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Low Power: Small Enterprises in Shanghai, 1949–67

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Lynn T. White III
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Extract

Small firms in Chinese cities, which before 1949 were private, have in the communist era gradually come under more government authority. The stages of this slow process can be treated as a case study in the political socialization of small units. They tell a tale of tensions between different levels of economic power, high, medium and low. Research into the kinds of power that promoted this step-by-step centralization, and also into those that resisted it, may suggest a more comprehensive approach to power in China generally.* The author expresses great thanks to the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies for support related to this article. The Center of International Studies and the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, supplied some clerical help, and the Foreign Area Fellowship Program supported the author's first researches on Shanghai. Very useful comments were received from James Nickum, Gordon Bennett, Bruce Reynolds, Thomas Rawski, Carl Riskin, Dick Wilson, and an anonymous reader for The China Quarterly. All opinions here are the author's solely.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 73 , March 1978 , pp. 45 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1978

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References

1. An example of this tendency is Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975). A less hasty approach, at least in rural cases, was suggested a few months later in Hua Kuo-feng, Let the Whole Party Mobilize for a Vast Effort to Develop Agriculture and Build Tachai-type Counties Throughout the Country (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975). As final revisions were being made on this article, Hua's faction defeated Chang's. The precise implications for future management policies are still unclear, but the continuing importance of these issues is quite clear.Google Scholar

2. See Gardner, John)., “The Wu-fan campaign in Shanghai,” in Doak Barnett, A. (ed.), Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 477–539. See also my forthcoming article, “Changing concepts of corruption in Communist China: the case of Shanghai, 1949–52.”Google Scholar

3. Lao-tung pao (Labour News) (Shanghai), 23 November 1950 and Tsung-kung Hui, Shang-hai, Ch'u, Ts'ai-wu (Shanghai General Federation of Trade Unions, Finance Division, Kung-hui ts'ai-wu kung-tso (Union Finance Work) (Shanghai: Lao-tung Ch'u-pan She, 1951).Google Scholar

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5. Ibid., Vol. 2, No. 38 (13 May 1951), p. 1, 373. It is not entirely clear what kinds of taxes had been guaranteed in this manner.

6. Chieh-fang jih-pao (Liberation Daily) (Shanghai), 31 December 1952. This new institution was formed by the merger of six others: the former East China College of Economics and Finance, Shanghai Business College, Shanghai Law School, Chiaot'ung University's Department of Financial Management, Kuanghua University's Business College, and an accounting department at Great China University.Google Scholar

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19. Hsin-wen jih-pao (News Daily) (Shanghai), 24 November 1956, mentions these officials. They were employed in earlier years too.Google Scholar

20. Ta-kung pao (L'Impartial) (Tientsin), 6 February 1954.Google Scholar

21. Interview, Taipei, February 1970.Google Scholar

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24. Interview, Hong Kong, October 1969. The Ministry of Post and Telegraph acted as an agent for foreign banks, for local Overseas Chinese affairs committees, for exchange banks in China, and for the companies on whose goods the ration cards were issued. Overseas Chinese privileges described above were terminated in 1966 during the early Cultural Revolution.Google Scholar

25. Interview with an ex-employee of the Shanghai Communications Bureau, who reports from c. 1955 to c. 1965.Google Scholar

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27. Ibid. 26 August 1955. This problem was related to the grain shortage. Anhwei peasants nevertheless had some extra hens, whose production could be spared for this sale. This particular purchasing group was reported in the newspapers. It is impossible to know how many others operated more quietly at other times.

28. Ibid. 23 September 1955. It was reported with some relief that the supplies of apples and mooncakes would be sufficient.

29. See Donnithorne, Audrey, The Budget and the Plan in China (Canberra: ANU Press, 1972); and Lardy, Nicholas R., “Economic planning in the People's Republic of China,” in Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress, China: A Reassessment of the Economy (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975), pp. 95–99.Google Scholar

30. The five sentences before the superscript are based on Hsin-wen jih-pao, 17 September 1955.Google Scholar

31.NCNA (Shanghai), 21 July 1956. The average figure, 65, is calculated from data indicating 1,673 handicraft co-ops at this time.Google Scholar

32. Computed from figures in NCNA (Shanghai), 18 April 1956.Google Scholar

33. NCNA (Shanghai), 10 September 1956.Google Scholar

34. Interview, Taipei, February 1970, with a man who said he had worked in the city's Finance Bureau to adapt this system for use in Shanghai during the mid-1950s.Google Scholar

35. Lao-tung pao, 16 October 1956; and Hsin-wen jih-pao, 19 January 1957.Google Scholar

36. NCNA (Shanghai), 13 November 1956.Google Scholar

37. Ibid.

38. Shang-hai kung-shang (Shanghai Industry and Commerce) (Shanghai), No. 13 (5 July 1956), p. 3.Google Scholar

39. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 24 November 1956.Google Scholar

