Yanjie Bian, University of Minnesota and Hong Kong University and Science and Technology

Guanxi Capital and Social Eating in Chinese Cities:

Theoretical Models and Empirical Analyses

In Chinese society, guanxi is developed and maintained through social eating: eating a meal with other people. I review three theoretical models about the nature of guanxi, each having different implications for the relational bases of guanxi, sources and forms of guanxi capital, and strategies of accumulating guanxi capital, or the capacity to mobilize social resources through network ties to others. Then I analyze some empirical implications of these models for social eating, using data from a 1998 urban consumer project in Chinese cities. I find that pseudo-family ties are greatly represented in a person’s regular guanxi network and eating-partner network. Second, persons with greater network diversity are frequent banquet guests and hosts, independent of the effects of their economic ability and political influence. These findings are discussed in the broad context of social capital.