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New Social Classes, 1895-1949 (Chinese Studies)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. The ability of foreign enterprises to establish factories in China after the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895 accelerated industrialization and as a consequence proletarianization, by which numerous workers without resources entered a class relationship by selling their labor power to survive. It was, however, during the economic boom years of World War I and its aftermath and during the New Culture Movement with the introduction of socialism that new urban social forces—the bourgeoisie and working class—emerged and radical intellectuals applied the concept of social class to their analysis of society and revolution. The increasingly politicized and often-militant quality of the labor movement between 1919 and 1927 led Jean Chesneaux (Chesneaux 1968, cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement) to argue, in Marxist terms, that a class-conscious proletariat under the ideological guidance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had arisen in reaction to the forces of imperialist oppression and exploitation. Although most social historians of the republican era concur that social classes in their objective form had emerged by the 1920s, they disagree on whether workers constituted a subjective “class for itself.” Scholars influenced by the new labor history school, with its emphasis on community and culture, find the complexity of the social composition and social dynamics of the working class to have obstructed the process of class formation. Despite positing workers’ own historical agency, these scholars underscore how segmented labor markets, workers’ particularistic ties and strong sense of regional identity, and gender divisions impeded class consciousness. Consequently, questions over workers’ politics and the nature of the labor movement have become controversial. Elizabeth J. Perry (Perry 1993, cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement) interprets labor divisions based on skill, provenance, and gender as encouraging rather than debilitating labor activism. Other studies emphasize how anti-imperialism fueled the 1920s labor movement, with class taking a subservient role to nationalism. In a related issue, the relationship between workers and the CCP has sparked debate. Whereas Chesneaux emphasized that a class-conscious proletariat served as the social basis for the Communist revolution, others have challenged the CCP’s ideological supremacy and leadership over the labor movement and have focused on contradictions between Communists (largely drawn from the intelligentsia) and workers. Although these studies focus on Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Canton from 1919 to 1927, scholarship on Chongqing’s class formation during the 1940s analyzes both objective and subjective features of social class and contributes to an ongoing debate about the origins of the post-1949 work unit (danwei 单位) system.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
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  7. Although dated, Bastid-Bruguiere 1980 provides a useful introduction to how foreign intrusion and internal structural changes ushered in social change during the last forty years of the Qing dynasty. The book argues that the upper classes were broken up and transformed with the formation of a nascent bourgeoisie after 1905. A small industrial proletariat and a class of marginalized commoners emerged, marking not the disappearance of traditional society but its progressive dislocation. In a similar fashion, Li 2005 follows Weberian theory in using both economic and cultural criteria to examine social stratification after the 1911 revolution. The reemergence of capitalists in the contemporary market reform in China prompted Marie-Claire Bergère (Bergère 2007) to synthesize her long-standing research on the bourgeoisie by examining continuities and ruptures over the 1949 divide and the impact of the state on the capitalist class. Chinese-language overviews of the working class are sharply divided along political and ideological lines. Ma 1959, overseen by the founding director in 1927 of the Nationalist government’s labor bureau and three-time mayor of Nanjing, provides an official Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD) chronicle of the labor movement and offers a sympathetic appraisal of Nationalist government labor legislation and a hostile view of Communist participation in the 1920s labor movement. By contrast, Liu and Tang 1998 ascribes class formation during the early 1920s to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership and castigates the Nationalist government for its white terror of the 1930s. The authors blame Leftist adventurism for labor’s setbacks during the Nanjing decade but credit CCP policy and the labor movement during the anti-Japanese war for balancing class contradictions with the goal of national liberation and for following Mao Zedong’s revolutionary strategy of encircling the cities from the countryside during the civil war. Selden 1983 also highlights the Communist Party’s dominant leadership and the repressive capacity of the Nationalist state in shaping the Chinese labor movement, noting that only the 1920s constituted a high-water mark in the conscious and autonomous revolutionary activity of the working class. Chesneaux and Kagan 1983 underscores how the precapitalist social relationships of the working class constrained its ability to become an enduring and viable force in the political arena. McQuaide 2008 reviews late-20th- and early 21st-century labor historiography, highlighting the impact of the new labor history school of thought and the turn away from class analysis among most Western scholars. Although scholarship on the post-Maoist era in China continues to adhere to the official party narrative regarding the centrality of the party to class formation, interest in topics once off-limits—such as workers’ preindustrial associational culture, the Nationalist-controlled unions, and working-class ties to secret societies—suggests labor history’s growing independence from Communist-dominated narratives.
  8.  
  9. Bastid-Bruguiere, Marianne. “Currents of Social Change.” In The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 11, Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, Part 2. Edited by John K. Fairbank and Kwang-Ching Liu, 535–602. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
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  11. Traces social change in the late Qing dynasty among elites (gentry, military officers, merchants, and rural oligarchy) and the lower classes (artisans, industrial workers, and migrant laborers) in rural and urban China. Industrial capitalism ushered in a nascent bourgeoisie, which remained auxiliary to the broader modern elite and was limited to major treaty ports.
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  13. Bergère, Marie-Claire. Capitalismes et capitalistes en Chine: XIXe–XXIe siècle. Perrin Asies. Paris: Perrin, 2007.
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  15. An overview of Chinese capitalism and its hybrid character (relying on native and imported business practices) during the 20th century. Emphasizes how late development gave rise to the preponderant role of the state vis-à-vis capitalists except during the ephemeral “golden age” of Chinese capitalism between 1911 and 1927.
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  17. Chesneaux, Jean, and Richard C. Kagan. “The Chinese Labor Movement: 1915–1949.” International Social Studies Review 58.2 (1983): 67–87.
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  19. In a critical reevaluation of his earlier work (Chesneaux 1968, cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement), Chesneaux provides a socioeconomic profile of the Chinese working class and its working conditions with emphasis on precapitalist social relations to understand the relative weakness of the labor movement and why it did not play the leading role in the Chinese revolution, especially after 1927.
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  21. Li Mingwei 李明伟. Qingmo Minchu Zhongguo chengshi shehui jieceng yanjiu: 1897–1927 (清末民初中国城市社会阶层研究: 1897–1927). Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2005.
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  23. Well-documented study of social change and stratification throughout coastal and river port cities of China. Focuses on the relationships among economic interests, cultural values, and social differentiation by examining the income, lifestyle, marriage patterns, and educational opportunities of eight social strata, including bureaucrats, compradors, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, petty urbanites, and workers.
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  25. Liu Mingkui 刘明逵 and Tang Yuliang 唐玉良, eds. Zhongguo gongren yundongshi (中国工人运动史). 6 vols. Guangzhou, China: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1998.
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  27. Well-documented Chinese Marxist narrative of the labor movement from the late Qing dynasty to 1949 and its role in the new democratic revolution. Argues that the semifeudal, semicolonial context pushed workers’ economic struggles during the 1920s into broader political opposition against imperialism and warlordism. Traces the trajectory of the post-1927 labor movement as corresponding to CCP policy with detailed analysis of Communist base areas and Nationalist China.
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  29. Ma, Chaojun 馬朝俊, ed. Zhongguo laogong yundong shi (中国劳工运动史). 5 vols. Taibei: Zhongguo laogong fuli chubanshe, 1959.
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  31. This massive work (some twenty-three hundred pages) chronicling major events of the labor movement highlights its anti-imperialist thrust during the 1920s and the Nationalist Party’s leadership role. Also provides full texts of important documents.
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  33. McQuaide, Shiling. “Writing Chinese Labour History: Changes and Continuities in Labour Historiography.” Labour/Le Travail 61 (Spring 2008): 215–237.
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  35. Critical review of labor history scholarship in both the West and China in the late 20th and early 21st centuries exploring the rejection of class analysis in Western scholarship but the continued adherence to orthodox Marxist approaches among Chinese labor historians.
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  37. Selden, Mark. “The Proletariat, Revolutionary Change, and the State in China and Japan, 1850–1950.” In Labor in the World Social Structure. Edited by Immanuel Wallerstein, 58–120. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE, 1983.
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  39. Comparative overview of stages of industrialization, class formation, and the role of state power in shaping the rise of labor and revolutionary movements, especially between 1919 and 1927 in China and the immediate post–World War II period in Japan.
