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112 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. i, Spring 1996 Ole Bruun. Business and Bureaucracy in a Chinese City: An Ethnography of Private Business Households in Contemporary China. China Research Monograph series. Institute ofEast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1993. viii, 273 pp. Paperback $20.00, isbn 1-55729-042-3. Ole Bruun's work on the proliferation ofprivate business in Chengdu is one of the most detailed and focused discussions to date of this relatively recent Chinese economic phenomenon. His account, based on research spread over a five-year period, is a fascinating and often entertaining story of entrepreneurs struggling against social and political odds to sometimes achieve impressive economic success. Bruun spent some twelve months, from 1987 to 1991, interviewing several dozen businesses in a total of about five hundred meetings. He looked only at a section of Chengdu city (an area called Bin Shen), but his accounts seem to ring with the sound of universality. The choice ofa city in inland Sichuan Province represents a refreshing change from standard analyses limited to coastal areas or cities such as Shenzhen, Shanghai, or Beijing. Bruun's methodology of repeated visits allowed him to develop the kind ofpersonal ties with his subjects that are crucial to obtaining sincere opinions from Chinese citizens wary of speaking with outsiders. Like most discussions ofeconomic events in China, Bruun's work is probably already somewhat dated; he himselfnotes that Deng Xiaoping's "southern tour" of1992 unleashed a new wave of movement toward capitalistic and, implicitly, private enterprise. The reader should not be surprised, then, that the majority of businesses described in the text are small-scale operations, with the majority in food service or small handicraft industry. Following a description ofBin Shen's history and environs, Bruun's chapter 3 introduces some ofhis interview personalities. Many of the older businesspeople visited were simply resuming private occupations practiced before the 1949 Communist takeover, though the young play a prominent role on the Chengdu economic landscape. In this chapter, we meet (among others) Mr. Wang, who has made a small fortune running a restaurant (about 30 percent of the private businesses were restaurants); the couple Luo and Yang, who run a vegetable shop but fear criticism ifthey expand their business; and an anonymous tinsmith, who works enthusiastically but teaches a reluctant son to carry on the trade. These and other characters comprise the case studies used for later analysis. ^ s In most ofBruun's cases, the subjects interviewed depend on family members to staff their enterprises. The theme of family loyalty and cohesion runs throughout the text. Men take up the duties ofhigh-level economic planning and formulating a long-term outlook, while women tend to run the daily accounting, ofHawai'i Press Reviews 113 stocktaking, and other chores; children have the option to join the family business . In many cases, the family structure is pitted against outside forces, such as rival entrepreneurs, or the ever-present government regulatory and tax authorities . As enterprises grow ever larger, however, workers outside the family-relation circle will ofnecessity enter the company. Chapter 4 discusses some of the characteristics ofprivate-business employees. Bruun points out the dress code among the workforce: the skilled craftsman wears a blue work suit; a chefmay wear white; rural young laborers, sometimes brought in for their willingness to work long hours at low pay, often wear the same clothes every day. A social hierarchy continues to structure attitudes in a traditional fashion : manual labor is still disdained, while those in administration are respected. This chapter also discusses the importance of guanxi, defining the term (pp. 92-93) by using the unconventional translation "closed faction" (rather than "connections") to suggested a rather high degree of exclusivity in personal ties. Chapter 4 also contains a discussion of Chinese historical cosmology; this section seems rather out ofplace. The next chapter, on the local bureaucracy, is one ofthe best. Bruun writes of a visit to the secretive tax bureau, and ofbusiness people who are forced to estimate the income of their fellow competitors. Those who ingratiate themselves with the collectors, or who are apparently willing to pay bribes, seem to have lower tax rates. Flattery of Communist...

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