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Labor's Love Lost: Worker Militancy in Communist China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Elizabeth J. Perry
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley

Abstract

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Type
Labor Under Communist Regimes
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 1996

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References

NOTES

1. See Shaffer, Lynda. Mao and the Workers: The Hunan Labor Movement, 1920–1923 (Armonk. 1982);Google ScholarPerry, Elizabeth J., Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford. 1993).Google Scholar

2. See, for example, Haydu, Jeffrey. Between Craft and Class: Skilled Workers and Factory Politics in the United States and Britain (Berkeley, 1988);Google ScholarKatznelson, Ira and Zolberg, Aristide R.. eds., Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, 1986);Google ScholarAminzade, Ronald, Class, Politics, and Early Industrial Capitalism (New York, 1981);Google ScholarSewell, William P., Work and Revolution in France (New York. 1980);CrossRefGoogle ScholarHanagan, Michael P., The Logic of Solidarity (Urbana, 1980):Google ScholarGutman, Herbert G., Work, Culture and Society (New York, 1977);Google ScholarMoss, Bernard H., The Origins of the French Labor Movement: The Socialism of Skilled Workers (Berkeley, 1976);Google ScholarScott, Joan W.. The Glass workers of Carmaux: French Craftsmen and Political Activism in a Nineteenth-Century City (Cambridge, 1974).Google Scholar

3. See Bonnell, Victoria, Roots of Rebellion: Workers' Organizations in St. Petersburg and Moscow (Berkeley. 1983);Google ScholarMandel, David M., The Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime (New York. 1983);CrossRefGoogle ScholarSmith, Stephen Anthony. Red Petrograd: Revolution in the Factories, 1917–1918 (Cambridge. 1983);CrossRefGoogle ScholarKoenker, Diane. Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution (Princeton, 1981).Google Scholar

4. Smith, . Red Petrograd. 255.Google Scholar

5. Mandel, , Petrograd Workers, 23.Google Scholar

6. In this respect, the legacy of the labor movement was very different from that of the peasant movement. As Andrew Walder pointed out in commenting on this paper, the presence of former peasant movement leaders in the communist government did nothing to save peasants from the disastrous collectivization and production drive of the 1950s that ended in the starvation of millions. The difference. I would submit, lies in the role of Mao Zedong. Whereas the chairman felt sufficiently familiar with rural matters to intervene at will in agricultural policy, he was much more restrained when it came to industrial policy—leaving it largely in the hands of Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun. Li Lisan. and others whose revolutionary experience had been centered in the cities rather than the countryside.

7. See Perry, . Shanghai on Strike, chap. 4.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., 148. On the welfare functions invested in the unions by the Trade Union Law. see Fletcher, Merton Don. Workers and Commissars: Trade Union Policy in the People's Republic (Bellingham. Western Washington State College, Program in East Asian Studies Occasional Paper 6, 1974). 7.Google Scholar

9. Fletcher, , Workers and Commissars, 18.Google Scholar

10. Kallgren, Joyce K.. “Social Welfare and China's Industrial Workers, in Chinese Communist Politics in Action, ed. Barnett, A. Doak (Seattle, 1969), 540–73.Google Scholar

11. Chunliang, Tang, Li Lisan zhuan [Biography of Li Lisan] (Harbin: Heilongjiang People's Press, 1984). 151.Google Scholar

12. “Shangwu yinshuguan gonghuishi” [A History of Unions at the Commercial Press]. n.d., 1–12.

13. Yu, Wang et al. , eds., Dangdai Zhongguo gongren jieji he gonghui yundong jishi [Annals of Contemporary China's Working Class and Labor Movement] (Shenyang, 1989). 7.Google Scholar

14. Chen Yun yu xin Zhongguo jingji jianshe [Chen Yun and the Economic Construction of New China] (Beijing. 1991), 14–16. 223, 417–18, 498–500.