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  41. Reference Works
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  43. Western-language reference works specific to China’s labor history are limited to Bianco and Chevrier 1985, a biographical dictionary on labor activists and trade union leaders. Chang 1990, the first Chinese dictionary of the labor movement, provides comprehensive treatment of key events and actors in the labor movement and provides an extensive bibliography. In general, Chinese-language works are more useful in providing historical context on Chinese society and politics. Zhang, et al. 2001 supersedes Xu 1991 in providing the most comprehensive coverage of prominent republican-era figures, especially political, business, and intellectual leaders in Nationalist-controlled China. Zhang, et al. 2001 can be used in conjunction with Boorman and Howard 1967–1979, Klein and Clark 1971, and Cheng 1991. The latter two works focus on biographies of prominent Communist Party members and chronicle key events, organizations, and policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). For a Japanese-language chronology of labor-related events especially detailed for the 1920s and 1930s, readers may consult Kimura 1978.
  44.  
  45. Bianco, Lucien, and Yves Chevrier, eds. Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrièr international: La Chine. Paris: Les Éditions Ouvrières, 1985.
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  47. Although the expansive definition of “worker” used in this biographical dictionary leads to the questionable inclusion of certain writers and political leaders with little or no connection to industrial labor, this is a useful reference for students of China’s labor movement and its international dimensions.
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  49. Boorman, Howard L., and Richard C. Howard, eds. Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. 4 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967–1979.
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  51. Biographical essays of six hundred prominent Chinese from 1911 to 1949, including information on the early years of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and a select bibliography in Volume 4 of their writings. Political and military figures predominate, but some industrial and business leaders are also included.
  52. Find this resource:
  53. Chang Kai 常凯, ed. Zhongguo gongyunshi cidian (中国工运史辞典). Beijing: Laodong renshi chubanshe, 1990.
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  55. This dictionary covers significant events of the Chinese labor movement in chronological order from 1844 (the first documented strike) through 1986. Also includes sections on labor organizations, meetings, legislation, the press, publications, and key figures. Especially useful for its summary of key documents and extensive bibliography.
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  57. Cheng Min 程敏, ed. Zhongguo Gongchandang dangyuan dacidian (中国共产党党员大词典). Beijing: Zhongguo guoji guangbo chubanshe, 1991.
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  59. Includes biographies of prominent Communist Party members and chronicles key events, organizations, and policies of the CCP.
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  61. Kimura Ikujirō 木村郁二郎. Chūgoku rōdō undōshi nenpyō: 1557–1949 (中国労働運動史年表: 1557–1949). Tokyo: Hatsubaijo Kyūko Shoin, 1978.
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  63. This chronicle of the Chinese labor movement spans the mid-16th century (starting with Portugal’s use of Macau as a trading port) through 1949, but approximately 80 percent of the content details with events pertinent to the labor movement and CCP history during the 1920s and 1930s.
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  65. Klein, Donald W., and Anne B. Clark. Biographic Dictionary of Chinese Communism, 1921–1965. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
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  67. Includes 433 highly detailed biographical articles of Chinese Communist political elites active in the Chinese Communist movement from the founding of the CCP to the eve of the Cultural Revolution.
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  69. Xu Youchun 徐友春, ed. Minguo renwu da cidian (民国人物大辞典). Shijiazhuang, China: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 1991.
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  71. Includes biographical sketches of over twelve thousand republican-era (1912–1949) elites prominent in the fields of politics, the military, the economy, religion, education, the arts, and the sciences.
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  73. Zhang Xianwen 张宪文, Fang Qingqiu 方庆秋, and Huang Meizhen 黄美真, eds. Zhonghua minguoshi da cidian (中华民国史大辞典). Nanjing, China: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 2001.
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  75. Comprehensive coverage of the republican era from 1912 to 1949 that includes sixteen thousand items spanning biographies, events, and organizations in the fields of the economy, society, politics, the military, foreign affairs, the arts and literature, religion, media, science, and technology.
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  77. Bibliographies
  78.  
  79. Skinner, et al. 1973 is an excellent resource for articles in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages on various facets of Chinese society, including social classes and the economy, during the Qing dynasty and the early Communist era. For more specific sources on pre-1949 labor history, Chan 1981 offers a detailed guide to the rich source collection of the Hoover Library. Chūgoku rōdō undōshi kenkyūkai 1978 is an essential guide to Japanese-language sources published prior to 1949, especially regarding the labor movement and working conditions in Japanese concerns in Shanghai, northern China, and Manchuria. For Chinese sources on labor history and the labor movement, researchers should consult the extensive bibliographies in Liu and Tang 1998 (cited under General Overviews). Zhang 2005 is a comprehensive listing of Chinese-language secondary works on all facets of modern Chinese history from 1840 to 1949, including separate categories on the labor movement, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) history, and urban social classes.
  80.  
  81. Chan, Ming K. Historiography of the Chinese Labor Movement, 1895–1949. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1981.
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  83. An excellent historiographic review of Chinese labor history sources that urges greater attention to workers’ collective actions for patriotic causes and socioeconomic gains in the late Qing dynasty and the post-1927 labor struggles for survival under the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) dictatorship and the impact of Japanese aggression. Includes an annotated bibliography of 728 titles held at the Hoover Institution Library at Stanford University.
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  85. Chūgoku rōdō undōshi kenkyūkai, ed. Chūgoku rōdō mondai, rōdō undoshi bunken mokuroku: Kaihō mae (中国労働運動問題, 労働運動史文献目録: 解放前). Tokyo: Dō Kenkyūkai, Seisaku Hatsubai Kyūko Shoin, 1978.
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  87. This bibliography of over three thousand Chinese- and Japanese-language works on the pre-1949 labor movement and working conditions is organized along topical and regional lines. Most citations are from the republican era and concentrate on Shanghai, northern China, and Manchuria.
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  89. Skinner, G. William, Wensun Xie, and Shigeaki Tomita, eds. Modern Chinese Society: An Analytical Bibliography. 3 vols. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1973.
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  91. Selective bibliography oriented toward social science covers thirty-one thousand items from the secondary literature in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages regarding Chinese society since 1644. Among many subject headings are economics and social stratification in urban and rural areas. In addition to author and general indexes, includes three analytic indexes classified by historical period, geography, and local systems.
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  93. Zhang Haipeng 张海鹏, ed. Zhongguo jindaishi lunzhu mulu: 1979–2000 (中国近代史论著目录: 1979–2000). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2005.
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  95. A comprehensive bibliography of Chinese research works and sources on modern Chinese history published between 1979 and 2000. Encompasses the 1840–1949 period with separate categories, including the labor movement, CCP history, economic history, and social history.
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  97. Journals, Bulletins, and Newspapers
  98.  
  99. With the exception of Chūgoku rōdō undōshi kenkyū, no journals deal exclusively with pre-1949 labor history, although Zhongguo gongyun xueyuan xuebao includes scholarly articles on labor history. For the English-language reader, publications by the International Labour Organization offer a reformist perspective on pre-1949 labor and include translations of key government documents and articles by prominent Chinese labor scholars (Official Bulletin: International Labour Office, International Labor Information, International Labour Review). Numerous journals and periodicals devoted attention to labor issues, of which Laodong jibao, published from 1934 to 1937, remains a key source. Chan 1981 (cited under Bibliographies) provides a detailed overview of pre-1949 periodicals. The Chinese Communist perspective on labor issues during World War II can be gauged by reading Xinhua ribao.
  100.  
  101. Chūgoku rōdō undōshi kenkyū (中国労働運動史研究). 1977–.
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  103. This quarterly publishes articles on the republican-era labor movement and its leaders, labor legislation including source materials, an occasional book review, and “state-of-the-field” essays. Published in Tokyo.
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  105. International Labor Information. 1931–1933.
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  107. Published by the International Labour Organization (ILO), China Branch, on a monthly basis between October 1931 and December 1933, renamed International Labor for issues from January to September 1934 and International Labor News from September 1934 to December 1941. Besides documenting ILO activities, the journal published prominent Chinese scholarship on labor legislation and domestic and international labor issues.
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  109. International Labour Review. 1919–.
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  111. Useful resource offering English translations of the wartime Nationalist government’s laws and policies regarding unions, working conditions, labor mobility, wages, price controls, and so forth.
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  113. Laodong jibao (劳动季报). April 1934–May 1937.
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  115. Laodong jibao (Labor quarterly) included informative essays on the international and Chinese labor movements, unions, and labor education and included historical sources and a chronicle of contemporary labor events in China. Published in Nanjing.
