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Shanghai's Strike Wave of 1957

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Elizabeth J. Perry
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In the spring of 1957, a strike wave of monumental proportions rolled across the city of Shanghai. The strikes in Shanghai represented the climax of a national outpouring of labour protest that had been gaining momentum for more than a year. The magnitude of the 1957 strike wave is especially impressive when placed in historical perspective. Major labour disturbances (naoshi) erupted at 587 Shanghai enterprises in the spring of 1957, 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 serious forms of labour unrest (maoyari). These figures are extraordinary even by comparison with Republican-period Shanghai when the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925, the Shanghai Workers' Three Armed Uprisings of 1926–27 and the protests of the Civil War years gave rise to one of the most aggressive labour movements in world history. In 1919, Shanghai experienced only 56 strikes, 33 of which were connected with May Fourth. In 1925, it saw 175, of which 100 were in conjunction with May Thirtieth. The year of greatest strike activity in Republican-period Shanghai, 1946, saw a total of 280.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 137 , March 1994 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1994

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References

1. Oral presentations of this paper were made to seminars at the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, Indiana University and the University of Washington. The author would like to thank participants in those seminars for many stimulating comments and suggestions. Appreciation for a critical reading of an earlier draft goes to Joseph Esherick, Ellen Fuller, Nina Halpern, Richard Kraus, David Shambaugh, Dorothy Solinger, Christine Wong, and especially Thomas Bernstein, Anita Chan, Charles Hoffmann, Stanley Rosen, Mark Selden and Andrew Walder. Valuable research assistance was provided by Jiang Kelin, Li Xun and Susan McCarthy.

2. These statistics are the calculation of the Shanghai Committee Party History Research Office. See Zhongguo gongchandang zai Shanghai, 1921–1991 (The Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai, 1921–1991) (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Press, 1991), p. 472.

3. On the other hand, the figures for 1957 pale in comparison with those for late 1949 – the period immediately following the establishment of the new Communist order in the city. In the six months from June to December of 1949, Shanghai experienced 3,324 strikes and major disturbances (averaging more than 500 incidents per month). This critical takeover period remains to be carefully studied.

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22. Published by the ACFTU, this journal can be found in a number of research libraries in China.

23. Zhongguo gongyun (The Chinese Labour Movement), No. 2 (1957).

24. Zhongguo gongyun, No. 7 (1957). Reprinted in Jiadong, Yan and Liangzhi, Zhang (eds.), Shehuizhuyi gonghui xuexi wenjian xuanbian (Compilation of Study Documents on Socialist Unions) (Beijing: 1992), pp. 176–183.Google Scholar

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26. For descriptions of labour unrest in the city of Guangzhou, see Guangzhou ribao, 12 May 1957, 14 May 1957, 20 August 1957; and Nanfang ribao, 10 May 1957. For a case in Guilin, see Guangxi ribao, 16 October 1957. For an example from Hangzhou, see Hangzhou ribao, 26 June 1957. For an incident in Chongqing, see Chongqing ribao, 22 September 1957. For disputes at mines in Guangdong, Hebei and Shanxi, see the reports in Xingdao ribao, 16 February, 1957; Renmin ribao, 9 May 1957; and Zhongguo qingnian bao, 2 June 1956. For disturbances at co-operatives in Tianjin and Jiangxi, see Da gong bao, 22 May 1957. And for a dispute at a Beijing paint factory, see Da gong bao, 9 May 1957. Hoffmann, Charles, The Chinese Worker (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989),pp. 145–150Google Scholar, offers an informative description – based upon official press reports – of a longshoremen's strike in Guangzhou between November 1956 and April 1957.

27. A translation can be found in Survey of China Mainland Press, No. 1536, 23 May 1957, pp. 1–3.

28. Gipouloux, Francois, Les cents fleurs a I'usine: Agitation ouvriere et crise du model sovietique en Chine, 1956–1957 (Paris: L'ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, 1986).Google Scholar My review of this useful volume appears in Journal of Asian Studies (February 1989), pp. 134–35.

29. Gipouloux, Les cents fleurs a I'usine, pp. 198–202. For Chinese press reports, see Xinwen ribao, 27 April and 13 May 1957; Da gong bao, 27 April and 3 May 1957.

30. An informative guide to the archives is Shanghaishi danganguan jianming zhinan (Concise Introduction to the Shanghai Municipal Archives) (Beijing: Archives Press, 1991). Most of the materials for this paper were drawn from the “C1” category of Shanghai trade union archives, described on pp. 286–87 of the guide.

31. See especially Macfarquhar, Roderick (ed.), The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals (New York: Praeger, 1960)Google Scholar; and Goldman, Literary Dissent.

32. See, for example, Jin, Cong, Quzhe fazhan de suiyue (The Years of Tortuous Development) (Henan: Henan People's Press, 1989), pp. 84ff.Google Scholar

33. MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Vol. I, Part III.

34. Mao Zedong sixiang wansui, pp. 74–79, 87.

35. On the role of workers in earlier “tiger-hunting” campaigns, see White, Lynn T. III, Policies of Chaos: The Organizational Causes of Violence in China's Cultural Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 67–71.Google Scholar

36. See n. 3.

37. Carlriskin, , China's Political Economy: The Quest for Development since 1949 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 96–97.Google Scholar

38. Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA), Nos. B31–1536–1237, B31–1–304.

