodates one quarter of the world's population. It
is doubtful that the Sinologists-globalists debate will
be settled any time soon. The thesis at hand does not
purport to provide a conclusion to this issue. The
author hopes that the specific case examined--manpower
planning in Shenzhen--adds to the body of knowledge in
the field. Globalization is an attractive "big idea,"
but often "untrammelled by data."28 This thesis will
provide some data.
_______________________________
1.Lin (1992), "Social Resources Theory;" Bian (1994), Work and
Inequality in Urban China; Chan (1994), Social Mobility
in Hong Kong.
2.Marsden (1992), "Social Network Theory."
3.Cook (1992), "Exchange Theory."
4.Foa et al. (1993), Resource Theory: Explorations and
Applications.
5.See, Bond (1995), Handbook of Chinese Psychology.
6.Sanyal (1987), Higher Education and Employment; UNESCO
(1983), "Education, Training and Employment."
7.White III (1978), Careers in Shanghai; Shirk (1982),
Competitive Comrades; Gold (1985), "After Comradeship."
8.Yan (1993), The Flow of Gifts; Yang (1986), The Art of
Social Relationships and Exchanges in China; Kipnis
(1991), Producing "Guanxi."
9.These terms may be troublesome. Sinologists refer to
observers of China who are based outside of Mainland
China. Quite a few are ethnic Chinese, who grew up in
Hong Kong, Taiwan or the Mainland. For the purposes of
this thesis, Chinese academics and scholars who operate
within the Mainland are not considered Sinologists. In
contrast, globalists usually do not specialize in one
particular country. Culturalists take a middle ground.
They focus on particular societies, yet in contrast with
the sinologists, their studies (or their perspectives)
are not exclusive to China. In contrast with the
globalists, they focus on cultural features that help
identify cultures in terms of similarity and difference.
The fitting of individuals (e.g., Fei Xiao-tong [Hsiao-
T`ung]) into these categories may be contested.
10.Database was the Business Periodical Index, compiled by
ProQuest (University Microfilms, Inc, Ann Arbor, MI) for
the University of Hong Kong library, searched Oct. 1994.
11.Sklair (1991), Sociology of the Global System.
12.Sklair (1994), "The Culture-Ideology of Consumerism in
Urban China."
13.Sklair (1994), "Capitalism and Development in Global
Perspective."
14.Thompson et al. (1990), Cultural Theory.
15.Spence (1980), To Change China.
16.Ross (1993), China Learns English, especially chapter 2.
17.Jones (1994), "Capitalism, Globalization and Rule of Law.
18.Chu & Ju (1993), The Great Wall in Ruins.
19.Ross (1993), China Learns English.
20.Bruun (1993), Business and Bureaucracy in a Chinese City.
21.Nathan (1985), Chinese Democracy.
22.Bond (1995), Handbook of Chinese Psychology; Bond (1986),
The Psychology of the Chinese People.
23.Nathan (1993), "Is Chinese Culture Distinctive?
24.To, "Modernization and Educational Development in China."
25.Seminar by Yun-xiang Yan, at the Universities Service
Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Oct. 26,
1994.
26.Sklair (1994), "The Culture-Ideology of Consumerism in
Urban China."
27.Paper presented by David Kwai-che Tse, to be included in
Bond (1995), Handbook of Chinese Psychology.
28.Sweeting, "The Globalization of Learning," 6.