Chapter 9 2. Society is a circle

The strong hierarchy and circle consciousness in Beijing determine the importance of personal connections, social background, and survival in this city.Without these, you can still pant around town, but slowly you'll find yourself out of breath. It is precisely because of this insight that the Beijing Office has grown intertwined in Beijing, like an old vine that absorbs the essence of the sun and the moon, and finally found a blessed place to practice. And this tacit "hidden rule" in the city is also popular among the people. To go to school, get a job, get promoted, get rich, and even buy special tickets, everyone is rushing to the "back door".Therefore, the news that "the children of high-ranking cadres account for 91% of the number of billionaires over 100 million yuan" is false, but the "consciousness" that misleads the public is true.

It is not terrible that there are classes with great disparity between rich and poor in Beijing. What is terrible is that the classes are hardened. On January 19, 2010, Beijing City suffered from a severe cold.Because the "Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Strengthening and Regulating the Management of Local Government Offices in Beijing" was issued-the central government's strong medicine of "abolishing the Beijing Office" choked the "communication system" that was originally smooth.And the huge size of this system also made this instruction particularly attractive.

According to incomplete statistics, currently in Beijing, in addition to 52 Beijing Offices of units above the sub-provincial level, there are 520 Beijing Offices of city-level units and more than 5,000 Beijing Offices of county-level units.If you add the liaison offices (or offices) set up by government departments at all levels (mainly the provinces) and various associations, state-owned enterprises and universities, there are more than 10,000 institutions in Beijing. Not only is the number huge, but the energy of the Beijing Office should not be underestimated. "To a certain extent, the Beijing Office has a great influence on Beijing's economic development." A scholar in Beijing put forward such a point of view, "The investment and consumption capabilities of the Beijing Office are astonishing, whether it is from real estate or catering, entertainment, The role of tourism in Beijing's economy cannot be ignored."

Generally speaking, the higher the level or the more developed the economy, the more impressive the offices in Beijing, and almost all the star-rated hotels are named after the provinces.Although the conditions of the Beijing Offices vary, they generally have good cars and houses, as well as adequate staffing and funds.According to a person from the State Administration Bureau, there are currently only 52 provincial-level offices in Beijing with about 8,000 employees, including about 1,300 from the government agencies, and about 6,700 from the affiliated hotels, restaurants, and guest houses. "Combined with the personnel of various provinces, bureaus, prefectures, cities and counties, and enterprises in various places in Beijing, it will be a huge number."

Relevant experts calculated an account: "If the annual funding of a Beijing office is conservatively calculated at 1 million yuan, the total annual funding of all the Beijing offices will be more than 10 billion yuan." On April 20, 2006, in the State Council At the press conference of the new office, when a reporter asked about the reasons for the high housing prices in Beijing, Zheng Jingping, a spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, said: "Apart from other reasons, there are the impact of the Olympic Games, the impact of the headquarters economy, and the Beijing-based The influence of the office is in it.” The Beijing Office’s contribution to Beijing’s GDP can be imagined.

An official from a certain province in East China, who did not want to be named, revealed to the media that in a sense, the "Beijing Office" has become the "embassy" of local governments and party committees in Beijing. As well as their huge activity energy in the capital and their impact on the economic development of the dispatched area, ordinary people can't imagine it at all. There is such an extreme example. At around 3:40 p.m. on May 12, 2002, Mr. Gao Fushui in Beijing personally verified the "bullness" of the "Beijing Office"—it doesn't matter if he is overturned by a car, and he was beaten violently by the perpetrator.The "bully" perpetrator yelled while beating people: "Do you know what I do?" Staff of the Beijing Office of the Department of Communications.

Who is this "Beijing Office"?Why is it so powerful in Beijing?What is its energy source?To answer this series of questions, one has to figure out what the Beijing Office is doing "at the feet of the emperor". In fact, the similar sense of superiority of the staff of the "Beijing Office" generally comes from their "supernatural powers".They have their own "contact map", shuttling between various ministries and commissions of the state and relevant units in Beijing and between Beijing-based agencies, their network of relationships is criss-crossing.That's their power -- connections.

