Ritualized Relational Work: Secret Banquets and Rural Cadres in China

ABSTRACT

Despite the Chinese central government’s anti-corruption policies and restrictions on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres’ conduct, many rural cadres still hold or join lavish banquets, but in secret. Why do cadres take such risks? Why is banqueting so important for them? This ethnographic study in one rural county shows how instrumental banqueting (fanju) and associated interactions enhance exchange among rural cadres and businessmen, which can be understood as a process of relational work. This relational work exaggerates and adorns participants’ personal relationships and constructs a moral basis for corruption. This style of relational work uses the Confucian notion of li as an excuse to show benevolence(ren), creating "ritualized relational work." This paper contributes to an understanding of the resilience of guanxi practices during President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• banqueting
• relational work
• corruption
• guanxi

Introduction

On December 4, 2012, shortly before formally becoming president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), announced the “Eight point decision on improving party and government conduct” at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee. The purpose of this decree was to curb the extravagance and corruption of party officials, which are widely abhorred by ordinary people.¹ Since then, a large number of party members and cadres have been punished for holding or joining lavish banquets paid for with public funds. In the first two years of this policy, 25,975 people were punished. By 2022, it is reported that 96,756 people had been punished, more than seven times that of 2014.²

Nevertheless, many rural cadres still hold or join lavish banquets, albeit in secret.³ How and why do cadres take these risks? Why is banqueting so important for them? Why do their banquets have to be lavish and extravagant? What purpose do these banquets serve?

Based on an ethnographic study of secret banqueting in one Chinese county between March 2017 and October 2019, as well as follow up visits in late 2021, this article explores why cadres collude with each other and rich businessmen through holding and attending banqueting. Banquets play at least two roles in social exchange. They provide a private communication channel to achieve particular outcomes, especially resource allocations from and by upper-level officials.⁴ They also provide opportunities to make new friends, strengthen existing friendships, and, in particular, improve ganqing (affection) and renqing (a sense of indebtedness). However, other social interactions can achieve these two functions, such as coffee at a cafe, tea at a tea house, or a common dinner, none of which violate party rules. Why then do cadres risk holding or attending lavish banquets?

We approach this question by situating the Chinese concept of guanxi with the theory of relational work. Viviana Zelizer coined the latter term to match social relations with economic transactions and exchange.⁵ Since then, the concept has been used in many research areas.⁶ However, few scholars have focused on how relational work applies in Chinese society, particularly in instrumental banqueting (fanju).

This research contributes to the existing literature in four ways. First, it reveals a special function of banqueting. Second, it explores characteristics of Chinese relational work in relation to guanxi. Third, it conceptualizes a new type of relational work, what we call “ritualized relational work.” Finally, it reveals how guanxi practices change and why lavish banquets and guanxi remain resilient despite President Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.

Guanxi and lavish banqueting among cadres and businessmen

Guanxi has been defined as personal relationships, connections, or networks that can be utilized in informal and interpersonal ways for the acquisition of resources.⁷ Since the reform movement began in the PRC in 1978, China’s economy has been regarded by most scholars as a system of “centrally managed capitalism,” in which economic activities and governmental resource allocations are heavily embedded in guanxi.⁸ Indeed, surveys have shown a fairly consistent pattern of the existence, persistence, and possible increase of guanxi use in China’s labor markets during the reform era,⁹ despite predictions in the 1990s that the influence of guanxi would decline.¹⁰

The practice of guanxi typically encompasses activities such as the exchange of gifts, hosting elaborate banquets, and making personal visits to establish and maintain relationships for a strategic purpose. Some scholars contend that the utilization of guanxi serves as a means to offset the deficiencies of China's formal institutions.¹¹ Furthermore, some argue that widespread extravagant banqueting among local government and party officials to cultivate guanxi links is a logical reaction to the fragmentation of China’s bureaucratic governance system.¹² To fulfill the requirements of navigating through intricate processes, exhaustive assessments, and burdensome paperwork, local officials seeking financial assistance from higher-levels of the state must engage in the practice of guanxi to navigate fragmented vertical bureaucratic hierarchies.¹³

However, the function and purpose of guanxi practices in officialdom extend beyond mere superficiality. The PRC state consists of a vast bureaucratic system wherein the central authority functions as the apex and local governments operate as subordinate entities. This bureaucratic structure operates under a shared logic, with tensions within the system giving rise to and strengthening a unique set of informal institutions within the bureaucracy. Consequently, this process contributes to the Confucianization of the Chinese bureaucratic apparatus.¹⁴ Individuals in positions of authority within the bureaucratic hierarchy allocate resources that are subsequently distributed through patronage networks in exchange for political backing, allegiance, and illicit payments.¹⁵ Lower-ranking officials engage in the practice of guanxi with their higher-ranking counterparts, to acquire resources, secure opportunities for career advancement, safeguard themselves from potential threats, and establish affiliations with influential political factions. In addition to their primary responsibilities, cadres are confronted with the challenges of horizontal bureaucratic fragmentation and competition from local governments or agencies operating at the same administrative level. Officials in these entities are primarily driven by self-interest and the advancement of their respective departments within the bureaucratic framework.¹⁶

