Players And Organizational Context

Cadre retirement policy aimed to retire nearly 2.5 million surviving veteran cadres, revolutionaries who had joined the Communists during the wars of 1924–49.^[10] It also aimed to replace an existing de facto lifelong tenure system for cadres with a regular retirement system. Consequently, veteran cadres were the immediate but not the only targets of retirement policy. Postrevolutionaries, those who had become cadres after the Communist victory in 1949, were also affected. Among them were 2,353,000 cadres who had been recruited in 1950–52,^[11] many of whom were in their fifties when cadre retirement policy was introduced. These two groups, veteran revolutionaries and cadre recruits of the early 1950s, constituted the most important targets of cadre retirement policy.

[9] Lao ganbu gongzuo wenjian xuanbian , vols. 1 and 2 (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang zuzhi bu lao ganbu ju laodong renshi bu lao ganbu fuwu ju, 1983 and 1986). Cited hereafter as Gongzuo wenjian , vols. 1 and 2. These sources are internal (neibu ).

[10] Of these, 10,000 were veterans of the Revolutionary Civil Wars (1924–27 and 1927–37), 300,000 were veterans of the Anti-Japanese War (1937–45), and 2,190,000 were veterans of the War of Liberation (1945–49). See "Selecting Young Cadres for Leading Posts," Beijing Review 24, no. 31 (1981): 3.

[11] U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Foreign Demographic Analysis Division, Administrative and Technical Manpower in the People's Republic of China , by John Philip Emerson, International Population Reports Series P-95, no. 72 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973), 37. Obviously, not all 2,353,000 were postrevolutionaries; probably many had joined the Communists before victory in 1949 but had been recruited as cadres only after the Communists gained national power.

Middlemen in the cadre retirement policy process are defined here as people and organizations charged with executing the policy formulated at the top. These range from local governments that promulgated local regulations on cadre retirement to functionaries at the lowest level of the workplace who were charged with processing retirements. Their actions make more sense in the context of two features of the formal structure of authority: the differences between territorially based organizations and functional departments, and the exceptional Party domination of the issue area in which cadre retirement falls.

In the case studied here, as in many other issue areas, authority is formally structured in two separate hierarchies of territorially based organizations and two functional hierarchies. Both kinds of hierarchies have organizations at the top in Beijing and down to the county level. There are two of each kind of hierarchy because at each level are parallel Party and government organizations.

The key differences between the territorially based organizations and the functional departments are the span of authority and the nature of authority relations. The authority of territorially based organizations, the Party committees and governments at the various levels, extends to more than simply the cadre issue in territory at and below their respective levels.^[12] This span of authority over many issues is reflected in the relation between a territorially based organization and the functional department responsible for cadres, in the Party or government hierarchy at any given level: the functional department is subordinate to the territorially based organization in a "relation of leadership" (lingdao guanxi ), the most authoritative type of linkage between Chinese organizations. The relation between territorially based organizations at different levels of the hierarchy is also one of leadership. By contrast, the authority of functional departments spans separate, broadly defined issue areas which in principle do not overlap. The relation between superior and subordinate organizations in the functional hierarchy dealing with cadres is one of "professional guidance" (yewu zhidao ), a relation more circumscribed than that of leadership.

Cadre retirement is one issue within the area defined as part of the organization-personnel "system" (xitong ). This system is virtually solely responsible for all cadre work—which includes recruitment, staffing, training and education, various forms of assessment, and maintenance

[12] Authority over the cadre issue is not to be confused with authority to approve appointments, promotions, transfers, and removals. The latter kind of authority belongs to the Party committee, and it extends to cadres at the next subordinate level. See M. Manion, "The Cadre Management System, Post-Mao: The Appointment, Promotion, Transfer and Removal of Party and State Leaders," China Quarterly , no. 102 (1985): 203–33; and John P. Burns, "China's Nomenklatura System," Problems of Communism 36, no. 5 (1987): 36–51.

of personnel dossiers.^[13] The main Party organizations in the system are the organization departments at the various levels; their government counterparts are the personnel departments.^[14]

Barnett in 1967 identified the system as the most important of the key "watchdog" mechanisms for ensuring Party leadership.^[15] More recent studies concur with this view. The post-Mao trend in many issue areas has been toward a retreat of Party organizations from routine work, along with a decentralization of authority and the granting of more autonomy to government organizations in the conduct of administrative work. In the organization-personnel system, authority has been substantially decentralized. However, Party organizations continue to dominate even the day-to-day work.^[16]

Within the organization-personnel system, the issue of cadre retirement is particularly important and, perhaps as a consequence, particularly dominated by the Party. This is revealed most clearly in the elaboration of structures to manage cadre retirement.^[17] These are indicated in figure 8.1.

[13] See M. Manion, "Cadre Recruitment and Management in the People's Republic of China," Chinese Law and Government 17, no. 3 (1984); Manion, "The Cadre Management System"; and Burns, "China's Nomenklatura System."

