Social Dynamics and the Lost Tradition of a Third Front Enterprise in Post-Maoist China: The Anding Computer Factory and the Everyday Lives of Employees

During significant social transformations, the government and society are closely interconnected with each other, mediated by the family. A special group of the state-owned enterprises in China prepared for national security and infrastructure constructions. The Third Front (TF), such as the Anding Computer Factory, were typical small societies that confronted the decline of the work unit system and the socioeconomic transformation from a planned economy to a socialist market system. This study attempts to understand the lives of employee residents in the Anding factory community by applying long-term participant observation and in-depth interviews. Overall, both the Anding community and its employees can be considered to have experienced three historical stages—the productive youth, the confused midlife, and the unsettled twilight years. The material culture, organization, and spirit were all profoundly impacted in each of the three periods. After realizing the unstoppable deindustrializing trend and the rising social disparity brought along by the free market, employees gradually transferred their considerations from the factory society to the future of their families as a cultural adaptaion. Driven by the priority rule of profits, the employees' lives are full of contradictions and are poorly suited to the economically competitive society. This study opens a novel dialog between ethnography, industrial relations, labor history, elderly affairs, and social dynamics.