The Chinese factory is a place where much political indoctrination occurs both individual and at the group level, with the aim of developing the pure Communist man as conceived by Mao. It is a place where illiterate workers learn how to read and write, and where employees can and do improve their work skills and develop new ones through education and training. It is a place where housing, schools, recreational facilities, roads, shops, and offices are often constructed or remodelled by factory employees. It is also a place from which employees go out into the fields and help the peasants with their harvesting.
Hence, if supplies do not arrive according to the plan, Chinese factory workers generally do not remain idle or unproductive - at least, by the regime's standards. In factories I visited where this type of situation arose, workers undertook some education or training during the period of delay in order to improve their skills; or they studied and discussed Chairman Mao's work; or, as was the case at the Tientsin Shoe and Wuhan Diesel Engine factories, they undertook various construction and modernization activities; or they worked on developing new or improved processes and ProdUCEs.
This type of activity makes more sense than meets the eye in a country where illiteracy has Level of industrial skill adequate. The benefits of political indoctrination seem more questionable, but even this activity seems to have a favorable motivating impact which is difficult for the capitalist Western mind to grasp fully.
In order for a Wester mind to make sense out of some of the more surprising and strange things going on in Chinese factories, one must be aware of two pure Communist ideological tenets which the regime takes senousiy and hasion a long way in implementing: (i) the classes, class distinctions, and elites; and (2) the abolition of distinctions between mental and physical labor.
In the Soviet Union upper-level industrial CILLCTDESC managers have long been paid substantially more than workers, generally live significantly better with favored housing and an allocated car, and have become a type of elite. In fact they are recognized as an integral part of the Soviet intelligentsia because of their special Knowicuge, SKis, aDulles and/or education. Not so in Red China. The Chinese regime realizes that one sure way to breed class OI elites is to pay managers substantially more than workers and provide them with substantially better living conditions. Hence when great stress is placed on pure workers There rep leton that the e ideology in practice, expect happening today. Thus:
At the 38 Chinese industrial enterprises I visited, the director alone is the top paid employee at only 3, while he shares the top pay slot with the party secretary, experts, and/or workers at 12 others.
At 2 of the enterprises, the party secretary alone gets top pay, and at 12 others he shares this slot with other personnel.
Vice directors, department heads, and engineers are the highest paid at 12 factories, and share this position at 7 others.
Workers are the highest paid employees at 8 factories - mostly fairly small ones - and share this slot at 2 others. At some of the enterprises I was told tha recently the directors and other key manageria and technical personnel had "voluntarily" asked for and received cuts in salary to put them nore in line with the workers. This happened a the Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation, Wuhan Heavy Machinery factory, and Loyang Tractor factory. The director of the Nanking Chemica Fertilizer factory claimed that he had refused a salary increase. At most factories the ratio between directors' incomes and the average factory pay was less than 2 to 1; the highest ratio I found was about 3 to 1....
At Chinese enterprises there also seem to be no really very substantial differences in the housing conditions of managers, or workers. At the Nanking Chemical fertilizer, Wuhan Iror and Steel Corporation, and Peking Cotton Textile No. 3 enterprises I spent quite a bit of time inspecting the factory housing. Top Worker parucipation in management Chinese factories takes the form of committees, meetings, suggestions, and elections. Some Chinese managers interviewed admitted that in the past - apparently during the Great Leap Forward period workers spent too much on-the-job time in meetings, and now most of these meetings are held "voluntarily' after hours.
The major formal on-the-job meeting of workers is generally held monthly or quarterly to discuss the enterprise plan and performance At most factories only a committee of worker representatives elected by the various sections, shops, and departments participate. The worker representative committees can and apparently do exert considerable influence at times, even to the poi at of reversing managerial decisions.
For the Canton Electrical Appliance factory some managers wanted to buy a new machine; the workers made them reverse the decision, and the factory rebuilt an old machine atra fraction of the cost. This, I was told, is in line with the state policies of self-sufficiency and innovation.
Much time is spent in after-work meetings (and I did unexpectedly drop in on some when İ stayed late at various factories). The workers discuss how to improve performance and their own skills, and of course they talk much about politics and ideology. They also vote on who should get what size bonus, as well as on which members of their group should be elected to lead during the period.
Apparently the Chinese regime is not yet willing to the workers play mator management roles at their enterprises. If they did, chaos would surely result. It is significant that at the majority of factories I found no workers on the enterprise party committees, and at the other factories workers did not make up more than about 10% of the committee membership As for the factory trade union committee, i is supposed to play a major role in motivating and organizing worker participation, but here again the party clearly plays the dominant role. In fact, the trade union in Soviet enterprises. although not very strong, seems to be significantly more influential and important than in China.
Yet elections and worker participation in general do seem to have some favorable impacts at Chinese factories. They give the workers a sense of identification, loyalty, belonging, and commitment to their enterprises. They also keep managers on their toes, since they must at least listen to the workers; also, the latter can and do evaluate the managers and point out what they view as deficiencies in administrative performance. The workers still earn bonuses for favourable economic results, and if their bonuses are lost because of poor management, their voices are probably not silent. Perhaps more important to the regime is that worker participation results in a form of bottom-up control not only over economic performance, but also over the proper interpretation of state policy and ideologically correct behavior.
During first VISIE Chinese factory ... I was introduced to the director who was cooking dumplings in the kitchen. He was doing one of his two days a week of physical labour. I soon learned that all enterprise directors, vice directors, party secretaries, and trade union leaders spend from one to two days each week in physical labour. So when I later saw the director of the Tientsin Watch factory cleaning up a shop and a vice director of Shanghai Steel No. 3 working on a machine, 1 was no longer shocked. In fact, managers, experts, and key Reds of organizations above the enterprise also come to plants each week to engage in physical labor. For example, when I was at the Shanghai Truck factory, there were three managers from the Shanghai Bureau of In probably no other country does informal organization play such a pervasive and significant role in the functioning of enterprises as in Red China. In Chinese factories one commonly observes workers violating foreman chain of command and going directly to middle or top-level managers for advice orl Since the roof occupation of luxury flats in Such disregard for the division of labour, work specialization, and formal relationships can and often does lead to considerable confusion. unproductive time, and general inefficiency However. this great stress informal organization also makes more sense than meets the eye in a country that does not have nearly enough skilled people or experts to meet its minimum needs.
When relatively few employees are highly skilled, the pooling of know-how, the sharing of information, mutual aid, and cooperation may frequently lead to net gains in productivity and efficiency over time. In addition, such activities often seem to promote trust, cohesiveness. harmony, and, perhaps, better information for decision making at all levels. However, if Chinese industry is to the progress substantially, and hence become more complex, it appears that more stress must be. placed on formal organization. later Elaine was rushed off to hospital and