Socialist Ideology Legacy in a Chinese State-Owned Bank: From Red Engineers, to Colorless Cats, to Pink Bankers

I investigated the degree to which socialist ideas are transmitted to individual employees in a Chinese state-owned bank over generations. Through empirically examining the exposure effects of socialist ideology on different generations of bureaucrats with semi-structured interviews, I found that socialist ideology influences individual attitudes differently by cohorts. The red engineers born in the 1950s and 1960s are staunch socialists; the colorless cats born in the 1970s and 1980s absorbed the state’s nominal socialist attitude but practiced capitalist ideas as encourage by the state; and the pink bankers born in 1990s subscribe to socialist attitudes for both nominal legitimacy and organizational operations less relevant to their personal interests. The socialist legacy shapes how: individuals think about the nature of the SOE, the nature of their work, the degree to which automation affects the Bank’s future and the degree to which branch openings and closings are political or economic decisions.