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  117. Official Bulletin: International Labour Organization. 1919–.
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  119. The annual bulletin, published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland, has articles on labor legislation, the labor movement, and international labor agreements involving China’s Nationalist government. Coverage expanded in 1934, when China was elected a member of the ILO Governing Board. Most volumes available online.
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  121. Xinhua ribao (新华日报). October 1938–February 1947.
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  123. Journalists for Xinhua ribao (New China daily), the official Communist daily published in Chongqing, frequently reported on wartime labor issues and included a daily “reader’s garden” (duzhe yuandi 读者园地) column that published workers’ letters expressing their hopes and grievances. Researchers may first consult the useful index, Xinhua ribao suoyin bianjizu 新华日报索引编辑组编, ed. Xinhua ribao suoyin (上海書店) (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1987).
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  125. Zhongguo gongyun xueyuan xuebao (中国工运学院学报). 1987–1992.
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  127. The Bulletin of the Chinese Labor Movement Institute was published bimonthly by the Chinese Institute of Workers’ Movement. Devoted to union issues in contemporary China but occasionally published an article on the labor movement prior to 1949. Published in Beijing.
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  129. Collections of Source Materials
  130.  
  131. Following the same trajectory as the compilation of source materials for economic sectors and enterprises, collections of documents on China’s industrial proletariat and the labor movement were first published during the 1950s, experienced a hiatus during the Cultural Revolution, and witnessed a resurgence during the 1980s and the early 1990s. Zhonghua quanguo zonggonghui zhongguo zhigong yundongshi yanjiushi bian 1994 reprints important Chinese Communist Party (CCP) documents relating to unions. As China’s industrial and commercial center, Shanghai has remained the focus of most publications, such as the collections of source materials on the Rong family enterprises (Shanghai shehui kexueyuan jingji yanjiusuo jingjishi zu 1962) and on the May Thirtieth Movement (Shanghai shi dang’anguan 1991) and the twenty volumes included in the Compendium of Party and Labor Movement Histories of the Shanghai Factory Enterprises series, of which Shanghai juanyan gongren yundong shi bianxiezu 1991 is one example. The latter collection originated in the early 1950s documentation of Shanghai’s labor movement, but most materials, if published, remained classified as internal (neibu 内部) documents. Only with the rehabilitation during the early 1980s of cadres purged during the Cultural Revolution did the publication of labor history document collections ensue. The Compendium of Party and Labor Movement Histories of the Shanghai Factory Enterprises encompasses individual factories in the textile, cigarette, transport, machinery, and print industries. The collection uses archival documents, newspaper accounts, and numerous oral histories to document each factory’s development; the factory management system’s evolution; working conditions through 1949; and the major political, economic, and cultural struggles during the labor movement, with attention paid to the CCP’s influence over labor organizing. Besides these works on Shanghai, during the 1980s most provincial party committees and municipal general unions jointly published source materials on the history of the labor movement in their respective provinces, such as Sichuansheng dang’anguan 1988. Zhongguo jindai bingqi gongye dang’an shiliao bianweihui 1993 documents the development of the arms industry (China’s largest state-run industry) and various dimensions of labor. Liu and Tang 2002 is the culmination of decades of research in documenting proletarianization, working conditions, and the labor movement. Ju and Zhuang 2003 is a compilation of sources on Japan’s use of forced labor in North China for its military efforts that marks a departure from a focus on labor as part of China’s revolutionary history to the documentation of wartime victimization for purposes of domestic patriotic education and ongoing efforts to press Japan for apologies and compensation.
  132.  
  133. Ju Zhifen 菊李芝芬居之芬 and Zhuang Jianping 庄建平, eds. Riben lüeduo Huabei qiangzhi laogong dang’an shiliaoji (日本掠夺华北强制劳工档案史料集). 2 vols. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2003.
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  135. Ju Zhifen, the authority on wartime forced labor, has helped compile over one thousand pages of Chinese archival materials and Japanese sources (translated into Chinese) that document the Japanese military and government’s planning and implementation of forced labor in North China, which supplied roughly 80 percent of China’s forced laborers between 1933 and 1945.
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  137. Liu Mingkui 刘明逵 and Tang Yuliang 唐玉良, eds. Zhongguo jindai gongren jieji he gongren yundong (中国近代工人阶级和工人运动). 14 vols. Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 2002.
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  139. Includes documentation on the late Qing dynasty but emphasizes the 1915–1949 period, reflecting the premise that social classes emerged only after 1915 and that the working class was indelibly linked to the CCP. Each volume is organized along regional and thematic lines and by industrial or handicraft sector, reprinting both quantitative and qualitative sources.
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  141. Shanghai juanyan gongren yundong shi bianxiezu 上海卷烟厂工人运动史编写组, comp. Shanghai juanyan gongren yundong shi (上海卷烟工人运动史). Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 1991.
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  143. One of the twenty volumes in the Shanghai gongchang qiye dangshi gongyun shi congshu (Compendium of party and labor movement histories of the Shanghai factory enterprises) series based on archival sources, press reports, and oral interviews conducted during the 1950s and 1980s that highlight Communist Party leadership of the labor movement with details of the development, the working conditions, and the role of labor activists in Shanghai’s cigarette factories.
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  145. Shanghai shehui kexueyuan jingji yanjiusuo jingjishi zu 上海社会科学院经济硏究所編, ed. Rongjia qiye shiliao (荣家企业史料). 2 vols. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1962.
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  147. Extensive documentation from 1896 to 1949 of China’s most prominent capitalist family enterprise, which owned the Shenxin textile mills and the Maoxin flour mills. Includes sources relevant to the Rongs’ business culture, production and profits, management system, industrial relations, and working conditions.
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  149. Shanghai shi dang’anguan 上海市档案馆编, ed. Wusa yundong (五卅运动). 3 vols. Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1991.
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  151. A collection comprising approximately one thousand documents from the Shanghai Municipal Archives that highlights the roles played by the Communist Party, labor, and the business community in Shanghai during the class-inflected Nationalist May Thirtieth Movement of 1925, and the response by the Shanghai Municipal Council.
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  153. Sichuansheng dang’anguan 四川省档案馆, 四川省总工会编, ed. Sichuan gongren yundong shiliao xuanbian (四川工人运动史料选编). Chengdu, China: Sichuan daxue chubanshe, 1988.
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  155. Useful for documenting the relationship between party activists and labor, working conditions, and the Sichuan labor movement.
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  157. Zhongguo jindai bingqi gongye dang’an shiliao bianweihui 《中国近代兵器工业档案史料》编委会, comp. Zhongguo jindai bingqi gongye dang’an shiliao (中国近代兵器工业档案史料). 4 vols. Beijing: Bingqi gongye chubanshe, 1993.
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  159. Massive compendium (over thirty-six hundred pages) of archival documents that traces the development of the state-run armaments industry from the 1860s to 1949, with separate volumes dedicated to the late Qing, early republic, and warlord eras; Nationalist China; and the wartime Communist-based areas. Sources include production and budget figures, information on industrial organization, management systems, working conditions, and labor strife.
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  161. Zhonghua quanguo zonggonghui zhongguo zhigong yundongshi yanjiushi bian 中华 全囯 总工会 中囯 职工 运动史 研究室 编. Zhongguo gonghui lishi wenxian (中国工会历史文献). 5 vols. Oakton, VA: Center for Chinese Research Materials, 1994.
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  163. Includes documents on unionization from July 1921 (founding of the CCP) until the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, reflecting the perspective that unions were an appendage of the Communist Party. Originally published 1958–1959.
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  165. Labor Markets
  166.  