The "running department" is an important task of the offices in Beijing.In order to obtain more funds and projects for their hometowns, many Beijing Offices have assigned special personnel to collect information about the projects and funds that relevant ministries and commissions are planning to release, and then quickly carry out "public relations", and some even transfer benefits to buy people's hearts. "For some project funds, under the same conditions, anyone can give it. At this time, it depends on which Beijing office has the most energy." The director of the Beijing office of a city in Sichuan Province said, "Our mayor is the national Generally speaking, a representative of the National People's Congress, when he comes to Beijing to participate in the 'two sessions', he has to live in the Beijing Office for a day or two. The vehicle, entourage, and round-trip itinerary, including which leader he wants to meet and what he is going to give, all have to be done. I have to take care of it in advance. Not only can I not go back to my hometown for the New Year, but I am busier than usual.”

The reason why the "Beijing Offices" are so powerful is inseparable from their usual painstaking efforts.Every New Year's Eve, each "Beijing Office" will invite local leaders to Beijing, invite "hometown people" who have positions and positions, and hold grand "Spring Festival Reunions", "Hometown Associations", and "Friendship Parties" , and its purpose is only one: to connect the feelings among "fellow villagers", weave and expand the network of relations in Beijing. In this regard, the director of the Beijing Office of a certain city in Shandong Province analyzed, "In recent years, although the State Council has required various departments to reduce approval procedures and change some items that do not require approval to the review and filing system, in fact, except those that are insignificant and early In addition to the outdated approval items being abolished, those with high 'gold content' have not been abolished. In this case, local governments can't get things done without 'running the ministry'."

To build this huge "relationship network", it is necessary to "welcome and send" and "communicate up and down". The consumption generated in this process accounts for the vast majority of the more than 10 billion "expenditures" we mentioned earlier.All kinds of corruption also breed in this process.In some corruption cases that shocked the whole country, there are also many staff members of the Beijing Office, such as Wang Fuyou, the former director of the Beijing Office of Hebei Province in the case of Li Zhen in Hebei Province, and the former deputy director of the Beijing Office of Guangxi in the case of Cheng Kejie. Li Yihong, Cui Li, the former director of the Shenyang Beijing Office in the Shenyang "Muma Case".