40. Ibid. 29 November 1956.

41. Ch'ing-nien pao (Youth News) (Shanghai), 8 January 1957.Google Scholar

42. Included on this committee to control the free market were the heads of the Municipal First Commerce Bureau (which has jurisdiction over retail markets), the Industry and Commerce Administrative Management Bureau, the Services Bureau, the Tax Bureau, the Shanghai office of the China Supply and Marketing General Co-operative, and deputy heads form the Water Products and Grain bureaus. Huangp'u, Yimiao and Chapei set up their own district committees simultaneously. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 8 February 1957.Google Scholar

43. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 3 March 1957. The office in Chinese was the Laochach'iao Fushihp'in Chiaoyi So, in Huangp'u District.Google Scholar

44. Ibid. 17 February 1957.

45. Ibid. 25 February 1957.

46. Ibid. 16 June 1957.

47. NCNA, Shanghai, 7 September 1957.Google Scholar

48. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 12 September 1957.Google Scholar

49. Ibid. 11 October 1957.

50. Ibid. 8 March 1957.

51. Hsin-min pao wan-k'an (New People's Evening Gazette) (Shanghai), 20 March 1957.Google Scholar

52. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 17 June 1957.Google Scholar

53. Ibid. 18 June 1957.

54. Ibid. 17 May 1957.

55. Ibid. 18 June 1957.

56. Ibid. 31 March 1957.

57. Ibid. 27 July 1957. Ex-cadre informants are sometimes shaken by the idea that speculation could take place in their good bureaucratic order, even though they know it did. I once asked an ex-cadre whether speculators ever posed as the agents of collective units. At first he denied the possibility. But when he was asked the same question again on another day, he listed no less than five different illegal procedures that had been used: (1) “When speculators met officials in administrative or tax organs, they could pretend to be agents of state or joint shops.… They could thus hide their illegal activities to obtain a profit, to evade taxes, to confuse the market, and to raise prices.” (2) “They would buy something at place B for the lowest possible price, then sell it at place A for a very high price,” using collectives' transport to make the shipment. (3) “Sometimes they would run underground factories, mostly private repairworks.” (4) On a larger scale, they might “see that some enterprises were badly in need of materials during periods of economic setback; so they would seize opportunities to buy those goods and sell them to enterprises through black markets, thus gaining a profit.” (5) “Finally, it was sometimes possible to smuggle goods from abroad, then to transfer these commodities to others for purchase and sale.” Interview, Hong Kong, December 1969.

58. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 27 July 1957.Google Scholar

59. Ibid. 25 October 1957.

60. Ibid. 26 April 1957.

61. Ibid. 15 May 1957. Since 5,000 personnel were reported in these firms, they must have had an average of 3.3 workers each.

62. Hsin-min pao wan-k'an 3 September 1957.Google Scholar

63. Ibid.

64. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 20 September 1957.Google Scholar

65. Ibid. 15 August 1957.

66. Chieh-fang jih-pao, 9 October 1957.Google Scholar

67. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 8 August 1957.Google Scholar

68. Ibid. 14 August 1957.

69. Ibid. 20 July 1957.

70. Ibid. 23 December 1957.

71. Ibid.

72. NCNA (Shanghai), 11 December 1956.Google Scholar

73.Ibid.Google Scholar

74. Cf., for example, Hsin-min pao wan-k'an, 22 February 1957.Google Scholar

75. An example: NCNA (Shanghai), 13 June 1956.Google Scholar

76. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 24 May 1957.Google Scholar

77. Cf. Ibid.

78. Wen-hui pao (Documentary News) (Shanghai), 5 February 1958; transl. Survey of the China Mainland Press (SCMP) (Hong Kong), No. 1723, p. 37.Google Scholar

79. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 24 May 1957; on the sales tax, see ibid. 22 July 1957.

80. Chieh-fang jih-pao, 7 May 1958; transl. SCMP, No. 1794, p. 32. Cf. also Audrey Donnithorne, China's Economic System (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 290. Especially in the autumn, one goes to East China teahouses to drink, eat the crabs that are best then, and watch the chrysanthemums bloom. This context, as a site for 5,000-watt power generator deals, is a metaphor of the best in this city's life.Google Scholar

81. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 15 May 1958.Google Scholar

82. Schurmann made a distinction between “decentralization I,” or power-transfer “all the way down” to the production units, and “decentralization II,” only down to “some lower level of regional administration.” Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), p. 175. The Leap “localization” was of the second sort – in other words, it was the opposite of localization from the viewpoint of the lowest levels.Google Scholar

83. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 6 January 1958, deals with the creation of subsidiaries under the Second Huangp'u District Food Store (Huangp'u Ch'ü Yin-shih Ti-erh Ch'ü-tien).Google Scholar

