Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture, and the Changing Nature of Guanxi (review)

This is an excellent book that deserves the wide attention of specialists on contemporary Chinese society and politics. Social Connections in China not only avoids the typical problems of edited volumes, it masterfully uses the opportunity to bring multiple specialists on a single topic together to engage in vigorous debate. The chapters are wonderfully connected in a way that one would expect of students of relationships. Familiarity with the contributors' original studies would help readers, but even the uninitiated student can gain a great deal from these pages.

The book begins with a solid overview by the editors of the major issues involved in a discussion of guanxi: how to define it, whether guanxi is quintessentially Chinese or a Chinese variant of a global phenomenon, a summary of recent findings about how guanxi is deployed and with what effect, and avenues for future research. Contributors Kipnis, Guthrie, and Lin then separately discuss conceptual and methodological issues that arose out of their own work but that apply to students of guanxi generally. This is followed by presentations of recent research, some of which represents updates of earlier scholarly studies. Although rich in empirical insights, even these latter studies are explicitly concerned with conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues that promote comparison and contrast among topics. No one issues a complete mea culpa, but several qualify their earlier findings.

Collectively, the contributions discuss the significance of guanxi in four settings: family and personal life (Kipnis, Wilson, and Farrer); the labor market (Guthrie, Hanser, and Bian); business practices (Guthrie, Lin, Keister, and Wank), including interaction with other firms and local state agencies; and the operation of the legal system (Potter). What emerges from their research is not one common pattern but variation across the Chinese landscape. First, sentiment (ganqing) appears to be more central to guanxi practices in personal affairs than in more public settings. Although some might stress that the difference is between rural and urban, the book's lone study of urban private life by Farrer, who examines gossiping in a Shanghai community, describes relationships and the utilization of guanxi that resonate with what Kipnis saw in the countryside. To both, the promotion of guanxi is also an end in itself that structures one's life, not just a tool that helps one live. By contrast, guanxi appears much more instrumental in labor markets, business, and the legal scene, circumstances not limited to urban locales. Wank's private entrepreneurs follow rituals in cozying up to official patrons, but their real intent—privileged access to scarce resources—is clear to both sides.

Second, according to Hanser and Bian, it appears that young job seekers rely less on connections than their older counterparts, who have developed networks of friends and colleagues on which to draw. (The same distinction is true for those in highly specialized fields, where skills are critical, as opposed to those in less knowledge-specific positions.) Third, the respective research findings of Guthrie and Wank demonstrate that companies high in the administrative bureaucracy rely far less on guanxi than their private counterparts in dealing with officialdom. And finally, while some find guanxi a helpful substitute for inadequately developed institutions (e.g., Bian on labor markets), others note how guanxi has become integral to new institutions (e.g., Wank on local official regulation of business and Potter on judicial treatment of court cases).

While all the contributors would likely agree that variation is a fact of life in China, the authors are not shy—but not dismissive or disrespectful—in airing their differences. They make trenchant criticisms about the concepts and methods that they respectively rely on to make their judgments. For example, Guthrie and Hanser appropriately challenge Bian's positive finding about the importance of guanxi in labor markets. Bian only interviewed job seekers, who only knew...