15. Bachman, David M.. Chen Yun and the Chinese Political System (Berkeley, 1985):Google ScholarLardy, Nicholas R. and Lieberthal, Kenneth, eds., Chen Yun's Strategy for China's Economic Development (Armonk, 1983).Google Scholar

16. The locus classicus is Walder, Andrew G., Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley, 1986),Google Scholar but see also Richman, Barry, Industrial Society in Communist China (New York. 1969);Google ScholarHoffmann, Charles. The Chinese Worker (Albany, 1974);Google Scholarand Andors, Stephen, China's Industrial Revolution: Politics, Planning and Management, 1949 to the Present (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

17. Walder, , Communist Neo-Traditionalism, 39–56.Google Scholar

18. Chen, Nai-Ruenn, Chinese Economic Statistics: A Handbook for Mainland China (Chicago, 1967), 47273;Google ScholarZhongguo shehuitongji ziliao [Chinese Social Statistics] (Beijing, 1990), 127–28.Google Scholar

19. Serious disturbances [naoshi] occurred at 587 enterprises in the city, involving nearly 30,000 workers. More than 200 of these incidents included factory walkouts, while another 100 or so involved organized slowdowns of production. Additionally, more than 700 enterprises experienced less threatening forms of labor unrest [maoyan]. For more information on this strike wave, see Perry, Elizabeth J., “Shanghai's Strike Wave of 1957,” China Quarterly 137 (03 1994), 127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. See especially MacFarquhar, Roderick, ed., The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals (New York, 1960);Google Scholarand Goldman, Merle, Literary Dissent in Communist China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. For the first perspective, see for example Jin, Cong. Quzhe fazhan de suiyue [The years of tortuous development] (Henan, 1989), 84ff;Google Scholarfor the second, MacFarquhar, Roderick. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974). Part III.Google Scholar

22. Mao Zedong sixiang wansui [Long Live Mao Zedong Thought] (Institute of International Relations, Taipei) 1974 7479. 87.Google Scholar

23. Riskin, Carl, China's Political Economy: The Quest for Development since 1949 (New York, 1987), 9697.Google Scholar

24. Shanghai Municipal Archives (hereafter SMA). #C1–12–2272.

25. Ten percent occurred in previously established joint-ownership enterprises and fewer than two percent occurred in state enterprises.

26. SMA, #Cl-11–1187, #C1–12–2407. More than ninety percent of the incidents occurred in these smaller firms.

27. The average annual wage in Shanghai for workers at local state enterprises (difang guoying) was 796 yuan and for workers at central state enterprises (zhongyang guoying) was 856 yuan, whereas workers at central joint-ownership enterprises (zhongyang gongsi heving) earned an average annual wage of 880 yuan and at local joint-ownership enterprises (difang gongsi heying) a whopping 924 yuan. SMA, #B31–11–1304.

28. SMA, #C1–11-1187.

29. Min, Qian and Jinping, Zhang, Guanyu 1957 nian Shanghai bufen gongchang naoshi de yanjiu [A study of the disturbances at some Shanghai factories in 1957] (Shanghai. 1990). 2.Google Scholar

30. SMA, #C1–12–2407.

31. SMA. #C1–12–2272.

32. SMA. #Cl–12–2271.

33. SMA. #Cl-12–2396.

34. Renmin ribao, May 9, 1957. In 1956 Mao Haigen. chair of the trade union at the Shanghai Knitting Factory, was deposed after he revealed serious problems of mismanagement to an All-China Federation of Trade Unions inspection team.

35. On party controls, see Walder, . Communist Neo-Traditionalism. On the importance of party-state networks in structuring the factionalism of the Cultural Revolution,Google Scholar see Walder, Andrew G., “The Chinese Cultural Revolution in the Factories: Party State Structures and Patterns of Conflict.” in Putting Class in Its Place: Worker Identities in East Asia. ed. Perry, Elizabeth J. (Berkeley. 1996).Google Scholar

36. See Perry, Elizabeth J. and Xun, Li. Proletarian Power: Shanghai in the Cultural Revolution (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996).Google Scholar

37. In some cases, these groups were extremely small and engaged in rather suspect activities. For example, a “rebel headquarters” which specialized in robbery was actually comprised of a three-person family!

38. Walder, , Communist Neo-Traditionalism, 246. 249.Google Scholar

39. Walder, Andrew G., “The Remaking of the Chinese Working Class, 1949–1981.” Modern China 10 (1984):348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. See Perry, Elizabeth J., “Labor's Battle for Political Space: The Role of Worker Associations in Contemporary China.” in Urban Spaces in Contemporary China. ed. Davis, Deborah et al. , (Cambridge, 1995), 302–25: and Perry, “To Rebel is Justified: Maoist Influences on Popular Protest in Contemporary China.” Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences (forthcoming).Google Scholar