Peverelli, P.J. (2000), Cognitive Space – A Social-Cognitive Approach to Sino-Western
Cooperations, Delft:Eburon, pp. 65 -69
2.1 Sector Space - Railways
Our term sector here is broader than merely economic sector, like Chemical Industry. A sector is a
designation of a number of related occupational activities. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc., are all
working in a sector called Health Care. Sectors are major cognitive Spaces in China. This is
reflected in the language, as sectors are often referred to as systems' (xitong) in everyday parlance.
The impact of each sector can be felt in all corners of the country and affects the lives of tens of
thousands of persons. The sector Spaces are even more important for the subject matter of this
study, as almost any Western company trying to establish cooperations with Chinese organisations
will get involved in one or several of such Spaces. Instead of trying to list all such sector Spaces
exhaustively, we will present a more extensive description of one of them: the Railways Space
(RS). When other sector Spaces will be mentioned in later case descriptions in our text, we can refer
to this description of the RS.
2.1.1 The construction of sector Spaces
The sector Spaces were a product of the ideology of the Communist Party of China, which could be
regarded as Marxism with strong traditional Chinese influences. In this ideology, every person had
to belong to a certain social 'unit' (danwei). This unit was conceived as the source of the person's
income (employer), was responsible for the person's housing, provided health care, etc. This was
seen as the best guarantee for a fair distribution of scarce goods, but also the most effective way of
exercising social control. An enterprise was such a unit, but also a school, a municipality, a port,
etc. Although a single unit could be used to regulate a considerable number of people, the number
of units needed to control the entire Chinese population was still enormous. Seen from the
perspective of Chinese Commun