1. Womack cites Deborah Davis' argument that I exaggerate the dependence of workers onthe enterprise because I do not recognize the ways that employees build family and friendship networks outside the firm. This criticism misses the point, however, because extra-firm kin and friendship networks cannot providealternative sources of supply for the most valued rewards that factories have to offer: promotions and subsidized apartments. Moreover, since my analysis is stated in comparative terms, the criticism is trivial unless one also argues that such kin networks are more salient in China than in other countries. Our 1986 survey of Tianjin, to the contrary, suggests the opposite: that social networks in urban China are more centred on the workplace and less centred on kin than they are in the United States. See Danqinq, Ruan, Lu, Zhou, Blau, Peter M. and Walder, Andrew G., “Tianjin chengshi jumin shehui wang chuxi,” (“An analysis of the social networks of urban residents in Tianjin”), Zhongguo shehui kexue (Social Sciences in China), 2 (03 04 1990), pp. 157–176Google Scholar.

2. Womack cites the term “foreman's empire” as exemplifying the total control of workshop leaders. It is clear in the original context that a “foreman's empire” is an “empire” not because the foreman has total control within it, but because he or she has autonomy from higher levels of administration and exercises wide discretion. The point is not total state power, it is the opposite–decentralized authority.

3. At the end of both these passages I refer the reader to an article–length treatmentof “hidden bargaining” in the early post–Mao period. Walder, Andrew G., “Wage reform and the web of factory interests”, The China Quarterly, No. 109 (1987), pp. 22–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. I pointed out this omission when I analysed the consequences of workers’ monopoly over the supply of labour in an era where there are increasing pressures upon managers to raise profits and labour productivity. See Walder, Andrew G., “Factory and manager in an era of reform”, The China Quarterly, No. 118 (1989), pp. 242–264CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Walder, Andrew G., “Communist social structure and workers’ politics in China”, in Falkenheim, Victor (ed.), Citizens and Groups in Contemporary China (Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies, No. 56) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies, 1987), pp. 45–46Google Scholar.

6. See Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 32, n. 10Google Scholar, where he cites Oi's dissertation, an early version of her book, as a “careful and fascinating account” of “soft opposition” to state grain procurements.

7. And they are in any case irrelevant to the truth or falsity of a proposition. Performing sociology of knowledge upon the arguments of others is something never to be confused with showing the argumentsto be logically flawed and factually unsupported.

8. I cite these examples to show the falsity of Womack's premise, not to defend my political correctness.

9. Instead, the benefits themselves, and rules for their allocation, would have become an object of bargaining, and such bargaining would have led to rules that reduced the discretion of supervisors in allocating them as rewards. It is also possible those benefits would have been of higher quality and more extensive than they are now.

10. Pacific Affairs, Vol. 60, No. 4 (Winter 1987–1988), pp. 658–59Google Scholar.

11. By Blecher's logic, there is no convincing evidence of racial or sexual discrimination in the determination of incomes in the United States. Analyses of income data show consistently that gender and race have a tangible effect on incomes, but earnings are distributed “predominantly” (to use Blecher's term) according to such factors as seniority, occupation, and education. To require evidence that rewards are distributed “predominantly according to racist or sexist logic” before one admits these aspowerful social forces is, of course, unreasonable.

12. Blecher also suggested that my arguments about clientelism do not tell us how authority is exercised over non-clients. Since it is evident that rewards are not and cannot be given exclusively to loyal clients, it should also be evident that the same rewards and sanctions apply to nonclients as well. The only difference is that the non-clients develop a “passive” rather than an “active” strategy regarding these rewards (see ch. 5).

13. Womack refers to my chapter 7 as being about “changes in the 1980s”, although I explained clearly that my last interviews took place in 1984, and therefore covered the situation up to 1982–83. Even so, it was evident already that there was a marked shift toward a more paternalistic regime and less politicized rewards.

14. See the literature reviewed in Walder, Andrew G., “Social structure and political authority: China's evolving polity”, in Myers, Ramon H. (ed.), Two Chinese Societies in Opposition: The Republic of China and the People's Republic of China after Forty Years (Stanford: Hoover InstitutionPress, 1991), pp. 341–361Google Scholar.

15. I elaborate this position in “Workers, managers, and the state: the reform era andthe political crisis of 1989”, forthcoming in this journal.