Furthermore, government officials engage in guanxi with business individuals to facilitate public projects, thereby attaining political accomplishments and potentially receiving illicit incentives.¹⁷ Similarly, businessmen engage in guanxi with government officials to secure contracts for public projects and establish their own protective networks. This is in part because, despite decades of economic reform, the state still controls large sectors of the economy, and state agents still largely control access to capital, business licenses, and land. As a result, party cadres, government officials, and businessmen engage in a form of “symbiotic clientelism” which is a symbiotic exchange of commercial wealth for political power.¹⁸ Well-connected businessmen are more likely to win government contracts, obtain tax breaks and insider information, benefit from regulatory flexibility, and gain privileged access to state-controlled resources.¹⁹ As for party and state cadres, they build their own networks of entrepreneurs by distributing favors, privileges, contracts, and protection to accomplish various projects for their political achievements.²⁰

Guanxi, as a form of social connection or networking, does not inherently imply corruption. However, it has garnered a negative perception among the general populace, as “ordinary citizens … find it difficult to articulate the difference between ‘good’ guanxi practice and ‘bad’ corruption.”²¹ In fact, whether a particular example of guanxi is good or bad depends on the situation and who is involved. People always think their own guanxi practices are reasonable and good, while others’ guanxi practices are bad and corrupt.²² Moreover, the experimental and geographical diversity of the reform process has “resulted in high levels of uncertainty about what [is] legal as well as about what [is] moral.”²³ Since “anyone can be found guilty of corruption,”²⁴ seeking the protection of a high-ranking official has become all the more important during the current anti-corruption campaign.

Guanxi is a form of social exchange that is rooted in the principle of renqing. This concept describes human feelings, serves as a gesture of goodwill, and cultivates a sense of indebtedness.²⁵ It can be traced back to the Confucian emphasis on the ethical aspects of human relationships (lun li), and ritual (li).²⁶ This “renqing ethic,” or social norm, is complicated and requires a considerable period of time to learn or comprehend. According to a well-known Chinese proverb, “being experienced in renqing is big knowledge and talent” (renqing lianda ji wen zhang). Furthermore, renqing encompasses three distinct dimensions, namely rational calculation, moral obligation, and emotional attachment.²⁷ These dimensions are the foundational principles underlying guanxi networks.²⁸

While guanxi can serve as a beneficial supplement to the implementation of formal regulations and legal systems, it frequently clashes with the principle of the rule of law, perpetuating social inequality.²⁹ Given the prevalence of cadres and officials who use guanxi to contravene legal regulations, it is imperative for them to establish additional guanxi connections in order to safeguard themselves from potential repercussions. Consequently, this leads to the formation of patronage networks.³⁰

Gift-giving and banqueting are the main types of guanxi practice among cadres and officials.³¹ Spending time with colleagues, business partners, and customers outside the workplace is an often-cited requirement for establishing and maintaining guanxi. Business socializing (ying chou) are activities outside the workplace that are intended to build relationships to achieve professional goals.³² In China, business people and government officials regard shared activities (such as social drinking) as an essential way to cultivate affective attachment and mutual trust.³³ Before the current anti-corruption began, banquets were usually followed by other activities such as visits to karaoke clubs, massage parlors, foot massage parlors, saunas, bars, and tea houses.³⁴ In many cities and towns, local officials used connections with wealthy businessmen and crime bosses to manage the underground economy and its unruly actors and even to achieve the central government’s economic development aims.³⁵

Dinner parties which have instrumental purposes (fanju) have garnered a negative perception among the general populace in the PRC due to their association with corrupt practices. However, fanju participants frequently assert close friendships, characterized by ganqing (affection), and claim virtues such as yiqi, denoting righteousness and loyalty. Cadres and business people endorse ying chou as a critical tool for developing guanxi and bonding with others.³⁶ But enduring loyalty and influence can only be achieved through the cultivation of profound connections rooted in ganqing.

An initial invitation for a night of banqueting, drinking, and carousing is often motivated by instrumental factors, such as seeking the support of an influential individual or securing a business deal. However, the ultimate objective of a successful evening of entertainment is to surpass these ulterior motives and establish a lasting bond through the shared enjoyment of pleasurable experiences.³⁷ In other words, ying chou, or fanju, provides an opportunity for actors to cultivate guanxi, foster renqing, assess compatibility among friends and/or colleagues, and foster the formation of friendships, trust, and loyalty.³⁸

Ritual performance and relational work

As Allan Smart and Carolyn Hsu have noted, the use of guanxi is “not an automatically successful strategy but depends considerably on the skill involved in the actual interactional performances.”³⁹ Moreover, although guanxi practice is understood through “the discourse of warm relationships and emotional connections,” it has also always been a technique for instrumental gain.⁴⁰ Consequently, in order to show their expressive rather than instrumental motivations to make friends, actors use ritual performance to cover the instrumental elements.