  167. In China during the early 20th century few workers were hired directly on the capitalist labor market; instead, their labor was bought and sold freely according to supply and demand. During that time most industrial workers remained subject to precapitalist, quasi-feudal social relations and were dependent on intermediaries. The contract labor system, in which an intermediary acting for enterprise or factory owners recruited workers and assumed partial if not total control over the terms of their employment, was prevalent in construction work; in the coal mines, China’s largest heavy goods industry; and in Shanghai’s cotton textile industry, for which Hsia Yen (Hsia 1960) wrote his celebrated exposé. Interpretations differ regarding the origins of this practice and its economic benefits. Ono 1989 (cited under Women Workers and Class Identity) ascribes the practice to the needs of foreign enterprises. Honig 1983 emphasizes the connection between the ascendancy of the Green Gang during the Nanjing decade and its control over the labor market in Shanghai, which Emily Honig argues was detrimental to capitalist interests in the long term. Wright 1981 provides a valuable economic and comparative perspective, noting that contract labor systems were widely used among countries in the early stages of industrialization and that these systems could reduce management costs. Honig 1992 uses labor market segmentation theory to show how the Shanghai labor market was divided among migrants from north and south of the Yangzi River to the detriment of the Subei (northern Jiangsu) people. Despite subethnic tensions and the presence of gangs in wartime Chongqing, conditions that would seem to replicate those found in Shanghai, Howard 2004 (cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement) finds that the state-owned arsenals during the 1940s implemented direct hiring and established an internal labor market whereby local Sichuanese workers were trained at the factory and given the opportunity to rise in the ranks of skilled workers, eventually displacing skilled workers from the coastal regions.
  168.  
  169. Honig, Emily. “The Contract Labor System and Women Workers: Pre-liberation Cotton Mills of Shanghai.” Modern China 9.4 (1983): 421–454.
  170. DOI: 10.1177/009770048300900402Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  171. Details the contract labor system, a form of bonded labor used to recruit and control young Subei women employed in the cotton mills, and ascribes its origins to the power of the Green Gang, which cornered Shanghai’s labor market after having helped mill owners crush the labor movement in 1927. Available online by subscription.
  172. Find this resource:
  173. Honig, Emily. “Native-Place Hierarchy and Labor Market Segmentation: The Case of Subei People in Shanghai.” In Chinese History in Economic Perspective. Edited by Thomas G. Rawski and Lillian M. Li, 271–294. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
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  175. Demonstrates how Shanghai’s labor market was divided between migrants from north of the Yangzi (Subei) and those from the lower Yangzi delta region. The former occupied low-status, “coolie” labor jobs, whereas the latter dominated artisanal crafts and skilled positions.
  176. Find this resource:
  177. Hsia Yen. “‘Contract Labour’ and ‘Postscript.’” Translated by Gladys Yang. Chinese Literature 8 (1960): 47–63.
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  179. Originally published in 1936 by Hsia Yen (Xia Yan), one of the founders of the League of Left-Wing Writers, the short story “Baoshengong” (“Contract Labour”) is based on his investigative reporting of the Shanghai cotton mills.
  180. Find this resource:
  181. Wright, Tim. “‘A Method of Evading Management’: Contract Labor in China’s Coal Mines before 1937.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 23.4 (1981): 656–678.
  182. DOI: 10.1017/S0010417500013591Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  183. Ascribes contract labor, used by all of China’s large-scale mines through the 1920s, to the early stages of industrialization in which labor markets remained fragmented and firms lacked trained supervisory staff. Thus, the system was not particular to Chinese culture or the needs of foreign firms operating in semicolonial China. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  184. Find this resource:
  185. Industrial Revolution and the “Social Problem”
  186.  
  187. The emergence of sociology as a field of study in China heightened concern and fear of urban social change caused by the Industrial Revolution, and efforts by the Nationalist government to control labor strife through labor legislation and its co-optation of trade unions stimulated the publication of several important studies during the 1927–1945 period. These can be broadly divided into two schools of thought—social reformist and Marxist—although both were critical of the market system. Chen 1927 pioneered the use of statistics to study the labor movement. In Zhu, et al. 1984, three underground Communist Party members offer the most comprehensive description of factory conditions and class relations in each occupational sector of Shanghai. Lowe 1977 provides a sympathetic reformist study of the social problems associated with industrialization, such as child labor and unemployment, along with descriptions of the labor movement and labor legislation. Wagner 1980, written by a proponent of a social reform program, argues that the difficulty of implementing necessary labor legislation was caused by weak public opinion in support of regulation, factory owner resistance, government inability to enforce the laws, and contention over sovereignty issues in the foreign concessions. Porter 1994 also concludes that the predominantly Christian organizations seeking industrial reforms had a limited effect in swaying public opinion and employer attitudes. Wales 1945 advocates greater autonomy for the trade unions and the government-sponsored Chinese Association of Labor for China to achieve “full national sovereignty, unity, and democracy” (p. 3). Shih 1944, written by a student of the prominent sociologist Fei Xiaotong, provides one of the first sociological studies of workers’ transition from farm to factory in the frontier province of Yunnan. Howard 2011 analyzes the development of child labor as an outgrowth of industrial capitalism and the industrial legislation that it spawned.
  188.  
  189. Chen, Da. Analysis of Strikes in China, from 1918 to 1926. Beijing: Chinese Government Bureau of Economic Information, 1927.
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  191. Pioneering statistical study of workers’ collective action by the Columbia University–trained sociologist and longtime chair of the sociology department at Qinghua University in Beijing.
  192. Find this resource:
  193. Howard, Joshua H. “A History of Child Labor in China.” In Child Labour’s Global Past. Edited by Kristoffel Lieten and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, 501–525. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2011.
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  195. The first historical overview of the causes and scope of child labor in pre-1949 China and the debates and industrial legislation that it generated.
  196. Find this resource:
  197. Lowe, Chuan-hua. Facing Labor Issues in China. Washington, DC: University Publications of America, 1977.
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  199. Originally published by the China Institute of Pacific Relations in 1933, this reformist-leaning study by the industrial secretary of the National Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) of China surveys social problems connected with industrial development, trade unions, labor policy, and industrial welfare.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. Porter, Robin. Industrial Reformers in Republican China. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994.
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  203. Informative study of the industrial reform efforts by the YMCA, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the Industrial Labor Organization, the Shanghai Municipal Council, and the National Christian Council of China and of each organization’s relationship to capital and labor. Appendixes include a variety of documents, such as factory regulations and surveys of wage rates.
  204. Find this resource:
  205. Shih, Kuo-heng. China Enters the Machine Age. Edited and translated by Hsiao-tung Fei and Francis L. K. Hsu. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944.
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  207. A study of social change conducted by the Yenching-Yunnan Station for Sociological Research that examines the impact of wartime industrialization on Yunnan Province, with case studies by Kuo-heng Shi and Ju-k’ang T’ien, respectively, of employees of a state-owned electrical supply factory and first-generation female cotton mill workers.
  208. Find this resource:
  209. Wagner, Augusta. Labor Legislation in China. New York: Garland, 1980.
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  211. First published in 1938 by Yenching University, Beijing, where Wagner taught in the Department of Economics, the study remains an insightful analysis of Nationalist government labor legislation and factory social welfare. Argues that labor legislation was delayed in part when entangled in political battles over sovereignty and the foreign concessions.
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  213. Wales, Nym. The Chinese Labor Movement. New York: John Day, 1945.
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  215. Sympathetic to the Chinese Communists and an advocate of independent unions, Nym Wales (the pen name of Helen Foster Snow) contrasts the vibrant labor movement and push for unionization from 1923 to 1927 with Nationalist government controls over organized labor after the break in the First United Front.
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  217. Zhu Bangxing 朱邦兴, Hu Lin’ge 胡林阁, and Xu Sheng 徐声. Shanghai chanye yu Shanghai zhigong (上海产业与上海职工). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1984.
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  219. Originally published in 1939. The authors were underground Communist Party members investigating the economy, factory conditions, and class relations in Shanghai’s industrial, transportation, and communication sectors at the outbreak of the anti-Japanese war.
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  221. Class Formation and the Labor Movement
  222.  
