This chapter will attempt to highlight the relationship between a certain type of informal group, that characterized by patron–client relations, and formal organization. While not wishing to rule out the possibility that such groups can find their origins in phenomena like common regional or generational origins, this study will explore the possibility that sometimes these groups may have their basis in formal organization. It will not provide a conclusive resolution to the question of the nature and primary activity of these groups. Instead, through a brief case study of politics within China's national defense science and technology research and development (R&D) sector up to and including the Cultural Revolution, a path for further investigation will be proposed.

Informal, in contradistinction to formal, politics concerns a process that occurs outside formal rules and among groups that cannot be considered formal organizations. The process is marked by a behind-the-scenes, hidden character, as opposed to public and open procedures such as the election of the president of the United States. The informal groups that are major actors in this form of politics have usually been classified as factions in Chinese studies. Andrew Nathan considers a faction to be a structure mobilized on the basis of clientelist ties to engage in politics and consisting of a few, rather than a great many, layers of personnel. The clientelist tie at the heart of it is a “one-to-one rather than a corporate pattern of relationships between leaders (or subleaders) and followers.”