China Keeps Secret Dossiers on Every Working Citizen

Kathrin Hille
Financial Times
September 5, 2009

[efoods]On the day of his high school graduation in 1979, Zhu Zhuanghong saw a bright future for himself. People’s Bank of China had just picked the 19-year-old from among hundreds at his school to start work as a prestigious “cadre” candidate – an employee, in the Leninist language of Chinese institutions, set for a career as a professional. “My teacher told me that as a cadre at the bank, the wind cannot blow you over and the rain cannot hit you,” Mr Zhu recalls.

He was wrong. Now 50, Mr Zhu has been buffeted by the wind and rain for more than a decade. In 1995, he lost his job at Industrial and Commercial Bank of China , the world’s largest bank by market capitalisation, which had been spun off in 1984 from the central bank that had given him his first job.

The reason for this dramatic decline in fortunes is hidden in a manila folder in an office drawer somewhere in Beijing: Mr Zhu’s renshi dangan or “employee file”. While China has long since replaced its communist economy with a kind of raw capitalism and is fast ascending to the rank of superpower, its relationship with its own citizens remains partly stuck in its totalitarian past. The state continues to keep a secret dossier on every working citizen, which helps it retain its absolute power over the individual.

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