  223. The issues of class formation and Marxist analysis of the labor movement remain contested. For decades the seminal study by Jean Chesneaux (Chesneaux 1968) was the benchmark work, admired for its comprehensive treatment of the 1920s labor movement, but it has been challenged more recently for its conclusions. Chesneaux argued that forces of imperialism and exploitative labor regimes fueled the labor movement between 1919 and 1927, during which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) provided ideological guidance and shaped workers’ class consciousness. As they became ever more conscious of their class interests, workers cast off their “traditional” shackles—that is, regional rivalries and patron-client relations. A second generation of labor historians influenced by E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Random House, 1963) sought to study workers’ experience and culture as the key to understanding class formation. Using such a methodology, Honig 1986 (cited under Women Workers and Class Identity) and Hershatter 1986 reach more mixed conclusions than those of Chesneaux 1968 regarding working-class consciousness. Both highlight how workers had divided loyalties because of particularistic regional affiliations and the tenacity of patron-client relations between workers and their supervisors or labor bosses. The pioneering studies by Alain Roux (Roux 1993 and Roux 1995) of Shanghai labor and labor activism after the collapse of the United Front in 1927 and subsequent white terror second this emphasis on class fragmentation, which rendered workers susceptible to the domination of labor bosses associated with organized crime and the Nationalist state during the 1930s. Rather than treat class fragmentation as a liability, Perry 1993 argues that divisions among workers based on skill, gender, and regional provenance laid the foundation for collective action. Rejecting the analysis in Chesneaux 1968 of major labor episodes, such as the 1927 three armed uprisings, as class based, Perry 1993 argues that workers were motivated by economic and nationalist issues, thus acting as consumers or citizens rather than as members of a class. By contrast, Smith 2002 reintroduces the concept of class in discursive terms by arguing that the labor movement, especially after the May Thirtieth Movement, represented a class-inflected nationalism. In a study of Chongqing’s arsenal workers during the 1940s, Howard 2004 analyzes social class in terms of structure, ways of life, dispositions, and collective action and argues that workers pursued their own specific class interests in times of heightened labor militancy.
  224.  
  225. Chesneaux, Jean. The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927. Translated by H. M. Wright. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968.
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  227. Originally published in French in 1962. A pioneering and comprehensive study of working-class formation on a national scale during the Roaring Twenties. Argues that workers in the modern industrial sector under the impact of imperialism, capitalist exploitation, and Communist organizing moved from a class “in itself” to a class “for itself.”
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Hershatter, Gail. The Workers of Tianjin, 1900–1949. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986.
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  231. An empirically rich social and cultural history of the diverse and fragmented working class in the northern treaty port city of Tianjin, with case studies of ironworkers, cotton mill hands, and freight haulers. The prevalence of patronage, laborers’ continued ties to the farmland, and economic instability impeded the development of horizontal class relations and class consciousness.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Howard, Joshua H. Workers at War: Labor in China’s Arsenals, 1937–1953. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.
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  235. Study of labor relations in the Nationalist defense industry concentrated in the wartime capital of Chongqing, underscoring how three interrelated wars (national liberation, civil war, and class) accelerated processes of social change and class formation. Concludes that labor activism of the 1940s influenced social welfare and political movements of the early 1950s.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. Perry, Elizabeth J. Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.
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  239. Important reinterpretation of the Shanghai labor movement from the late Qing dynasty to 1949 arguing, contra Jean Chesneaux (Chesneaux 1968), that sectional, regional, gender, and skill divisions fueled workers’ collective action. Suggests political party affiliations based on skill divisions, with artisans and skilled workers (e.g., printers and silk weavers) supporting the CCP, machine operators in the tobacco and cotton industries gravitating toward the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) and the government-approved “yellow unions,” and “North China proletarians” remaining apolitical.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Roux, Alain. Le Shanghai ouvrier des années trente: Coolies, gangsters et syndicalistes. Paris: Harmattan, 1993.
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  243. A detailed study of Shanghai labor emphasizing how native place, guilds, brotherhoods, sisterhoods, and secret societies fostered class fragmentation.
  244. Find this resource:
  245. Roux, Alain. Grèves et politique à Shanghai: Les désillusions, 1927–1932. Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1995.
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  247. A finely researched study of labor activism in the aftermath of the white terror that highlights the limits of worker solidarity and lack of trade union autonomy because of the close nexus forged between the Green Gang and Nationalist government leaders.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Smith, S. A. Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895–1927. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.
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  251. A theoretically sophisticated analysis of the Shanghai labor movement and its rhetoric, which emphasizes how the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925 reflected and reinforced a class-inflected, anti-imperialist nationalism.
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  253. The Bourgeoisie and Its Politics
  254.  
  255. Although scholars do not interpret the 1911 revolution as a bourgeois revolution, Esherick 1998 posits that a new reformist elite emerged in the decade leading up to the revolution but that the residual gentry origins of this new elite class led it to find common cause with traditional gentry landowners. Rowe 1989 also stresses the rise of a professional and independent merchant class that undertook quasi-government functions in the Yangzi River entrepôt city of Hankou prior to the 1911 revolution. Bergère 1989, authored by a longtime student of the Chinese capitalist class, traces the social formation of a new class, the modern urban business class of Shanghai that identified with the norms and business practices of the treaty ports, to the 1912–1927 period, when the bourgeoisie became distinct from the older traditional merchant class operating under the gentry bureaucratic order of late imperial China. Despite this break with the past and its newfound links with the world market, the bourgeoisie’s business culture and practices retained vestiges of the old Confucian order. Bergère 1989, Cheng 2002, and Coble 2003 interpret the business community’s continued reliance on family and regional ties as key components rather than impediments in the development of Chinese capitalism. All three scholars highlight the fusion of Confucian personalistic methods and Western managerial techniques. On the question of the relationship of the bourgeoisie to the Nationalist government during the Nanjing decade (1927–1937), consensus reigns with some differences of degree that the bourgeoisie was a weak social class increasingly subordinated to the demands of the bureaucratic state. Bush 1982 offers a nuanced view of the relationship by noting a convergence of interests between cotton mill owners and government authorities with regard to taxation reform and industrial relations, whereas Coble 1986 forcefully underscores the predatory and extortionate practices of Chiang Kai-shek’s regime vis-à-vis the Shanghai capitalists. Coble 2003 rebuts the patriotic nationalist narrative prominent in Chinese scholarship regarding wartime collaboration with the Japanese and their quisling, or traitorous nationalist, governments by showing the variety of responses among capitalists that ran the gamut of resistance and collaboration.
  256.  
  257. Bergère, Marie-Claire. The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911–1937. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
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  259. An influential study of how the Shanghai bourgeoisie spurred economic modernization in prewar China emphasizing its dependency on the booms and busts of the international economy and constraints exerted by agricultural stagnation and underdeveloped infrastructure. Concludes that the reemergence of a parasitic bureaucratic state after 1927 curtailed the political independence of the bourgeoisie.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Bush, Richard C. The Politics of Cotton Textiles in Kuomintang China, 1927–1937. New York: Garland, 1982.
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  263. Rejecting the view that the bourgeoisie was homogeneous in pursuing its interests, argues that the Shanghai cotton mill owners forged links with the Nationalist state on tax reform and labor-management conflict but preserved their relative independence from the Nationalist regime because of the near-constant military challenges facing the state.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Cheng, Linsun. Banking in Modern China: Entrepreneurs, Enterprises, and the Development of Chinese Banks, 1897–1937. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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  267. Traces how the modern Chinese banking sector dominated the market in terms of capital power by 1936. Challenges the view that China’s banks expanded primarily through trading and speculation in government bonds. Highlights how a new class of entrepreneurial bankers generated success using traditional Chinese business practices and Western techniques.
  268. Find this resource:
  269. Coble, Parks M. The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927–1937. 2d ed. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1986.
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  271. Countering the view of Chinese Marxist historians that the Nationalist regime served the interests of the bourgeoisie, Coble argues that Chiang Kai-shek’s regime during the Nanjing decade was predatory vis-à-vis the business community and remained autonomous from capitalist leverage.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Coble, Parks M. Chinese Capitalists in Japan’s New Order: The Occupied Lower Yangzi, 1937–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
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  275. Capitalists’ response to Japanese occupation spanned the gamut of resistance and collaboration but moved toward the latter after 1942 to preserve their businesses. Argues that capitalists in the textile, rubber, match, and chemical industries responded to Japanese demands using connections embedded in their family firms but not collectively in class terms.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Esherick, Joseph W. Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei. Rev. ed. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1998.
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  279. Originally published in 1976. Argues that the provincial elite led by its Westernized urban reformist wing undertook political and economic reforms from 1901 to 1911 that alienated the peasant masses and the urban poor, who bore the burden of the costs of the reforms. To prevent a social revolution, the elite used the 1911 revolution to uphold their class interests.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Rowe, William T. Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796–1895. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989.
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  283. Discusses the social history of Hankow and the managerial role of guilds in city governance that helped promote an urban identity. By the late Qing dynasty “dangerous classes” had emerged, but sponsorship of urban infrastructure, security forces, and social welfare services by a new class of gentry-merchants helped diffuse social tension.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Nationalism, Class, and the Labor Movement in South China
  286.  