[14] The Party organizations for managing personnel have been the same since 1949. Government organizations have been rearranged several times, five times in the post-Mao period alone. In 1978–80 the top government personnel organization was the Government Organs Personnel Bureau in the Ministry of Civil Affairs; in 1980–82 it was combined with the State Council Small Group Office on Settlement of Demobilized Military Personnel to form the State Personnel Bureau; in 1982 this bureau was combined with the General Labor Bureau, the Bureau of Scientific and Technical Cadres, and the State Establishment (bianzhi ) Commission to form the Ministry of Labor and Personnel; and in 1984 the Bureau of Scientific and Technical Cadres was placed under the State Science and Technology Commission. See Cao Zhi, ed., Zhonghua renmin gongheguo renshi zhidu gaiyao (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1985), 426–32. This source is internal. The Ministry of Labor and Personnel was reseparated into two separate ministries at the First Session of the Seventh National People's Congress in March 1988.

[15] A. Doak Barnett, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 20.

[16] Manion, "Cadre Recruitment and Management" and "The Cadre Management System"; and Burns, "China's Nomenklatura System." Burns's recent study of the reforms proposed by the Thirteenth Party Congress (convened in November 1987) concludes that Party dominance is likely to change but not diminish in a significant way; see "Civil Service Reform in Post-Mao China," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs , no. 18:47–84.

[17] Documents calling for the assignment of personnel to manage veteran cadres and the establishment of specialized structures were issued as early as December 1978. See Some Views of the Central Organization Department on Strengthening Veteran Cadre Work (29 Dec. 1978), in Gongzuo wenjian , vol. 1, 80–88; State Council Temporary Regulations on Veteran Cadre Special Retirement (lixiu ) (7 Oct. 1980), in Gongzuo wenjian , vol. 1, 32–36; Central Organization Department, Suggestions on Appropriate Handling of Veteran Cadres Who Have Stepped Down from Positions (2 June 1982), in Gongzuo wenjian , vol. 1, 192–95; Central Organization Department and Ministry of Labor and Personnel, Trial Measures on Scope of Responsibility of Veteran Cadre Bureaus (and Divisions) in State Council and Central Committee Organizations (31 Dec. 1982), in Gongzuo wenjian , vol. 1, 222–23; and Central Organization Department, Summary of Forum of Nine Provinces (and City) on Veteran Cadre Work (25 Apr. 1983), in Gongzuo wenjian , vol. 1, 89–97. However, structures were not in place until 1982–83. Wang Xingming (deputy director of Cadre Retirement Division, Veteran Cadre Bureau, Ministry of Labor and Personnel), interviewed in Beijing, 24 November 1986.

The importance of cadre retirement is evident in the status of veteran cadre departments at the provincial, prefectural, and county levels: the departments are not subordinate to the organization departments at the respective levels, but rather are equal to them in bureaucratic status. The organization departments relate to parallel veteran cadre departments by giving professional guidance. The Party committees exercise direct leadership over veteran cadre departments. Only at the top level is the Veteran Cadre Bureau a subordinate department of the Central Organization Department.

Party dominance is indicated by the virtual absence, until about ten years after the first regulation on cadre retirement was issued, of specialized structures for cadre retirement in the government hierarchy, except at the top level. As late as 1986, government organizations usually attended to cadre retirement work by assigning responsibility to one leading cadre in each of the personnel departments at the provincial, prefectural, and county levels. These cadres worked in coordination with the Party veteran cadre departments parallel to their personnel departments.^[18]

Institutional arrangements for cadre retirement at the workplace have tended to depend on workplace size and the number of retired cadres. National and provincial departments have either bureau-level veteran cadre departments or division-level departments under the organizations (usually the organization department) responsible for cadre work. Smaller and lower-level workplaces do not usually have specialized structures for cadre retirement. Rather, this work is carried out by the Party and government cadres or organizations responsible for cadre work.^[19]

What did this context mean for middlemen in the cadre retirement policy process? Those at the workplace were responsible for implementing a large number of policies in the organization-personnel system, and cadre retirement represented only one task among many. Those tasks were not always mutually complementary; in cases of policy conflict, middlemen had to choose which policies to implement and which to ignore effectively. Many factors determined how middlemen responded to this choice. Party domination of cadre management dictated greater

[18] Wang Xingming, 1986.

[19] Ibid.

Fig. 8.1.
Formal Structure of Authority in Veteran Cadre Work

attention to signals from Party organizations than to those from their government counterparts. The interests of policy targets also came into play. In making choices about transforming policies into actions, it made sense for middlemen to consider the relative difficulty of their tasks. Obviously, policies that challenged vested interests would not meet with ready compliance. Thus middlemen could be expected to prefer to implement more-appealing policies over less-appealing ones. Cadre retirement disturbed what was seen as the norm in bureaucratic careers, and it deprived cadres of positions and income. For these reasons and others,

many cadres were inclined to resist retirement. Further, immediate policy targets were generally those with the most seniority at the workplace. Virtually by definition they included those with the most clout, whether that was reflected in official position or not. These interests of policy targets made cadre retirement policy difficult to implement easily. Resistance of policy targets made it an unappealing policy for middlemen too.