However, in corrupt guanxi, actors need to practice ritual performance to cover both elements: instrumental intentions and illegal actions.⁴¹ An actor attempts to transform a potential act of corruption and exploitation into a “reasonable” guanxi transaction⁴² by practicing “customary forms to disguise what might otherwise be recognized as a corrupt and illegal exchange.”⁴³ These performances “must be properly executed and appropriately understood, or possibly misunderstood, in which case the performance can be said to have failed.”⁴⁴ Since each party in these transactions is the other’s observer, they both feel nervous and need to persuade themselves and the other party that their exchange act is moral and justified.⁴⁵

Lavish banquets are one type of ritual performance used to facilitate guanxi exchange. These can also be understood as relational work. This concept explains how people negotiate the intersections between intimate and economic relations.⁴⁶ According to Viviana Zelizer:

[In] all economic action, I argue, people engage in the process of differentiating meaningful social relations … . [they] designate certain sorts of economic transactions as appropriate for the relation, bar other transactions as inappropriate, and adopt certain media for reckoning and facilitating economic transactions within the relation. I call that process relational work.⁴⁷

Relational work attempts to make a relationship or exchange reputable, ethical, and justified.⁴⁸ Monetary earmarking is a crucial aspect of relational work practice, as it makes unacceptable transactions look like normal social exchanges while avoiding the “commensuration of sacred for profane.”⁴⁹ What ensures this is “relational accounting,” especially on meaningful occasions such as rites of passage including graduations, funerals, births, and religious holidays.⁵⁰

In order to avoid ambiguity in the meaning attached to their economic practices and social relations, actors involved in guanxi select the appropriate medium of exchange to clarify their intentions and delineate their understanding of the relationship. These clarification practices allow actors to treat the exchange as either gift giving or market exchange.⁵¹ These forms of clarifying relational work exist in guanxi practice, as actors need to clarify that their practice is for the sake of emotion and love rather than transaction or bribery.⁵²

To date, scholars who have studied guanxi practices in the context of social drinking have not focused on the role of relational work in banqueting in China. How these tactful performances work need further exploration.

Methodology

Our research data is drawn from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a rural county in southern China (county X) from March 2017 to October 2019, and post-field work in November and December of 2021. County X, an area of 1,40 square kilometers, comprises eighteen towns, two sub-districts in the county center, and two state-owned farms. It has a total permanent population of 1.89 million.

The first author of this article traveled to county X in March 2017 as part of a group of researchers to carry out a culture and governance research project. Due to the author's preexisting connections and familial ties within the county, he was able to establish a wide network of acquaintances within a short period of time. He focused his fieldwork on five of the county’s eighteen towns (labeled towns A, B, C, D, and E). His preexisting social network was critical for this project, given the sensitive nature of banqueting and guanxi among CCP cadres. Indeed, despite the widespread practice of guanxi in China, it is uncommon for individuals to openly acknowledge their involvement in such activities.⁵³ In order to mitigate the potential impact of the participants’ formal relationship with the lead author on the research outcomes and minimize the risk of biases, data collection was conducted through informal and unstructured interviews. These interviews involved the use of open-ended and explicit questions as well as direct observation. Notably, note-taking and voice recording were intentionally avoided during the data collection process.

As a result of his strong affiliations with various cadres and businessmen, the first author frequently received invitations to clandestine banquets. During these gatherings, the author engaged in participant observation, occasionally participating in informal discussions with drivers, chefs, and workers prior to or following banquets.

In addition to attending banquets, the first author interviewed thirty-four people in the county on the topic of yinchou. These included nine county-level officials, six town-level cadres, six village-level cadres, five businessmen, two doctors, one teacher, three drivers, and two cooks. Fieldwork took place during secret banquets, in government offices and canteens, at government meetings, in the homes of officials, and at car parks or liquor stores.

The lead author speaks the local dialect and is familiar with local cultural realities. Because many cadres in this county consider him as “one of them,” they often invited him to attend banquets.⁵⁴ Finally, specific contextual information is not revealed in this article, and all names of individuals, cities, and villages have been anonymized to preserve confidentiality.

Banqueting context

The places in which secret banquets are held can be categorized into four types. The first type is an apartment near an upscale restaurant. After the government crackdown on banqueting began in late 2012, many high-end restaurants specializing in business socializing had to close down due to a lack of customers. Some restaurant owners began to rent apartments in the neighborhood to continue catering banquets for officials. The second type is unlicensed restaurants. These venues only accept reservations from familiar customers who are mostly cadres and rich businessmen. The third type is luxurious banquet halls housed in a privately owned company or factory. Many companies have built such facilities since President Xi announced his anti-corruption policies. The fourth kind of place is in villas in the countryside, which include leisure facilities such as fishing or golf.

There are two kinds of initiators: businessmen and cadres. Guests at these banquets usually are local social elites and distinguished professionals. Sometimes the host will invite a lawyer to dinner for a legal consultation. Cadres will arrange banquets for different reasons. In the first situation, they will invite other cadres who are visiting their county on official business. In other situations, cadres will invite their colleagues from other government departments because they need their help, cooperation, and coordination. Cadres will also at times invite their superiors or more powerful cadres to dinner in pursuit of a promotion or job transfer or for protection if they are in trouble. Finally, in some situations cadres will invite colleagues to dinner to help them solve personal issues, such as helping their children get entry into prestigious schools. Cadres seldom invite businessmen to dinner; in most cases, businessmen are the hosts, and even if they are guests, they usually pay the bill.