  287. The labor history of the Canton delta area and Hong Kong has attracted scholarly attention for several reasons. The British colonial presence in Hong Kong and the status of Guangzhou as the base of the Nationalist Party prior to the Northern Expedition and as the site of the sixteen-month Hong Kong–Canton strike during the mid-1920s have generated several studies on the relationship between nationalism and class formation. Chan 1975 argues that participation in the labor movement was fueled by workers’ economic grievances and nationalist sentiment rather than a strong sense of antagonism toward capitalists. Tsai 1993 underscores resistance among Chinese merchants and laborers to British colonial rule—for instance, in the 1884 riots—but contends that class divisions between merchants and laborers limited the scope of popular nationalism. Fung 2005 offers a rich ethnographic survey and study of poor migrant rickshaw pullers, finding a surprisingly high degree of political activism. Chan 1991 argues that the formation of a British mercantile class in Hong Kong was in large part fueled by racial tensions between the British and the Chinese but that these racial and status markers in Chinese society were subsumed by the class divisions between Chinese laborers and their employers, as epitomized by the seamen’s strike of 1922. Tsin 2000 rejects a metanarrative of class but suggests that both Communists and Nationalist elites during the 1920s adopted a discourse of class regardless of social reality, that is, that the Guangzhou working class was fragmented, contributing to the eventual disaffection of workers and the bloodletting between the two parties in 1927. By contrast, although Dirlik 1997 recognizes worker infighting in the aftermath of the Hong Kong–Canton strike, it argues that such divisions do not negate class consciousness but rather reflect the struggle for hegemony over the concepts of class and revolution.
  288.  
  289. Chan, Ming Kou. “Labor and Empire: The Chinese Labor Movement in the Canton Delta, 1895–1927.” PhD diss., Stanford University, 1975.
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  291. A pioneering study of the Guangdong–Hong Kong labor movement demonstrating how the forces of economism and nationalism propelled and shaped labor activism in the Pearl River delta.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Chan, Wai Kwan. The Making of Hong Kong Society: Three Studies of Class Formation in Early Hong Kong. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
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  295. Traces the formation of a Chinese merchant class through organizations, for example, the Tung Wah Hospital, and its tenuous political integration. Concludes that the seamen’s strike of 1922 marked Hong Kong’s shift from a status society dependent on racial identity to a class society in which workers pursued their interests against British and Chinese employers.
  296. Find this resource:
  297. Dirlik, Arif. “Narrativizing Revolution: The Guangzhou Uprising (11–13 December 1927) in Workers’ Perspective.” Modern China 23.4 (1997): 363–397.
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  299. Counters global and national narratives of the Chinese Revolution by highlighting the place-based narrative of the tragic Guangzhou uprising, in which vengefulness and hope motivated workers to take militant action. Infighting among workers and divisions between workers and radical intellectuals manifest the struggle for hegemony over conceptions of class and revolution. Available online by subscription.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Fung Chi Ming. Reluctant Heroes: Rickshaw Pullers in Hong Kong and Canton, 1874–1954. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005.
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  303. Well-researched study of working-class politics among rickshaw pullers, whose availability in urban public spaces and grievances against the abuse of power, foreign racism, and concern about competition from trams and buses were important factors fueling their activism.
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  305. Tsai, Jung-fang. Hong Kong in Chinese History: Community and Social Unrest in the British Colony, 1842–1913. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
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  307. One of the first social histories of colonial Hong Kong that addresses both merchant collaboration after 1884 and the rise after 1895 of “coolie nationalism” and resistance to British colonial rule.
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  309. Tsin, Michael T. W. Nation, Governance, and Modernity in China: Canton, 1900–1927. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
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  311. Demonstrates that political leaders during the 1920s refashioned Canton society using a discourse of class. Because mobilization politics—characterized by Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) regimentation and Communist class violence—had more to do with elite perceptions of the “social body” than social realities, Cantonese workers by 1927 became increasingly disaffected from both political parties.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Radical Intellectuals, the Chinese Communist Party, and Labor
  314.  
  315. These works examine the relationship among radical intellectuals, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and labor, especially the construction and contestation of labor and social class as a theoretical construct and as social reality. The scholarship implicitly challenges Chinese Marxist historiography that the CCP directed the labor movement and shaped working-class consciousness. Dirlik 1989 shows how radical intellectuals through the immediate aftermath of the May Fourth Movement were deeply influenced by Pyotr Kropotkin’s ideas about mutual aid in his Mutual Aid (London: Heinemann, 1902) and were suspicious of class struggle. Although new culture radicals with anarchist leanings advocated a thoroughgoing social revolution that would end class oppression, they sought to reconcile class differences and opposed class conflict for fear that pursuing class interests would foster selfishness. The anarchist goal of merging learning and labor influenced both political parties, as manifest in the short-lived experiment of the National Labor University documented in Chan and Dirlik 1991. However, industrial capitalism and the formation of a proletariat provided a social reality for the Communist theories—the necessity of class violence and the dictatorship of the proletariat—to take root. Both Dirlik 1989 and Smith 2000 highlight the catalytic role of the Comintern in imparting organization and discipline to the fledgling Communist Party. Interpretations of the Nationalist revolution differ in weighing external and internal factors in the 1927 defeat of the CCP’s urban labor strategy. Isaacs 1961 emphasizes how the power struggle between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky led to the Comintern and the CCP’s betrayal of the working class, whereas Smith 2000 underscores how a divided labor force and unequal balance of power ultimately doomed the labor movement in 1927. Kwan 1997 emphasizes contradictions between the Party Central Committee in Shanghai and Communist activists in South China during the Guangzhou–Hong Kong general strike and contradictions between Communist intellectuals and rank-and-file workers that ultimately led the party in 1927 to abandon the workers’ interests in favor of its own pursuit of revolution. Smith 1996 too shows that workers were acquiescent in their secondary status to CCP intellectuals. Despite the setback of the urban labor strategy and the rural exodus after 1927, Thomas 1983 underscores the persistence of “proletarian hegemony” to Communist theorizers throughout the 1930s. Howard 2003 demonstrates how the “organic intellectual” Yu Zusheng, a radical worker committed to social activism, mediated between the educated and the masses and conveyed a moral vision of class relations, a concern that was an integral part of class formation.
  316.  
  317. Chan, Ming K., and Arif Dirlik. Schools into Fields and Factories: Anarchists, the Guomindang, and the National Labor University in Shanghai, 1927–1932. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
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  319. Examines the theory and practice of Shanghai’s Labor University, which sought to implement the anarchist ideal of merging learning and labor to dissolve class divisions and inequalities. “Labor learning” influenced both Nationalists seeking control over the labor movement and Communists who viewed education as a means of social transformation.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Dirlik, Arif. The Origins of Chinese Communism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
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  323. Analyzes the interrelationship between ideology and organization in the ascendancy of bolshevism and the founding of the CCP while also examining how May Fourth Movement radical intellectuals interpreted concepts of social class and class struggle.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Howard, Joshua H. “Yu Zusheng: Organic Intellectuals and the Moral Basis of Class in Wartime Chongqing.” Asian Studies Review 27.3 (2003): 289–316.
  326. DOI: 10.1080/10357820308713380Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. A study of an arsenal worker, poet, and revolutionary martyr who, like the anarchists of the May Fourth Movement era, viewed class in moral terms between mental and manual labor, rich and poor. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Isaacs, Harold R. The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. 2d rev. ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1961.
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  331. Classic account of the mass movement supporting the Northern Expedition and the collapse of the CCP’s urban-labor strategy due to Chiang Kai-shek’s right-wing putsch, the rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky, and the betrayal of the working class by the Comintern and the CCP. Originally published in 1938.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Kwan, Daniel Y. K. Marxist Intellectuals and the Chinese Labor Movement: A Study of Deng Zhongxia (1894–1933). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997.
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  335. A densely textured study of the radical Communist labor organizer Deng Zhongxia, the political dynamics of the Guangzhou–Hong Kong general strike from June 1925 to October 1926, and the contradictions between Marxist intellectuals and working-class interests.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Smith, S. A. A Road Is Made: Communism in Shanghai, 1920–1927. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000.
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  339. Uses Comintern archives opened in the late 20th century to redress the influential position of Comintern agents in imparting organizational discipline to Shanghai’s Communist movement. But contra Isaacs 1961, underscores how a divided labor force and unequal balance of power ultimately doomed the labor movement in 1927.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Smith, Steve A. “Workers, the Intelligentsia, and Marxist Parties: St. Petersburg, 1895–1917, and Shanghai, 1921–27.” International Review of Social History 41.1 (1996): 1–56.
