Page 45 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

32 DAVID S.G.GOODMAN
received less education, while the wives of cadres at the provincial level were more likely
to have been university graduates.
The selection and training processes that attended the careers of leading cadres (as
opposed to other less politicised cadres) usually took them away from their roots.
Moreover, while the CCP has in general no ‘law of avoidance’ such as existed under the
imperial system of rule, in Shanxi at least it was rare to find a leading cadre below the
provincial level serving in their home county or district. Under these circumstances it
might be assumed that the extreme localism noted in the marriage patterns of the new
rich was not repeated for couples where the husband was a leading cadre. However, this
was not entirely the case. The leading cadres at the district and county levels and within
the county replicated those characteristics to a high degree.
Table 1.4 suggests that in general just over half of all couples where the husband was a
leading cadre were born in either the same town or the same county. Table 1.5 suggests
that a quarter of all the leading cadres interviewed and their wives met for the first time in
kindergarten. The exceptions to both these characterisations were the leading cadres in
the provincial administration and their wives. Though some of the leading cadres from the
provincial administration and their wives came from the same location and met early on in
their educational careers, it was more usual for them to have been from different parts of
China and to have met later. Indeed, the only leading cadres who were revealed in
interviews as having met their wives at university were those working at the provincial
level of the administration.
Information on the employment of the wives of leading cadres is provided in Table 1.7.
There are, once again, differences between the wives of the local cadres and the wives of
those in the provincial administration. Many of the latter were themselves members of the
CCP, and worked as cadres in various other offices of the party-state. Over a third of
leading cadres’ wives were employed as cadres, though interestingly the wives of
provincial-level leading cadres were equally likely to have been employed in some
professional occupation such as an engineer or doctor. At the county level and within the
county, leading cadres’ wives were more likely to be employed as teachers and
accountants, in addition to serving as cadres. Of the wives of leading cadres interviewed
83.5 per cent were employed in professional or white-collar jobs. Almost all the wives of
provincial-level leading cadres were members of the CCP.

Women cadres and women entrepreneurs

Twelve women entrepreneurs and two female leading cadres do not really provide an
adequate sample for any kind of generalisation about the role of women leaders in reform.
It was precisely for this reason that information was sought in interviews with husbands
about their wives’ economic and political behaviour. Nonetheless, any attempt at analysis
must clearly include their experience.
The two female leading cadres interviewed represented two very different social
backgrounds and careers. One was the daughter of a revolutionary cadre, who had joined
the CCP forces during the War of Resistance to Japan at the very heart of a major
Communist border region. Her father had gone on to become a leading cadre himself