Inside China’s Secret Files on Every Worker

Sun Jiahui (孙佳慧)

Every Chinese worker has a “dang’an” (personal file), but hardly anyone ever sees inside them

When 19-year-old Zhu Zhuanghong got a banking job, he thought he would be set for life. Entering the People’s Bank of China in 1979 as a “cadre”—a title given to professionals and managers in the state sector—he could look forward to the sort of lifelong job security known as an “ iron rice bowl ”; but in 1995, after Zhu left his job, he found that hardly anyone else would employ him.

It wasn’t until 12 years later that Zhu finally realized that his “personal file,” or renshi dang’an (人事档案), was the cause of the trouble. In 2007, Zhu applied to work at China International Intellectech Corporation, a state-run human resources company, and was told they could find no documents to show how he entered his previous two positions at the People’s Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), or to prove his identity as a cadre. This made it impossible for them to employ him. Later, the lack of documentation also gave Zhu a lower pension than he should have had.

Everything had hinged on Zhu’s dang’an , the mysterious personal file that every Chinese worker has, but few have ever seen. The file is typically created by their primary school and then transferred to their high school, university, and employer. It records a raft of personal information: physical characteristics, date of birth, educational background, work experience, academic reports, professional credentials, political background (such as membership in a political party ), records of any administrative penalties, and even assessments by past teachers and supervisors.

Today, state-run enterprises still check these files when someone applies for a job with them, but most of the time a person’s dang’an lie sealed and filed away in the archives of local government human resources departments or universities.

“If there are some bad records in your file, it could probably affect your ability to transfer to another job [in the public sector],” says Wang Yuqing, who worked as a file manager dealing with dang’an in a Chinese university (which she didn’t wish to name) from 2009 to 2022. These personal records fall under “security matters” according to Wang, so the details of how they are categorized or used are strictly guarded by institutions that keep hold of them.

Reviewing the dang’an of potential new hires was taken very seriously by Wang’s university. Last year, they reviewed all the files of the university’s “middle-ranking cadres” (mostly middle managers in administrative roles) to check they had the correct birth dates, length of service, work assessments, and salary-related materials. If they uncovered any missing data, the employee could run into trouble finding replacements. “If a file is lost or destroyed, it’s very difficult to get some materials reissued. One can only ask their work unit to issue some identifying document, which is just a substitute,” says Wang.

The dang’an system of today developed fully during the 1940s and ’50s, but keeping records of people’s employment history was hardly a new idea. As early as in the Shang (1600 – 1046 BCE) and Zhou (1046 – 256 BCE) dynasties, the nobility began to record the appointment and promotion of officials by inscribing bronzeware.

China’s first employee file perhaps emerged in the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) when the first emperor Liu Bang (刘邦) ordered candidates for officialdom to register at the chancellor’s office and have their “character (行),” “appearance (义),” and “age (年)” recorded.

During the Tang dynasty (618 – 907), a much more detailed personal record system emerged, with the government creating files for all applicants for official roles recording their personal information, work experience, job performance assessments, and references. The files, known as jiali (甲历) were kept by various government departments in the capital in archives called jiaku (甲库). Even after they met all the qualifications, such as passing exams , a person could only be hired as an official if their boss in the relevant department found their records satisfactory.

Today’s dang ’ an system took shape in 1940 when the Communist Party of China began creating files on Party members and established a “cadre office” to manage the information and ensure only the right people became members. The system slowly developed in the ’50s to also cover workers and students (but never farmers).

At that time, the personal file was a powerful tool that could influence many aspects of one’s life. The state assigned people to work units that had a say in whether a person could marry, give birth, or even travel, and they would often consult the person’s dang ’ an when they made these decisions. During the Cultural Revolution, family background and political records contained in the files were used to decide which individuals would be sent to carry out manual labor in the countryside, and which could instead get further education .

After 1980, as China’s market reforms gained pace, the dang ’ an system lost its significance. More and more people went to work in private companies, and employee files were no longer necessary when they started a career—only state-run work units are permitted to assess and store the files, so people working in the private sector don’t need to provide their dang ’ an when they change jobs. Today, most people’s dang’an are stored with the local Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security in the place where their household registration ( hukou ) is based.

The dang ’ an didn’t fade away, but there is little information on whether most are still being updated, or who is updating them. “For getting one’s professional performance evaluation or a pension, the file is still useful even if you work at a private company,” says Wang.

Mr. Wen, a 60-year-old who retired from an education company this year, claims he suffers a reduced pension because part of his employee file that proved his work history before 1992 has gone missing. While his employment history after 1992 is recorded in China’s social security system (as everyone’s should be these days), the only record of his employment before that was in his dang ’ an .

Without it, “his working years were undercalculated, meaning his pension is reduced by a few hundred yuan every month,” Wen’s daughter tells TWOC. The family has tried to contact Wen’s former employer (which went out of business years ago) for help, but to no avail.

Sometimes, because of the dang ’ an ’s secrecy, a personal file can influence a person’s life without them knowing it. In 2002, Tang Guoji, a writer from Hunan province, received a phone call from the local education bureau asking him to go to the township government to fulfill some administrative procedures regarding his “mental disability.” Tang was shocked—this was the first time he had heard he had a mental illness . Finally, in 2003, he received a copy of his dang ’ an from an anonymous source and found a former employer had identified him as “mentally ill” in a document.

Tang had graduated with good grades from Hunan Yiyang Teachers’ College in 1983, but struggled to find a school to accept him as a teacher. Now he knew why: His dang ’ an included an “opinion of the organization” from his college which identified Tang as mentally ill. This document, perhaps based on just one of his teachers’ subjective opinions, likely buried Tang’s job prospects for good.

Later, Tang sued the college and the local education bureau for wrecking his reputation. But the case was dismissed by a court that effectively argued the college, as a public institution, had a right to make its own assessment.

Despite his failure to sue, Tang’s case triggered a discussion of whether the dang ’ an is still relevant in modern society. So far, though, efforts to challenge the system have been in vain. In 2009, Zhu Zhuanghong sued ICBC to try and get his own lost social security contributions back from the company—he also lost.

While most people still never see or hear much about their dang ’ an today, the file is still precious enough to create anxiety among those who need to use or change it. In June, a viral video on social media showed a senior high school graduate screaming hysterically after finding that her mother had opened her dang’an file, which she had obtained in order to forward to her future college or employer: If opened by an unauthorized person, the file becomes invalid, according to Chinese law, though in this case the girl’s mother was able to get the documents verified and resealed in two days.

Though many people, including well-known TV broadcaster Bai Yansong, wondered how the graduate got her dang’an in the first place, since it’s quite unusual for private individuals to get a hold of them, none of the commenters on social media thought she was overreacting. Even for the young, the thought of having a secret file affecting one’s future chances for employment or pension, stored in some obscure government department or in a basement in a university, is enough to make anyone anxious.

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