Minority Bureaucrats’ Networks and Career Progression: Evidence from the Chinese Maritime Customs Service

Do minorities benefit from social networks? In this paper, we study this ques-tion using the historical example of China’s first modern bureaucratic organization, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Drawing on newly digitized personnel records from 1876-1911, we first show that the Chinese clerks employed by the service were predomi-nantly Cantonese. Using the plausibly exogenous transfers of clerks across stations, we then estimate that a non-Cantonese (minority) clerk benefited significantly from meeting at least one colleague from his same province and dialect. Such connections led to faster promotion and a 5.6% salary increase, with even stronger effects when meeting a clerk who was either senior or of high quality.