Secret banquets are very expensive, often costing between 20,000 and 50,000 yuan (approximately US$2,800 to US$7,000).⁵⁵ The food served at these gatherings is always exceptional, including luxury varieties of premium seafood such as abalone, sea crab, and sea lobster, prepared by professional chefs. The most expensive element is usually the alcohol, especially premium French brandy and Chinese Maotai wine, which, depending on the brand, can cost as much as 20,000 yuan (US$2,800) per bottle.

When government officials organize banquets in places such as factories, it is customary for the factory owner to assume financial responsibility for the dinner, as affluent businessmen rely on these officials to safeguard their interests and potentially conceal their tax evasion activities. In the event that a banquet is held at a neighboring apartment and organized by a group of cadres, the matter of payment becomes particularly sensitive. If affluent businesspersons are invited, it is customary for them to pay the bill. In the event that multiple affluent entrepreneurs are present, a competitive dynamic arises wherein they vie to assume financial responsibility. Typically, astute cadres invite several wealthy entrepreneurs to a banquet because they want the latter to assume financial responsibility.

Due to strict government controls on drinking and driving, cadres usually arrive at a banquet with their personal drivers. According to state regulations, only four cadres in the county are permitted to have their own drivers.⁵⁶ However, cadres in many local departments do so. When talking to these drivers, the lead author learned that they were all private drivers, not state employees. The deputy head of the county has a monthly income of about 6,000 yuan, while section level cadres earn approximately 5,000 yuan; yet their drivers’ monthly salaries were 4,000 to 5,000 yuan each. These privately employed drivers have unrestricted access to the premises of the county government and the county party committee. In certain instances, they may verbally confront certain cadres, perceiving themselves to be on a par with or even in higher positions than the latter. They also at times give expensive gifts, including cash, to other cadres while representing their employer.

In the following sections we discuss an important function of banqueting that has not yet been a focus of scholars, namely relational work. Three types of relational work are relevant: obfuscatory relational work, monetary earmarking and clarifying relational work, and moral construction.

Banquets as obfuscatory relational work

For an instrumental banquet (fanju), the host deploys calculated hospitality and etiquette to flatter guests. Our informant friends called this “helping friends” (bang pengyou de mang), similar to what John Osburg has described as “rooted in ganqing for others.”⁵⁷ Cadres and business people who attend such banquets refer to themselves as brothers, close friends, and even father and son, obfuscating their formal relationships by evoking the ideals of the Confucian notion of wulun (five cardinal relationships).⁵⁸

In this context, renqing is based mainly on rational calculation (sometimes hostile), and performance is used to cover the real goal of attendees. On some occasions, when the meal is almost finished, the cadre host might telephone a rich businessman and invite him to join them. Understanding what this means, the businessman will arrive and pay the bill.

Peng, the owner of a shoe factory, described the process:

He [a cadre in the tax department] called me and said that he was drinking with his friends, and since I am a friend of his too, he asked me to come for a drink. I knew what it meant. When I got there, I offered a toast to everyone, claiming that all the people there were my brothers, and then I paid the bill and left. I knew that if I went on drinking with them, there might be a second half, which involves singing karaoke accompanied by young ladies [sex workers], and then I would have to pay more.

In another example, Liao, a rich businessman, owned a large manor with a pool and often invited his business partner and cadres to his home to drink and swim. At the end of 2017, his father became ill and was sent to the hospital. During the months while his father was in the hospital, Liao would invite his dad’s doctors for dinner and drinks in his manor. During one banquet, Liao publicly called two doctors in attendance, Ho and Chang, his “elder brothers,” and Liao’s young assistants called them their “uncles.” Once his father had recovered from his illness and had been discharged from the hospital, Liao stopped inviting these doctors. Similarly, Liao also stopped inviting cadres from the county education department and local school officials once his daughter had graduated and gone abroad for higher education. Hong, the head of the education department, explained in an interview, “His [Liao’s] wife used to pay the flower shop to send flowers to my home on every spring festival, but she stopped this since her daughter has graduated from high school to study in the USA for an undergraduate degree.”

In guanxi exchanges, the “relationships must be presented as the primary goal and the exchange, useful as they may be, treated as only secondary.”⁵⁹ Many guanxi practitioners seek long-term rather than one-time relationships since “immediate instrumental purposes are subordinated to the greater aim of developing relationships that may serve as resources for solving problems over long periods of time.”⁶⁰ However, in the two cases we describe above, Liao’s primary goal was instrumental and the personal relationships were secondary; his description of his father’s doctors as his “brothers” was just a form of relational work meant to cover his instrumental motivation.