Having said so much, the entanglement of interests has already been revealed to the world-the "Beijing Office", the key to the problem is placed in front of you from the very beginning, and the focus is on the word "Beijing".For what reason, the provincial and municipal authorities have to send small teams to sneak into the city of Beijing, and they are still "ramping" in the city?Isn't it just for the word "Beijing"! "The Beijing Office has a relatively strong resistance to the rectification. It is generally believed that the central government's excessive resource allocation power has led to the surge in the number of Beijing offices at all levels and the emergence of corruption problems." Statistics show that in 2005, the central government arranged various transfer payment subsidies of 733 billion yuan, plus tax rebates and some institutional subsidies, and the funds used to promote balanced regional development exceeded 1 trillion yuan.According to the audit work report made by Li Jinhua, Auditor-General of the National Audit Office, as many as 37 departments currently participate in the allocation of central transfer payment funds.Some projects with only about 100,000 yuan also need to be approved by relevant ministries and commissions.Relevant ministries and commissions control project resources, but lack of legal-based institutional support in allocation, which makes transfer payments more random and blind due to the lack of scientific legal basis and reasonable allocation standards, and power rent-seeking becomes possible. In fact, the goal of some central ministries and commissions is only to distribute the money without much consideration to the actual local conditions. Many localities just seek money from the central government regardless of whether the project can be completed in the end. As a result, transfer payments have evolved into " The two behaviors of "asking for money" and "dividing money" have distorted the inherent functions of transfer payments to a certain extent. What followed was the increase in the approval authority of the central ministries and commissions and the spare no effort of the Beijing Offices to "money in from the ministries". "For some project funds, under the same conditions, anyone can give it. At this time, it depends on which Beijing office has the most energy. Those who run frequently and know how to operate in the dark will be able to get the biggest piece of cake. Behind it is the intervention and operation of power and money." A director of the municipal office in Beijing said. The central government has a lot of money to distribute to the local governments, but there are too many "laozi" guarding the central government responsible for distributing the money, and they don't know how to divide it, and no one cares about it, so the "boys" can only show their talents , Tickets, cars, houses and women, a lot of them. Is it necessary to adopt this unconventional mode of operation?You can't enter through the front door, do you have to go through the back door? The director of the Beijing Office of a certain city in Guangdong Province replied: "Now the local government wants to approve projects and raise funds. If they don't establish a good relationship with the relevant functional departments of the central government, how can they make a difference?" Can you understand?The director made it very clear-it doesn't matter if you work in Beijing, "how can you make a difference"?Personal connections are a huge undercurrent in the city of Beijing, turbulent and elusive in the "sewer pipes" of this central city. Someone concluded that in Jin Yong's novels, a young man must meet three conditions to grow into a leader of the rivers and lakes: (1) he was born in a famous family or a famous person (for example, Guo Jing is the son of Guo Xiaotian, a righteous man in the rivers and lakes, and Guo Xiaotian is the descendant of Guo Sheng, a hero in Liangshanpo, Zhang Wuji is the son of Zhang Cuishan, one of the Seven Heroes of Wudang, Yuan Chengzhi is the son of Yuan Chonghuan, a famous anti-Qing general, and Chen Jialuo was born in the Chen family of the Haining giant eunuch); (2) Marriage (for example, Guo Jing married Huang Rong, the daughter of Dongxie, one of the five top masters , Zhang Wuji married Zhao Min, the princess of Mongolia); (3) making friends with high-level people in the world, that is, a nepotism in a sense (Yang Guo, his guardian is Guo Jing, the leader of the martial arts, and his godfather is Ouyang Feng, a Western poison, For a while, he had a heated fight with Jinlun Fawang, and these few are all first-class masters. Needless to say, Zhang Wuji, the person who protected him only produced Zhang Sanfeng in hundreds of years). That is to say, if you want to be a good person in the arena, you must have a good background. Even if your "innate conditions" are not good, you must make up for it the day after tomorrow. .Otherwise, the future is bleak.This is reminiscent of a news item on the Internet. First of all, it is stated that this matter has nothing to do with the great Beijing. How could such a thing happen in Beijing?The news is roughly as follows: "On June 13, 2010, a number of university graduates in Wuning, Jiangxi Province reported to the media that the county's recent public institution admissions had imposed strict regulations on recruiting family members of department-level cadres, while others were excluded. They accused the relevant departments of setting up The threshold violates the national employment policy." Public institutions are limited to recruiting "second-generation officials", and ordinary people are excluded from the examination objects. Some people who don't know the truth don't understand this very much. refute this. However, some comments on the red net pointed out: "Jiangxi Wuning's move should not only be blamed, but should be promoted nationwide as an advanced experience!" It listed three reasons, but the first two were "restricted recruitment" of the second generation of officials. "Conforms to China's national conditions" and "restricting the recruitment of 'second-generation officials' conforms to the fundamental interests of the common people" are not without ridicule, so it is worth omitting them.But this third point is quite meaningful: "Restricting the recruitment of 'second-generation officials' is in line with social fairness and justice. Anyone with a little knowledge of China's national conditions knows that there are countless shady and unspoken rules in the employment field, especially in the iron rice bowl with lucrative jobs, and there are more black-box