Page 39 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

26 DAVID S.G.GOODMAN
The evidence from the interviews conducted in Shanxi is certainly that much of
economic development was family-centred, or perhaps more accurately husband-and-
wife-centred. Larger, sometimes extended, families still existed, but as other research has
clearly identified, particularly in the rural sector economic success had led to a decline in
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household size and to a greater focus by peasants on the role of the nuclear family Especially
in the private sector of the economy, husbands and wives worked together. However, it is
also clear that husbands and wives also worked in the same enterprise in other sectors of
the economy
A distinct pattern of family management is suggested from interviews with
entrepreneurs who were either owner-operators (in the private sector) or, to a lesser
extent, running enterprises that had grown from originally private-sector enterprises. The
husband was the managing director of the enterprise and its external face, whose name
appeared on the formal documentation associated with the enterprise. He was responsible
for the establishment of the enterprise; all aspects of negotiations with local (and where
appropriate superior) governments; and the production process, if specialist staff were
not also employed.
In most cases the wife was presented as essentially the business manager. She was
described as most usually being responsible for the administrative infrastructure of the
enterprise, and in particular its financial management. Depending on the size of the
enterprise, her responsibilities might also have included personnel and related matters.
However, a primary concern was clearly looking after the books. It was quite common to
find that in the development of the enterprise the wife had found the need to acquire both
basic book-keeping and sometimes more advanced accountancy skills and qualifications
through further study, usually at a local technical college, though there were three cases
where a wife had decided to move further afield (and even, in one instance, to Beijing) in
order to acquire an undergraduate degree in commerce.
Studies of the process of reform in other parts of China, while tending to focus on the
role of local government rather than the family, nonetheless emphasise the extent to
which social and economic development is local and characterised by a rhetoric of
parochialism (White 1998; Oi 1999; Whiting 2001). Parochialism in Shanxi may indeed
be no stronger a force in the process of change than elsewhere in China. However, it is
also possible that there are particularly provincial forces at work in this case. Until the
mid-1990s, communications around the province and with the rest of China were
extremely limited. Social mobility was consequently low, and the localism of marriage
patterns was reinforced by the particularities of local languages that tend to be county
specific.
The impressions of parochialism and family-based enterprise are certainly reinforced by
other demographic and career indicators of the wives of the new rich. Table 1.3 provides
information on the age and educational background of the wives of the new rich and cadres,
as well as parenthetically of their husbands. It indicates that the wives of the new rich
were most usually a couple of years younger than their husbands. The exception was those
who are married to owner-operators, who were more usually the same age. This
particular statistic reflects other characteristics of those couples who established private-
sector enterprises, notably the high probability that they had grown up together.