Monetary earmarking and clarifying relational work

The relational work of monetary earmarking establishes a social distinction between money for different purposes.⁶¹ Instrumental banqueting is not just about eating and drinking. Giving gifts (including cash gifts) is an important part of these events and giving gifts to each other is a very common custom in rural areas. Guan, a rich businessman and the party secretary of a local village, often invites cadres from various departments to lavish banquets at his manor, where they drink and play mahjong. Guan said in an interview that he has helped many cadres get promoted because of his yiqi to friends. At some such banquets, other cadres reported that envelopes containing cash were given as gifts. Such cash gifts are earmarked as renqing (gifts of gratitude) to cover instrumental relationships. In other words, the process of bribing is a type of relationship work of money earmarking.

In another case, the lead author attended a banquet with Hong, the county’s director of education, and his colleague, Gu, the deputy director. The banquet was held in a luxurious hall at a rich businessman’s company. This businessman, whose relative was a teacher at the county high school, asked Gu to appoint his relative dean of an urban high school. Technically, transfers of teachers from the county to the city education system is strictly regulated and difficult, except in exceptional circumstances, due to the significant benefits it can bring to the teachers involved. During the banquet, they did not talk about the teacher’s salary and benefits. The businessman said that the teacher’s family already lived in the city, her husband worked there, and her child attended the city school.

After a night of drinking and talking, Gu expressed sympathy for the teacher’s situation and promised to take care of it. Everyone in the room praised Gu as a good person with renyi (benevolence and righteousness) and renqing wei (a sense of renqing). Upon leaving, Gu and Hong each accepted a bag of tea (possibly including cash) as gifts from the businessman, who claimed the gifts were to express his gratitude and were motivated by qing and li (emotion and reason).

Moral construction for friendship with interaction rituals

Banqueting indeed pulls those involved in guanxi relations closer, and banquets are full of emotions and rituals that usually result in solidarity and positive emotions, such as ganqing, renqing, and yiqi, although those emotions are more or less exaggerated. What rural cadres try to strengthen are personal relationships between friends or between superiors and subordinates (two of the five wulun relationships).

During these banquets, attendees talk about how close and friendly they are with each other, often in a performative manner. In one case, Deng, a businessman, had a long-term friendship with Liang, a deputy mayor. Deng and his wife would often visit Liang at his home with expensive gifts. Using his guanxi with Liang, Deng established a relationship with Hong, the head of the county education bureau, and as a result was able to sell computers and teaching equipment to several schools. At a dinner party held at Deng’s company, Deng said to Hong, “Thank you, my brother. Last time, you delayed your trip by changing the flight time in order to give instructions for our company's project so that our company could receive the funds from the government rapidly.” The other diners praised Hong for his yiqi (righteousness and loyalty) and sense of obligation to his friends. In this way, they extolled each other’s virtues and proposed a toast.

In another case, after Qian, a cadre, received a promotion, he hosted lavish banquets to thank all the people who had helped him during the process. At one such banquet, Qian proposed a toast to Niu, the deputy head of the organizational department who had helped him with the documentary materials for his promotion. He said, “Niu and I are so close, like brothers; once I think of him, I take out my mobile phone and call him directly.” Qian then turned to Niu and said, “Remember? The last time I called you, it was midnight; I just finished a banquet drinking, and I was upset and wanted to talk to you, ha ha.” Qian continued, “If one had to think about whether he would disturb the friend when he calls or think about what time it is and whether it is too late to call at night, that means their guanxi is not close enough.”

Throughout the banquet, Qian and Niu took turns giving examples to prove the closeness of their relationship, how seriously they took their obligations to each other, and how much yiqi they had for each other. In the lively atmosphere of a banquet, social rituals such as these enhance the emotional energy and strengthens the relationships of the guests and hosts, thereby improving yiqi between friends, which is one of the five cardinal relationships of Confucianism. However, much of this is exaggerated and performative. When everyone sobers up the next day, everything goes back to normal. Colleagues and friends might try to help each other once in a while, but with many considerations in mind — considerations that are often embedded in self-interest or personal profit rather than the familial bonds they claim at banquets.

Constructing a hierarchical relationship between superior and subordinate

During banquets, toasts include flattering statements, performative declarations about the relationship between the drinkers, and expressions of gratitude for a favor, while people of lower social status behave in a fawning and servile manner toward those of higher status. Some senior leaders enjoy this flattery, and this atmosphere has become normalized in the Chinese bureaucracy. Therefore, if some young cadres do not behave in this way, people will say that they do not follow etiquette and renqing.

Businessmen also behave in this way. At a dinner party at Liao’s manor at the end of 2017, Chang, deputy director of a county hospital, toasted his boss Ho, telling all of the people at the dinner, “last year, my wife was transferred to the department she prefers. At that time, our leader Ho said, “I will approve this immediately, even before the meeting [to decide the case]. You are very helpful. I will follow you forever. Here's a toast.”

Ho replied, “No worries; that is my duty. I should take care of my younger brothers and sisters.”

In the process of mutually constructing emotion and morality, the other attendees kept praising the two men, proclaiming their loyalty and claiming they would “go through fire and water”⁶² for their leaders. This illustrates the overlap of the Confucian hierarchical relationship of ruler and subject with that between bureaucratic superiors and inferiors.

