Word.ws English Dictionary

iron rice bowl

iron rice bowl noun: a guaranteed state job in China that lasts until retirement and pays a pension until death.

Noun

iron rice bowl (plural iron rice bowls)

  1. A guaranteed state job in China that lasts until retirement and pays a pension until death.
    • Large or small, a state enterprise took care of all the needs of its workers and dependents, providing housing, schools, and health facilities at minimal cost - the so-called "iron rice bowl" which the economic mobilizers said now had to be 'smashed'.2006, John Gittings, “Economics in Command: The modernization of China”, in The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Market

Forms of iron rice bowl

pluraliron rice bowls

Origin of iron rice bowl

Calque from Chinese 鐵飯碗／铁饭碗 (tiěfànwǎn), from 鐵／铁 (tiě, “iron”) + 飯碗／饭碗 (fànwǎn, “rice bowl”).

Questions about iron rice bowl

What does iron rice bowl mean?
Iron rice bowl means a guaranteed state job in China that lasts until retirement and pays a pension until death.
What part of speech is iron rice bowl?
Iron rice bowl is a noun.
What is the plural of iron rice bowl?
The plural of iron rice bowl is iron rice bowls.

Words near iron rice bowl in the dictionary

  1. iron pyrite
  2. iron pyrites
  3. Iron Range
  4. iron ration
  5. iron rations
  6. iron rice bowl
  7. iron rice bowls
  8. iron ring
  9. iron rings
  10. iron road
  11. iron roads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: iron rice bowl (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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