operations. A small A group of ordinary people do not know what to do, and naively think that as long as they have real skills, they can find a good job, so they study, take exams, and rely on connections, but in the end they often end up with nothing. This is not a mess. People Jiangxi Wuning directly put the unspoken rules on the table, which is tantamount to a kind reminder to those stupid people, lest they waste time, energy and money, this is the embodiment of fairness and justice!" Straightforward and cruel.But what is even more cruel is that this cruel reality has become the consensus between you and me. In 2007, the "2006 Survey on the Employment of Chinese College Students" jointly released by the School Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the Institute of Public Policy of Peking University showed that interpersonal networks are still an ideal way for college students to find employment opportunities.41.61% of the students think that through family and personal social relations, acquaintances, etc., is the most effective way to find a job.Among students from big cities, this proportion is as high as 51.29%. With the increase of university enrollment year by year, the pressure of employment is also increasing. The saying that finding a job depends on "relationships" is supported by many students on campus.In the past, people had a mantra, "If you learn mathematics, physics and chemistry well, you will not be afraid to travel all over the world", but now it has become "If you learn mathematics, physics and chemistry well, it is better to have a good father".Finding a job depends on relationships, especially parents and family members. It is already a common sense in the consciousness of college graduates.Some people even bluntly said: "The employment of college students is better than that of fathers!" They believe that the higher the social status of parents, the greater the power and the more social connections, the stronger the ability to mobilize and use these resources to serve their children's employment.There is no parent in the world who does not want their children to find a satisfying job after studying hard for more than ten years in the cold window, and to have a promising future and a bright future.This has resulted in "the competition of employment is the competition of parents' ability"-this unspoken rule generally exists in our lives. Employment based on the ability of parents is undoubtedly a kind of harm to those who lack the ability of family background.However, many people do not completely reject the existence of such unspoken rules. Zhang Yun, a graduate, said: "I have longed to live in Beijing since I was a child, but when I graduated and came to Beijing to find a job, many units wanted graduates from famous universities. For me, a student from a non-key university, they didn't even accept my resume. In the end, my family had to rely on my relationship to help me find a job. Now I am an employee of a well-known investment company, and many of my colleagues are graduates of prestigious universities. We do the same job at work. My ability is not No worse than them. If I didn’t have a relationship back then, no matter how capable I am, I wouldn’t be able to get into this company.” Many people, like Zhang Yun, believe in the development principle of “relationship leads to entry, ability depends on individual”. The educational level and social status of parents reflect the resources of a family.Song Yang, deputy secretary of the Youth League Committee of the Peking University School of Journalism and Communication, believes that parents can even "determine their children's employment directly through relationships and power." Can we understand the words of the secretary of Peking University as: interpersonal relationships can determine a person's future, and this matter has been "internationally certified", why do you object? Then, let me ask again: Does existence mean it is reasonable? If it weren't for the "second generation of officials" and "second generation of riches", what are the chances of wanting to leap into the dragon's gate and make a fortune "at the feet of the emperor"?Let us first take a look at how many people in Beijing are rich. "2009 Hurun Wealth Report" announced the distribution pattern of rich people in China.Among them, Beijing has the most wealthy people, with 143,000 multi-millionaires and 8,800 billionaires respectively, that is to say, 88 out of every 10,000 Beijingers are multi-millionaires, and 54 out of every 100,000 Beijingers are millionaires. People are worth hundreds of millions. The "wealthy people" referred to in the report have assets of more than 10 million yuan, which includes the value of the businesses they start and the value of their self-occupied properties.According to the report, the number of multi-millionaires nationwide has reached 825,000, and 6 out of every 10,000 Chinese are multi-millionaires.At the same time, no matter in terms of the scale of multi-millionaires or billionaires, Beijing ranks first, while Guangdong, Shanghai and Zhejiang rank second, third and fourth respectively. Just like "beauties come out of the south of the Yangtze River", one side of the water and soil nurtures the other side, and the land in Beijing is rich in rich men, so there is a reason for it.But if you think this news means that gold is everywhere in Beijing, and every person who comes here will be rich, then I can only say that you are very humorous. A netizen named "Beijing Cat" set up a framework for Beijing's social class according to the amount of wealth (here, the understanding of wealth includes three different forms of wealth: money, power and prestige). From top to bottom, it is divided into : (1) State leaders: the core of the central party, government and military organs; (2) Powerful: middle and senior civil servants of the central government and Beijing, executives of large enterprises, academic elites, big names in the literary and art circles, and rich capital; (3) White-collar workers: middle and lower-level government servants, middle-level large enterprises, small and medium-sized private business owners, small and medium-sized rentiers, and professional white-collar workers; (4) Small citizens: grassroots citizens and employees of various enterprises and institutions; (5) Beidiao: those who come to Beijing from all over the country to seek development, have certain skills and knowledge, but their living conditions are not good; (6) Migrant workers: farmers who come to Beijing from all over the country to make a living, generally have no knowledge and skills, and live