Yeh, Wen-hsin, “Corporate Space, Communal Time: Everyday Life in Shanghai's Bank of China” (1995)

Title : “Corporate Space, Communal Time: Everyday Life in Shanghai's Bank of China”

Author(s) : Yeh, Wen-hsin

Year : 1995

Type : Journal article

Subject : History

Keywords : social;economy

Journal : American Historical Review

Volume : 100

Number : 1

Start page : 97

End page : 122

Language:Name : English

Support : Print

Abstract : At first glance, the Bank of China (1911-49) in Shanghai seems to have been a typical case of Western corporate paternalism imported quite naturally into China's most Westernized city. Examination of the everyday life and workplace relationships of the middle-class professional employees of this Western-style institution, however, makes clear that it differed in important ways from its Western model. Senior executives, heavily influenced by neo-Confucian notions of patriarchy, used moral injunctions to guide the conduct of junior employees, imposing discipline through living arrangements in communal compounds and a rigid scheduling of collective activity. This corporate communalism prefigured key features of the socialist work-unit system adopted by state-run industries after the revolution. The political significance of this continuity between prerevolutionary and postrevolutionary China is emphasized.