84. Wen-hui pao, 23 January 1958.Google Scholar

85. Chieh-fang jih-pao, 26 April 1958.Google Scholar

86. NCNA (Shanghai),29 April 1958.Google Scholar

87. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 29 May 1958.Google Scholar

88. Hsüeh-shu yüeh-k'an (Academic Monthly) (Shanghai) October 1958, p. 40.Google Scholar

89. Cf. Hsin-wen jih-pao, 26 November 1958.Google Scholar

90. An article in Hsüeh-shu yüeh-k'an, March 1959, p. 57, says 800 women in lane work contributed 50,854½ “labour days” (lao-tung jih) and received a combined income of 29,860 yüan. If so, they received an average wage of 58 fen per labour day. This rate is so low that the term “labour day” may refer to the number of attendances at work, rather than to any standard measure of work. On this assumption, and supposing they received the equivalent of a low full-time wage at about 30 yüan or 40 yüan per month, the typical job may have been approximately half time.This article also discusses the local history of Chang's Lane under the pre-Liberation “local tyrant” Wang San-mao. It describes many developments in 1958. The canteens had a staff of 60. Only 900 people joined a political/literacy class, and only 360 were in the culture class. A library, a choir, 29 citizens' newspaper-reading groups, and a political theory class were established.Google Scholar

91. Hsin-min wan-pao (New People's Evening News) (Shanghai), 20 November 1959.Google Scholar

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93. NCNA (Shanghai), 9 April 1960, . These 856,000 were said to be “about 70 per cent of the total number of street residents who are capable of labour.” The size of this potential labour force would be over 1.2 million. The finest works on Shanghai's labour economics are by Christopher Howe: Employment and Economic Growth in Urban China, 1949–1957 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) and Wage Patterns and Wage Policy in Modern China, 1919–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

94. Kung-jen jih-pao (Workers' Daily) (Peking), 20 September 1961; transl. SCMP, No. 2611, p. 7.Google Scholar

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96. Ibid. 21 June 1962.

97. Ibid. 5 July 1962.

98. Interview, Hong Kong, November 1969. The cadre was Cantonese, although he had been to Shanghai and had some familiarity with the situation there.Google Scholar

99. Letter written by a German businessman living in Shanghai to his friend at Santa Cruz, California, published in the San Francisco Chronicle, reprinted in the China Mail (Hong Kong), 28 March 1962.Google Scholar

100. Cf. Hong Kong Standard, 28 May 1963.Google Scholar

101. Ming pao (Clear News) (Hong Kong), 7 January 1970.Google Scholar

102. NCNA (Shanghai), 1 May 1963; and “Shanghai newsletter” written by a White Russian, in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 18 May 1963.Google Scholar

103. “Shanghai newsletter,” 6 June 1963.Google Scholar

104. Hsin-min wan-pao, 12 October 1963.105. Ibid. 27 March 1964. Ibid. 10 June 1966, contains a similar article about the development of standard measures in the rural counties around Shanghai. This campaign was sporadic, appearing at many times.

105. Ibid. 19 June 1964; cf. also Kung-jen jih-pao, 19 June 1964.

106. Ibid. 15 October 1964.

107. “Shanghai newsletter,” 12 February 1964.Google Scholar

108. Ibid. 8 October 1964.

109. Hsin-min wan-pao, 7 June 1965.Google Scholar

110. Ibid. 9 March 1965.

111. Interview, Hong Kong, December 1969.Google Scholar

112. Hsin-min wan-pao, 6 September 1964.Google Scholar

113. Ibid. 25 March 1965.

114. Ibid. 21 September 1965. The “three on-the-spot” work method: collecting pigs on the spot, butchering pigs on the spot, and selling meat on the spot (chiu-ti shou-chu, chiu-ti tsai-chu, chiu-ti mai-jou).

115. Ibid. 18 March 1965.

116. Ibid. 12 January 1966.

117. Ibid. 23 October 1965.

118. Ibid. 17 January 1966.

119. “Shanghai newsletter,” 22 June 1965.Google Scholar

120. Jen-min, 6 June 1965.Google Scholar

121. Hsin-min wan-pao, 14 May 1966.Google Scholar

122. “Shanghai newsletter,” 24 December 1966.Google Scholar

123. Shanghai Radio, 20 December 1967.Google Scholar

124. “Notice from the CCP Central Committee…,” Kuang-t'ieh tsung-szu (Canton Railways General Headquarters), No. 28 (early February, 1968); transl. SCMP, No. 4129, p. 1.Google Scholar

125. For example, Wen-hui pao, 23 September 1968.Google Scholar

126. The two allusions are to Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), and Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965). Dahl is more careful, when asking his question, than are others who follow him.128. Simon, Herbert A., Administrative Behavior: A Study of the Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations (New York: Macmillan, 1957), p. 12.Google Scholar

127. The two allusions are to Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), and David Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965). Dahl is more careful, when asking his question, than are others who follow him.

128. Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study of the Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations (NewYork: Macmillan, 1957), p. 12.