On another occasion, Ho explained that his subordinate Chang was a reliable man:

On numerous occasions, when my friends insisted on me consuming alcohol, Chang consistently interjected with kind remarks towards my friends, and he willingly assumed the responsibility of consuming the alcohol in my place … the last time [he did so] … he was intoxicated. I got him safely back to his home.

As can be seen, Chang was adept at banqueting rituals as a means of establishing a hierarchical dynamic with his superiors, a practice that proved to be advantageous for his own career. He subsequently was elevated to the position of department director in the hospital after Ho was promoted to head of the hospital.

In secret banquets involving cadres of different levels and rich businessmen, attention to social hierarchy (zunbei) is critical. This is reflected in where people sit, who serves the food, and who makes toasts. This type of superior-subordinate relationship is influenced by the Confucian ruler-subject relationship (junchen). At one such banquet, Jian, who was a young cadre, was constantly serving his supervisors with everything from vegetables and soup to tea and toothpicks, leaving him no chance to eat. He later explained, “I really hate to eat with leaders because I hardly have time to eat and it makes me exhausted.”

Why does banqueting matter for Chinese bureaucrats?

As the examples we have discussed illustrate, banquets such as these are performative attempts to justify unethical and illegal practices, including bribes and other incentives, by framing these as renqing and gifts. These performances enhance a sense of brotherhood among hosts and guests, bringing an ethical imperative to help one another. Meetings at a cafe or sharing a common dinner do not carry the symbolism of a traditional ritual like a lavish banquet. This is why cadres have to take risks by holding and joining lavish banquets.

Many scholars argue that traditional Chinese norms lack a public sense of ethics.⁶³ The ethical basis of renqing is mostly private, and includes things such as benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, faith, warmth, kindness, and courtesy. In the cases outlined above, participants at these banquets call themselves brothers, and superiors refer to their subordinates as younger brothers and sisters.

Because of this, illegal behavior may not be condemned but even praised by friends in guanxi circles as long as this type of behavior follows the logic of private ethics, which are often overemphasized and exaggerated via fanju. Thus Gu and Hong willingly accepted bags of tea with cash included from a businessman, who claimed these gifts were to express his gratitude and were motivated by ren and yi rather than personal gain. Similarly, Ho approved Chang’s request for his wife’s transfer before his meeting with other officials to decide the case. This was obviously illegal, but no one who attended the banquet condemned this. Instead, they praised Ho’s kindness to his friends. In each of these examples, officials used Confucian ethics as an excuse and a tool to enhance their personal relations, including acts of corruption.

These banquets matter to Chinese bureaucrats because of the relational work they provide to cover illegal exchanges between government officials, party cadres, and businessmen, as well as to strengthen their relationships. Sometimes, however, cadres and businessmen engage in these rituals with sincerity, rather than as a relational work. They may be real friends, and their banquet rituals and claims of ganqing and yiqi may well be authentic rather than performative. However, in such situations, people are more likely to exaggerate their relationships, even if they have real ganqing and yiqi. In other words, even in such cases, rituals such as drinking and toasting include some elements of performance.

Why have these practices been so resilient despite the anti-corruption campaign?

Most of the interactive rituals of banqueting are habitual. These include jostling back and forth when selecting a seat before dinner, deferring to others on where to sit, mutual concessions in gift exchange, calling each other brothers when toasting, and flattering, bowing, and serving others. Banquet participants go through a set of symbolic actions which they use to develop “a mutual focus of attention” and become ingrained in “each other’s bodily micro-rhythms and emotions.”⁶⁴ This ritualized behavior attempts to makes exchanges seem righteous, honorable, and moral, what we have labeled “ritualized relational work.”

The frequent use of ritual in daily interaction can be traced back to the Confucian concept of li (ritual, propriety). Li, the rule of proper conduct, including etiquette and religious and moral rules,⁶⁵ is highly relevant to “any account of Chinese ritual, of hierarchical relationships in China, and of popular practices such as banquets and gift-giving.”⁶⁶ Confucianism attaches great importance to li, and urges people to express ren (benevolence) in the process of guanxi practice through interactive rituals.⁶⁷

The government officials and party cadres we observed and interacted with have been greatly impacted by the central government’s anti-corruption campaign. Yet despite widespread arrests and other disciplinary measures, this campaign has not ended bribery and lavish banqueting. Instead, because of a strong subculture of corruption framed as a form of renqing, lavish banqueting and other corrupt practices continue to exist. In addition, political power has been increasingly concentrated among the top leaders at all levels of the government, increasing their arbitrary power to intervene and disrupt or reorient the bureaucratic process. Because of this, building guanxi with such top leaders is extremely important for cadres, which increases the possibility of corruption and the buying and selling of positions. Finally, during the current period of increased ideological control, cadres fear expressing any personal opinions or suggestions. To make matters worse, the lower the level of government, the stricter the ideological control (cengceng jiama). This has become a tool for bureaucrats and party officials to use to fight against political competitors. Thus, personal protection via guanxi relationships has become even more important, not less, and rituals such as banqueting are essential for cultivating these hierarchical patron-client relationships.

