Labeled clanization: the social structure of a Third Line enterprise

Abstract

This work focuses on the Third Line workers, who were secretly located in the remote mountain areas and fully untapped in the studies of Chinese labor politics. In this study, I show that the Third Line workers mainly originate from three different groups: the transferred workers, the returned educated youths, and the demobilized soldiers. These three origins served as different labels signifying the characteristics that each group had in common. In the workers’ quotidian interactions, these labels were meaningfully and closely associated with the workers’ occupational opportunities in the factory and shape their mutual perceptions and attitudes toward one another. As a result, the high degree of isolation gradually shaped the social structure of the Third Line workers toward a model of ‘labeled clanization.’ In the light of this unique social structure, I further argue that the widely accepted organizational dependency of Chinese urban danwei system needs to be reconsidered.