ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 has explicated the logic by which the steady expansion of the market and the diffusion of market relations erode the basic building block of the communist system-the work unit (danwei). A main social consequence of the disintegration or transformation of danwei is the release of the millions of individuals entrapped in it as free agents of the market. One aggregate effect is the burgeing of the so-called mobile or fl oating population (liudong renkou). The Party members among the mobile population tend to be danwei-less and therefore largely outside the supervision of the traditional danwei-based Party organizations.