China's weak institutional system pushes cadres to rely on their guanxi networks for personal protection and career advancement. In such a system, corruption is systemic, as each member of a guanxi network is a node in a system that channels benefits from the bottom up. Without the strong backing of a powerful superior, a cadre can easily be investigated and punished because, in rural areas where the legal system is weak, much work of local officials may violate laws and regulations. In such an institutional context, it is quite logical that cadres rely on their guanxi networks, which involves gift-giving and banqueting.

Some scholars have suggested that the high pressure of the anti-corruption campaigns has led to bureaucratic inertia at the local level of government, including the disappearance of lavish entertaining.⁶⁸ We argue that corruption has remained resilient despite the national government’s anti-corruption policies; it is simply practiced in a more secret and covert way. The difference in these analyses could be in the temporal focus of researchers. While some scholars have drawn conclusions based on their observations during the first two or three years of the anti-corruption campaign, our study relies on data collected between five and nine years after the campaign had started. Our study reveals that the anti-corruption campaign has led grassroots cadres to form alliances and use their guanxi connections for protection, while the practice of guanxi, such as lavish banqueting, have not disappeared but become more covert. Moreover, most studies on China's anti-corruption campaign over the past ten years have been based on a top-down perspective, ignoring the perspectives of grassroots cadres and local government officials.

Conclusion

Interaction rituals associated with banqueting not only distinguish between legitimate forms of helping friends and illegitimate and/or unethical forms of corruption and bribery, these also beautify, embellish and exaggerate personal relationships using the logic of Confucian morality and ethics. Such personal ties are more important to banquet participants because they promote long-term cooperation. Moreover, such ritual performances also build mutual understanding, designate certain sorts of economic transactions as appropriate, and shape moral and ethical approaches that support future gifting, building a subculture of corruption.

In his discussion of relationships between Chinese officials, CCP cadres, and businessmen, John Osburg describes social techniques such as eating, drinking, gift-giving, entertaining, KTV singing, and playing mahjong as a “masculine culture of entertaining."⁶⁹ He argues that these relationships are often couched in a rhetoric of male solidarity, brotherhood, paternalism, mutual aid, and yiqi. Alan Smart has highlighted how giving gifts to officials requires appropriate etiquette to show that these gifts are without conditions, hence not for utilitarian purposes, arguing that “the appropriateness of the performance is critical to its effectiveness.”⁷⁰ In other words, a gift giver may have instrumental motivations, but he or she must frame this as motivated by ganqing and esteem. These “customary forms” are utilized “to disguise what might otherwise be recognized as a corrupt and illegal exchange.”⁷¹

We use the concept of “relational work” to describe the purpose of performance in guanxi practice, including banqueting and gift giving. These not only construct legitimate exchange, but also highlight, adorn, and exaggerate the relationship between them. This is the advantage of using the term “relational work,” which reveals more than the process of this performance (it requires effort and operation) and function (to strengthen and embellish the relationship and provide cover for instrumental and/or illegal elements). Framing an instrumental banquet, as well as the gift-giving activities that usually follow, as a form of relational work reveals the important function of such banqueting in guanxi practice, and why cadres risk attending and/or hosting such lavish banquets

Using hard-to-obtain empirical evidence from a rural county, we have explored how and why government and party cadres continue to hold and attend lavish banquets, despite the crackdown by central government officials. We have analyzed the role of relational work in lavish banqueting by rural bureaucrats by showing how rural cadres practice guanxi via banqueting. In the drinking atmosphere of these lavish banquets, participants construct their ethics within their acquaintance circle, forming a collective subculture that supports collusion and corruption. Banquet participants use Confucian moral precepts such as li to justify their illegal practices. Thus, the ability of ritual practice is crucial in guanxi practices, which are an important part of an individual's ritual capital.⁷²

Guanxi practices, particularly banqueting, are strongly underpinned by deep cultural values such as renqing (favors) yiqi (togetherness with mutual obligations), and mianzi (face). Without ethical concepts such as wulun and yi, cadres would not carry out these lavish banquets. Our discussion of these practices reveals not only how exchanges are justified, but also how relationships are nurtured. In addition, China's weak institutional governance system pushes cadres to rely on their own guanxi networks for protection during times of political change and for career promotion.

Lavish banqueting and other corrupt practices still exist despite President Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and official restrictions on cadres’ conduct that are now more than a decade old. As political power has been increasingly concentrated among the CCP’s top leaders at all levels, from the national to the local, it has become increasingly important for bureaucrats at all levels to build guanxi networks for their own protection. What we have called “ritualized relational work” is a key part of guanxi practice, not only in banqueting but also in gift-giving. This reminds us that social relations are an integral part of economic activities, not just the background for them, and economic activities are themselves social interactions. The significance of ritual in economic action is an important area that calls for further exploration.