at the bottom. Regardless of whether this stratification is scientific or not, at least it represents a kind of folk wisdom, which is the general understanding of Beijing society.But people's understanding of the current society is far more than that. In June 2010, in a survey of young people conducted by the Social Survey Center of China Youth Daily, 88.1% of the people said that there were "money speculators" around them, and 76.8% of the people said that "it is difficult to get rich just by working hard." Deeply agree.Prior to this, a post on the northern forum entitled "Working for 40 years is not as good as 3 years of real estate speculation" sparked heated discussions.The person who posted said that it is difficult for young people to embark on the road to wealth through down-to-earth work. "Many elders have worked hard all their lives and saved hundreds of thousands of yuan. On the contrary, many people who don't work hard at all have become millionaires just by speculating in real estate and stocks." "It is difficult to get rich through labor", so who can only live mainly by labor?Farmers, migrant workers, industrial workers, general handicraftsmen, teachers, general office workers.For these people in the middle and lower classes of society, under the current system, after working hard for a lifetime, the best result is to "get rid of poverty" and become rich. Facts show that it is just a legend.To use a popular saying, labor is worthless.When the bargaining power of the labor force is obviously weak, an industrial worker who wants to get more remuneration can only be "worked overtime" for a long time.Even so, the possibility of striving ideals across social classes is almost zero in the reality that social stratification is becoming more and more solidified.Even a high-spirited college student can only be an "ant clan" who runs around the city all day when the employment situation is severe. This is a sad finding. So, who has the upper hand and gets rich first? "China Youth Daily" wrote: "Businessmen, bosses, managers of large state-owned enterprises, individual leaders, some experts and scholars. The class of the first rich across the political, business, and academic circles has a clear line of power, capital, and intellectual elites. The context of interweaving, monopolizing social resources, and jointly distributing social wealth. For businessmen and business owners, there are clear property rights and rapid wealth accumulation channels for capital to become rich; Social welfare and other channels complete the accumulation of wealth; some experts and scholars, in the alliance of knowledge and capital, have realized the wealth income of knowledge itself. The wealth accumulation process of these classes is not in the category of "practical labor" in this survey .” Beijing scholar Wang Shichuan pointed out another fact: "In recent years, it has become more and more difficult for graduates to find a job, and the theory that 'study is useless' has risen in some places. The proportion of people with academic qualifications who are willing to accept zero monthly salary has reached 20%, which has risen sharply compared with 1.2% last year. The phenomenon of zero monthly salary has made some netizens feel that it is too difficult to choose a job. In fact, it is difficult for the second generation to choose a job. "They have a lot of background, we only have backs." The second generation of rich and second generations of power have no worries in this regard. It is reported that in Beijing, when a college student enters a "national brand" large enterprise, especially a monopoly enterprise, the "help fee" in the middle, The "benefit fee" has soared to hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan. Such an opportunity, the second generation of the poor can only look at the ocean and sigh." The project team of "Mycos-China 2009 College Graduates Job Hunting and Work Ability Survey" concluded from a survey sample of about 500,000 people: the family class of college students has a significant impact on their higher education access and results .Although this conclusion is a self-evident life experience that does not need to be repeatedly proved, this does not mean that this survey is meaningless-at least it provides survey-based statistics that more intuitively present " The impact of "birth" on a person's education and employment—the results once again support the "Matthew Effect" of social differentiation: the intergenerational inheritance of superior and disadvantaged social classes is significantly enhanced, and the barriers to social mobility between the two are increasingly strengthened. Some scholars said frankly: "The outstanding children of the working class and peasant families have fewer and fewer opportunities to enter high-paying management institutions and industries through their own efforts. This not only weakens the efficiency of human capital in economic and social development, but also leads to The continued differentiation and strengthening of income classes - the rich get richer and the poor stay poor." The "Contemporary Chinese Social Structure" issued by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences pointed out that, considering various indicators and taking into account various factors such as China's economic development trend in recent years, China's social structure lags behind the economic structure by about 15 years.Although this refers to social structure, it is actually a metaphor for the solidification of social classes. Labor is useless, status dominates and determines income. This is the current social reality.As mentioned in the previous chapter, Beijing is also a city with a strong "circle consciousness", and its distinct hierarchy is reflected in all aspects of urban life.It makes the increasingly hardened social class worse. In this regard, a "Northern Drifter" wrote on his blog: "If one day I also escape from Beijing, it will not be because of the dirty air and traffic congestion here, but because Beijing is no longer a 'man', A city without fairness will sooner or later become a place of right and wrong." An open society should have a strong mechanism to adjust the social differentiation brought about by social competition, so that the "foolish, wise, virtuous and unworthy" can get their own place and be in a social position corresponding to their own abilities.This mechanism is to establish social fairness, including fairness in education, fairness in talent selection and appointment, and fairness in the social distribution system.However, there is still a long way to go to achieve this goal...