  342. DOI: 10.1017/S0020859000113689Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. Comparative analysis exploring why Chinese workers’ relationship to intellectuals in the CCP was more subservient and less equitable than that of their Russian counterparts. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Thomas, S. Bernard. Labor and the Chinese Revolution: Class Strategies and Contradictions of Chinese Communism, 1928–48. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1983.
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  347. Underscores the theoretical importance of labor and persistence of “proletarian hegemony” in Communist Party ideology, which created urban-rural dichotomies in party policy and impeded the basic land revolution.
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Women Workers and Class Identity
  350.  
  351. Much of Shanghai’s early industrialization, especially in the cotton mills and other light industries, depended on the labor of young girls and women. Luo 2011 is an overview and socioeconomic analysis of Shanghai’s cotton industry and the community of predominantly women workers in the Gaolangqiao district since the early 20th century. Luo Suwen’s study explores how China has become the world’s second-largest exporter of textiles using advanced technology but cheap labor. English-language works explore the effects of patriarchal values on women’s work experience, the sexual division of labor, and the labor movement. The scholarship highlights women’s agency and resistance but varies in its assessment of women’s politicization and class consciousness. Honig 1986 argues that the contract labor system, the dominance of the Green Gang over the labor market, regional particularistic ties of Subei and Jiangnan workers, and mistrust between male Communist organizers and women workers were factors impeding cotton mill workers during the 1920s from developing a strong sense of class consciousness. In contrast to Chesneaux 1968 (cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement), Honig 1986 maintains that employment in Japanese and British mills exacerbated fault lines within the working class. Both Ono 1989 and McQuaide 1995 provide more favorable assessments of working women’s politicization, participation in the labor movement, and class consciousness. McQuaide 1995 uses newly accessible materials on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to demonstrate increased party membership among women workers during the 1940s and stronger links between Communist activists and cotton mill hands than Honig 1986 acknowledges. Perry 1993 (cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement) underscores how different skill levels led to different politics; silk filature workers remained independent of CCP organizers, whereas weavers played a central role in union politics during the 1940s. Smith 1994 is explicit in examining the interplay between gender and class identities and rejecting the “dual systems” theory, which posits binaries between production and reproduction, capitalism and patriarchy, and class and gender. Most of the demands of women workers during strikes were similar to those of their male counterparts, with emphasis on wage increases, shorter working hours, and unfair treatment by supervisors, but strikes for similar ends could have different meanings for men and women. Smith 1994 concludes, contra Honig 1986, that although women actively participated in the labor movement and identified with a common class struggle, the CCP’s emphasis on equality was achieved at the cost of denying sexual difference.
  352.  
  353. Honig, Emily. Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986.
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  355. Pioneering study of women workers’ daily lives, culture, and work experiences that highlights how subethnic (native place) ties, Green Gang dominance over the labor market, the contract labor system, and patriarchal attitudes among Communist organizers impeded the development of a revolutionary class-conscious workforce.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Luo Suwen 罗苏文. Gaolangqiao jishi: Jindai Shanghai yige mianfangzhi gongyequ de xingqi yu zhongjie (1700–2000) (高郎桥纪事: 近代上海一个棉纺织工业去的兴起与终结 [1700–2000]). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2011.
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  359. A conceptually innovative study of women workers employed in Shanghai’s Gaolangqiao textile district in its broad comparative scope and chronological sweep, with two-thirds of its rich archival and oral history sources drawn from the Maoist and reform eras.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. McQuaide, Shiling Zhao. “Shanghai Labour: Gender, Politics, and Traditions in the Making of the Chinese Working Class, 1911–1949.” PhD diss., Queen’s University, 1995.
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  363. In contrast to Emily Honig (Honig 1986) and Alain Roux (Roux 1993 and Roux 1995, both cited under Class Formation and the Labor Movement), McQuaide argues that, during the heightened militancy of the late 1940s, women workers influenced by nationalist currents and Communist Party mobilization played a central role in Shanghai’s working-class formation.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Ono Kazuko. “The Rise of Women Workers.” In Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850–1950. By Ono Kazuko. Edited by Joshua A. Fogel, 112–139. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989.
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  367. In line with the book’s theme that women were agents of historical change in modern China, this chapter uses both Chinese and Japanese sources to analyze women’s working conditions, exploitation, and resistance in the Shanghai textile industry, with ample coverage of the Japanese-owned mills.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Smith, Steve. “Class and Gender: Women’s Strikes in St. Petersburg, 1895–1917, and in Shanghai, 1895–1927.” Social History 19.2 (1994): 141–168.
  370. DOI: 10.1080/03071029408567901Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. Comparative analysis of the form and content of strikes involving women with a focus on interplay between class and gender. Shows how sexual differences were invoked during strikes and how women expressed new identities as workers and women but that Communist Party leaders ignored specific needs of women in the belief that workers shared common interests irrespective of gender.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Wartime Labor
  374.  
  375. Studies of labor during the anti-Japanese war have pivoted around questions regarding the state-labor relationship in terms of wartime mobilization, state co-optation of labor or workers’ resistance to the state, the degree of nationalism among workers, and the degree to which paternalistic management-labor relations during the 1940s were a precursor to the Communist work unit system. Interpretations vary regarding the effect of the anti-Japanese war on worker politics and labor’s relationship to the state. Epstein and Friedman 1949 documents the deterioration of workers’ living standards and the growing alienation of labor from the state in Nationalist-controlled China. Howard 2003 counters Nationalist propaganda that workers were docile and patriotic by exploring how workers in wartime Chongqing used their mobility as a lever to defy arsenal management and to express dissatisfaction with working conditions. Regardless of workers’ motives in leaving the factory, government and industrial authorities viewed labor mobility as a form of resistance and branded “fugitive” workers as deserters. By contrast, Qi 1986 downplays worker resistance and stresses the patriotic and multiclass unity forged by the United Front alliance between the Nationalist and Communist Parties. In a study of the revival of the Shanghai labor movement during 1940 and 1941, Roux 2004 underscores the tenuous ties between the Wang Jingwei regime and union leaders. The former sought to use the movement to destabilize European authorities in the foreign concessions, and the latter sought revenge against the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, GMD). Although worker protests were fueled by narrow economic, not political, motives, the risk of being branded collaborators led pro–Wang Jingwei unions quickly to cut their ties to the puppet regime. Other studies of wartime labor, such as Kratoska 2005, emphasize repressive colonial state controls over labor mobilization as in Japanese-controlled northern China and Taiwan. The emergence of the state’s social welfare institutions (a precursor to the Communist work unit system) during the 1940s is the subject of Lü and Perry 1997 and Frazier 2002. The latter emphasizes that the civil war years (1946–1949) witnessed the growth of enterprises offering welfare services to sustain workers’ standard of living during the hyperinflation crisis that afflicted the Nationalists.
  376.  
  377. Epstein, Israel, with Julian R. Friedman. Notes on Labor Problems in Nationalist China. New York: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1949.
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  379. Uses government surveys, wage statistics, and interviews to examine critically Nationalist government labor policy, corruption among the official class, and the war’s effect on labor set in the context of the Nationalist collapse and the Communist success.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Frazier, Mark W. The Making of the Chinese Industrial Workplace: State, Revolution, and Labor Management. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  382. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511510076Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. Stresses institutional continuities between China’s pre- and postrevolutionary workforce organizations. Argues that labor management institutions and norms involving hiring practices, compressed seniority wages, welfare provisions, and dominant supervisors evolved as a process between the 1930s and the early 1960s.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Howard, Joshua H. “Chongqing’s Most Wanted: Worker Mobility and Resistance in China’s Nationalist Arsenals, 1937–1945.” Modern Asian Studies 37.4 (2003): 955–997.
  386. DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X03004098Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. A quantitative study of labor mobility among the arsenal workers of Chongqing that analyzes the causes and extent of mobility during the early 1940s and its social and political implications, including the expansion of social welfare benefits as a state and managerial response to the crisis created by labor shortages. Available online by subscription.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. Kratoska, Paul H. Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2005.