Acknowledgments

We greatly appreciate the helpful suggestions given by Dr. Peng Wang of the University of Hong Kong. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the National Social Science Fund of China (23BSH027)

Notes on contributors

Ji Ruan

Ji Ruan is a professor at Guizhou Minzu University. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Kent. His main research interests are guanxi, rural studies, marriage, education, and Confucianism. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Yuewei Zhang

Yuewei Zhang is an Associated Professor of Art at Guizhou Normal University and a doctoral candidate in sociology at Guizhou Minzu University. Her main research interest is cultural sociology. She can be contacted at [email protected].

Shizhan Ruan

Shizhan Ruan is a postgraduate student in the School of Sport and Exercise at the University of Kent. His main research interests are social networking and medical sociology. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Notes

1 China Daily 2020.

2 CCDI 2023.

3 Ruan and Wang 2023.

4 Wang and Yan 2020.

5 Zelizer 2012, 146.

6 Cf. Rossman 2014; Lainer-Vos 2013; Altomonte 2020; Wherry 2016; Nina Bandelj 2020, 251-272.

7 Jacobs 1979; King 1991; Kipnis 1997; Yan 1996; Yang 1994.

8 Li 2011.

9 Bian and Huang 2015; Bian 2018.

10 Cf. Guthrie 1998.

11 Yan and Ning 2013.

12 Gong and Xiao 2017.

13 Gong and Xiao 2017.

14 Zhou 2021.

15 Wang and Yan 2020.

16 Wang and Yan 2020, 611-634.

17 Osburg 2018.

18 Wank 1999, 11.

19 Smart 1993; Wank 1999.

20 Osburg 2018.

21 Smart and Hsu 2007, 167.

22 Ruan 2017.

23 Smart and Hsu 2007, 168.

24 Osburg 2018, 151.

25 Hwang 1987; King 1991; Yan 1996; Yang 1994.

26 Yang 1994, 70.

27 Yan 1996.

28 Yan 1996, 146.

29 Wang 2014, 809–830; Bian 2018, 597–621; Barbalet 2018, 934–949.

30 Jiang 2018, 982-999; Hillman 2014; Wang and Yan 2020, 611-634.

31 Yan 1996; Yang 1994.

32 Bedford Olwen 2016, 290–306.

33 Varese, Wang and Wong 2019, 594-613.

34 Osburg 2013, 125.

35 Osburg 2013, 85.

36 Bedford 2016, 290–306; Barbalet 2015, 1038–1050.

37 Osburg 2013, 75.

38 Beford 2016, 290-306; Osburg 2018.

39 Smart and Hsu 2007, 177.

40 Smart and Hsu 2007, 171.

41 Ruan 2021.

42 Smart and Hsu 2007, 179.

43 Smart 1993, 400.

44 Smart 1993, 405.

45 Ruan 2021; Ruan, 2019.

46 Zelizer 2005.

47 Zelizer 2012, 146.

48 Zelizer’s concept has been used by scholars in many research areas, such as informal labor (Alacovska 2018), the digital economy (Alacovska et al. 2022), and poverty alleviation (Jindra et al. 2020). Scholars outside of economic sociology have used this concept primarily in reference to the management of social relations in noneconomic forms of interactions (Cf. Fletcher 1999; Tilly 2006; Locher and Watts 2008). Gabriel Rossman has used “obfuscatory relational work” in his research on disreputable or taboo exchange, that is morally objectionable transactions that seem to make the sacred commensurate with the profane (Rossman 2014). According to Rossman, obfuscation masks intentionality, minimizes explicit reciprocity, and makes problematical exchange appear to be a common and ethical practice. (See Rossman, 2014: 46).

49 Rossman 2014, 43.

50 Wherry 2016.

51 Lainer-Vos 2013, 145.

52 Altomonte 2020, 76–105.

53 Yang 2002, 459–476.

54 However, some secret banquets were considered to be so important and secret that the author was not invited to attend.

55 By comparison, the salary of a high school teacher in this county is between 3,000 and 4,000 yuan per month.

56 These four are the secretary of the county party committee, the county head, the chairman of the county People’s Congress, and a department-level cadre retired to the second line. These four individuals are all at the level of departmental cadres (正处级).

57 Osburg 2013, 44.

58 These five relationships are: ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, brothers, and friends.

59 Smart 1993, 399.

60 Smart 1993, 403.

61 Zelizer 2012.

62 A Chinese saying, it means taking efforts and risks to help friends.

63 Liang Suming 2011, 64; Liang Qichao 2016, 19.

64 Collins 2004, 67.

65 Shun 2002.

66 Steinmüller 2013, 32.

67 Ren refers to the ethical ideal and li to certain traditional norms that govern human conduct (Jiarong Liang, 2010; K. Shun 2002). Li is the outer expression of ren, the instrument in the cultivation of ren, and can even be the measurement of ren. However, in some guanxi practices, people simply copy the forms of li in their ritual practice without any motivation for achieving ren, but with self-interest in mind. The result is ritualized relational work, which justifies their social exchange.

68 Wang and Yan 2020; Osburg 2018.

69 John Osburg 2018.

70 Smart 1993, 399.

71 Smart 1993, 400.

72 Ruan,2017