The Protestant Work Ethic in Mainland China

In an attempt to provide a cross-cultural examination and documentation of the Protestant Work Ethic (PWE) in Chinese society, we examined the differences of PWE across ten demographic variables including gender, age, education, work experience, position, religious affiliation, party affiliation, income, type of work organization, and place of residence from a random sample of 1703 participants from all walks of life and from several provinces in China. We employed Mirels and Garrett's (1971) PWE Scale to measure the PWE and a One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed to analyze the PWE scores. The results revealed that people having a graduate education, occupying senior positions, being with a monthly income ≥RMB5001, being Communist Party members, and living in South-East and North-East China expressed the strongest adherence to PWE. No significant difference on PWE existed in the categories of gender, age, work experience, type of work and religious affiliation.