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  391. Weighted toward Japanese labor systems in Southeast Asia but includes essays on colonial Manchuria, Taiwan, and northern China that detail how wartime mobilization regimes for labor grew increasingly coercive and brutal over time.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Lü, Xiaobo, and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds. Danwei: The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.
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  395. Multidisciplinary studies on the origins and evolution of the danwei 单位 (work unit) system, a key institution of the Maoist era, that refers to urban residential and work communities administered by state enterprises.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Qi Wu 齐武. Kangri zhanzheng shiqi Zhongguo gongren yundong shigao (抗日战争中国工人运动史稿). Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1986.
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  399. Argues that workers’ nationalist sentiment during the War of Resistance acted as a moderating influence on the labor movement defined strictly by strike activity. The expansion of state-owned industry and absence of foreign-owned enterprises in Nationalist-controlled China proved more conducive to Chinese employers and workers uniting in the resistance against Japan.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Roux, Alain. “From Revenge to Treason: Political Ambivalence among Wang Jingwei’s Labor Union Supporters.” In The Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation. Edited by Christian Henriot and Wen-hsin Yeh, 209–228. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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  403. Examines the revival of labor militancy during 1940 and 1941 as an outgrowth of economic hardship and the ultimately futile efforts of the Wang Jingwei regime to channel worker grievances into support for the puppet authorities.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Artisans and the Handicraft Sector
  406.  
  407. These works examine the effect of industrial capitalism on artisans working in the traditional handicraft sector and evaluate whether artisans played a central role in the labor movement, as in 19th-century Britain or France, because of their greater degree of literacy, higher wages, and pride in their work—as a craft learned through apprenticeship. Much of the scholarship on artisans during the first half of the 20th century emphasizes the deleterious effect of mechanized industrialization on handicraft industries and the new social relations forged by capitalism. Shaffer 1982 documents how Communists during the early 1920s unionized Hunan masons and carpenters by taking advantage of workers’ resentment toward capitalist change, which had divided their guilds (organized as a fictive lineage) along class lines. Eng 1990 ascribes the relative lack of militancy among Guangdong weavers to the incorporation of their handicraft sector into the silk export sector and to the presence of strong lineage forces that protected silk filatures from acts of Luddism. Weavers in the Yangzi delta region also did not engage in machine smashing, primarily because silk filatures were concentrated in Shanghai. They focused their ire instead on local officials and employers. Perry 1992 contrasts the collective actions of “modern” silk weavers employed at the Meiya Company with “traditional” silk weavers employed in smaller factories. The former struck in 1930 and 1934 for clearly articulated demands (higher wages, equal pay for men and women, and elimination of fines) and used their own networks to lead the strike, whereas the latter struck in 1936 and 1937 under the leadership of state-sponsored unions. Perry 1992 concludes that weavers, once a labor aristocracy in Shanghai that had lost its privileges during the Nanjing decade, found common cause with the growth of proletarian weavers by the late 1940s. In Harrison 2006 the state’s modernizing project (rather than capitalism) threatens the livelihood of rural Shanxi artisans employed in mining and the papermaking craft.
  408.  
  409. Eng, Robert Y. “Luddism and Labor Protest among Silk Artisans and Workers in Jiangnan and Guangdong, 1860–1930.” Late Imperial China 11.2 (1990): 63–101.
  410. DOI: 10.1353/late.1990.0004Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. Argues that industrialization was a socially integrating force in Guangdong but augmented social strife in Jiangnan among silk weavers and filature workers. Guangdong weavers’ relative quiescence derived from their dependence on the silk export sector. Jiangnan weavers were more militant because of class divisions, increasingly pronounced after workers unionized in 1910. Available online by subscription.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Harrison, Henrietta. “Village Industries and the Making of Rural-Urban Difference in Early Twentieth-Century Shanxi.” In How China Works: Perspectives on the Twentieth-Century Industrial Workplace. Edited by Jacob Eyferth, 25–40. London: Routledge, 2006.
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  415. Study of Shanxi’s rural industrialization (papermaking and mining) during the late Qing dynasty and the republican era emphasizing the adverse policies foisted on artisans and miners by the modernizing elite and the state.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Perry, Elizabeth J. “Strikes among Shanghai Silk Weavers, 1927–1937: The Awakening of a Labor Aristocracy.” In Shanghai Sojourners. Edited by Frederic Wakeman Jr. and Wen-hsin Yeh, 305–341. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1992.
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  419. Argues that post-1927 collective action among Shanghai silk weavers was initiated in 1930 and 1934 by male artisans from eastern Zhejiang threatened by capitalist initiatives on their craft and autonomy, whereas “proletarianized” weavers from traditional rural handicraft areas led protests in 1937 and the civil war period.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Shaffer, Lynda. Mao and the Workers: The Hunan Labor Movement, 1920–1923. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1982.
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  423. Besides seeking to establish Chairman Mao Zedong’s revolutionary pedigree in the labor movement, the author contributes to our understanding of how artisans (e.g., masons, carpenters, and cobblers) used preindustrial ties to form the core of the labor movement in Hunan Province in response to the birth pangs of industrial capitalism.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Petty Urbanites and the Poor
  426.  
  427. The works cited in this section examine the daily life and value system of the lower middle class, also known as petty urbanites (xiao shimin), and those of the poor and how they coped with urbanization and modernity. Link 1981 argues that the popularity of “butterfly literature” among petty urbanites derived from its escapism and above all its probing of the reader’s feelings about the dilemmas of modern life. Lu 1999 offers an ethnographic survey of everyday life in Shanghai’s alleyway neighborhoods, emphasizing both the shaping of daily life by commercialism and the avenues of upward social mobility open to recent rural migrants. Lu 2005 provides a cultural history of street beggars, arguing that a shared cultural identity prevailed from the 1600s to 1950. Although beggars experienced poverty, Shanghai’s professional beggars experienced greater freedoms in their lifestyles than did other urban poor and could earn more than factory workers. Wide ranging in its scope, Strand 1989 uses the case of Beijing’s rickshaw pullers to examine how they were caught up in competing forces of tradition and modernization and how their politicization played a part in an emerging civic culture. Yeh 2007 examines how office and shop clerks aspired to a modern lifestyle and clashed with traditional family expectations but ultimately embraced Communist Party paternalism on the eve of the 1949 revolution as their own economic status deteriorated under the impact of economic depression and civil war. Lipkin 2006 analyzes the attitude of the Nationalist state toward the poor and its social regulation of deviants, including shantytown dwellers, arguing that regulation was part of a civilizing project of modernity.
  428.  
  429. Link, E. Perry, Jr. Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Cities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.
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  431. A pioneering study of “butterfly literature,” the popular middle- to lowbrow fiction of the 1910s through the 1930s. Also provides a social history of the urban lifestyle, values, and concerns of its readership—the petty urbanite class.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Lipkin, Zwia. Useless to the State: “Social Problems” and Social Engineering in Nationalist Nanjing, 1927–1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006.
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  435. Argues that the Nationalist government’s determination to make its capital of Nanjing a showcase of modernity led municipal administrators, with limited success, to implement social engineering plans targeting deviant or asocial elements—refugees, prostitutes, disorderly rickshaw pullers, shantytown dwellers, and mendicants.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Lu, Hanchao. Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
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  439. A vivid if somewhat nostalgic account of daily life among Shanghai’s poor and petty urbanites residing in alleyway neighborhoods shaped by intense commercialization but not by class distinction or foreign influence.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Lu, Hanchao. Street Criers: A Cultural History of Chinese Beggars. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.
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  443. An encyclopedic study of beggars’ status, their begging methods, their ties to local authorities, and popular perceptions of beggars from the 1600s, during the Qing dynasty, until 1950. Offers a typology of mendicants with a focus on urban professional beggars organized in guilds under a “beggar headman” and plying their trade in a particular neighborhood.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Strand, David. Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
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  447. One of several important publications of the late 1980s influenced by Jürgen Habermas’s concept of a “public sphere.” Strand uses the case of Beijing’s rickshaw pullers, police, and merchant elite to argue that the interplay and politics of consensus and conflict marked the emergence of an incipient civic culture.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Yeh, Wen-hsin. Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843–1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
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  451. A detailed study of the everyday lives, aspirations, and frustrations of Shanghai’s “gowned” or lower middle class (“petty urbanites”) working in the department stores and banking sector. Traces the development of a hybrid commercial culture during the republican period that emphasized middle-class respectability, modern time discipline, and patriotism.
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