39. 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 gongyun yanjiu (February 1990), p. 3.Google Scholar This informative internal-circulation report, based upon archival sources, was published in the aftermath of the 1989 uprising as a reference document for leading cadres in the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions.

40. On the notions of customary justice that fuelled labour protest among the English proletariat, see Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage, 1963), especially chs. 8Google Scholar and 9.

41. SMA, No. C1–2–2234.

42. Qian Min and Zhang Jinping, “Study of the disturbances,” p. 14.

43. SMA, No. Cl–2–2272.

44. Only 10% occurred in previously established joint-ownership enterprises and fewer than 2% in state enterprises.

45. SMA, Nos. Cl–1–187, Cl–2–2407. More than 90% of the incidents occurred in these smaller firms.

46. 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 heying) earned an average annual wage of 880 yuan and at local joint-ownership enterprises (difang gongsi heying) a whopping 924 yuan. SMA, No. B31-1-304.

47. Among state enterprise workers, 25% were illiterate; among joint-ownership workers, the figure was 16%. SMA, No. B31–305. Although the cause of the difference in literacy rates is unclear, it may be a function of a higher proportion of (literate) workers from petty bourgeois backgrounds in the smaller firms, contrasted to a larger number of (illiterate) demobilized peasant soldiers in the state enterprises.

48. The cost of living index for workers in Shanghai had shown a steady, but gradual, increase over the preceding years. With 1952 taken as a base of “100,” the index rose to 105.76 in 1953, 106.62 in 1954, 107.76 in 1955, 108.15 in 1956 and 109 in 1957. Thus the rate of increase had actually tapered off in recent years. See Shanghai jiefang qianhou wujia ziliao huibian (Compendium of Materials on Shanghai Prices Before and After Liberation) (Shanghai: Shanghai People's Press, 1958), p. 463.

49. Cheng, Tiejun and Selden, Mark, “The city, the countryside and the sinews of population control: the origins and social consequences of China's hukou system,” paper presented to the conference on “Construction of the Party-State and State Socialism in China, 1936–65,” The Colorado College, 31 May–5 June 1993.Google Scholar

50. SMA, No. C1–1–189.

51. SMA, Nos. C1–2–2272, C1–1–188.

52. SMA, No. C1–1–189.

53. SMA, No. Cl–1–189.

54. For a discussion of demands for a Solidarity-type independent trade union in early 1980s Shanghai, see Chiang, Chen-Chang, “The role of trade unions in mainland China,” Issues and Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (February 1990), pp. 94–96Google Scholar; Wilson, Jeanne L., “‘The Polish Lesson’: China and Poland, 1980–1990,” Studies in Comparative Communism, No. 3–4 (Autumn-Winter 1990), pp. 259–280CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chan, “Revolution or corporatism?”

55. SMA, No. C1–1–189.

56. SMA, No. C1–1–189.

57. SMA, No. Cl–1–187.

58. Qian Min and Zhang Jinping, “Study of the disturbances,” p. 2.

59. SMA, No. C1–2–2407.

60. SMA, No. C1–2–2272.

61. SMA, No. C1–2–2234.

62. SMA, No. C1–1–189.

63. SMA, No. Cl–2–2234.

64. SMA, No. C1–2–2271.

65. On the role of activists in Chinese politics, see Solomon, Richard, “On activism and activists: Maoist conceptions of motivation and political role linking state to society,” The China Quarterly, No. 39 (July-September 1969), pp. 76–114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarTownsend, James R., Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 132Google Scholar, argues that “the primary distinction to make in analyzing … mass participation in any political movement in Communist China, is that between activists and ordinary citizens.” Walder, Andrew G., Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 166Google Scholar, states that “the distinction between activists and nonactivists … is easily the most politically salient social-structural cleavage” in the communist factory. Wang Shaoguang, “Deng Ziaoping' s reform,” takes the political divisions within the working class a step further, arguing for a tripartite schema: “The workforce, whether in the state sector or in the collective sector, was largely divided into three categories: activist, middle-of-the-road, and backward element.” Shirk, Susan, Competitive Comrades: Career Incentives and Student Strategies in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), chs. 3–4Google Scholar, portrays a comparable cleavage among Chinese high school students.

66. A 27 June 1957 report from the Hongkou district union noted that at the 15 affected enterprises in the district for which there were statistics, 43% of the protesters were union, Youth League or Party members. SMA, No. C1–2–2407. At the Xinguang Underwear Factory, which boasted a long history of labour strife in the pre-Communist period, of the 500 or so workers who participated in the 1957 strike, nearly 100 were Communist Party or Youth League members or other activists. A strike at the Hongwen Paper Factory was instigated by 27 employees, of whom 11 had “political history problems,” five were Youth League activists, six were staff members, and five were ex-soldiers. SMA, No. C1–2–2272.

67. SMA, No. C1–2–2272.

68. SMA, No. C1–2–2407.

69. Davis, Deborah, “Elimination of urban labor markets: consequences for the middle class,” paper presented to the Association of Asian Studies annual meeting, Los Angeles, 26 March 1993.Google Scholar

70. Xinwen ribao, 27 April and 13 May 1957; SMA, No. C1–1–189.

71. SMA, No. C1–2–2407.

72. SMA, No. C1–1–189.

73. SMA, No. C1–2–2407.

74. SMA, No. C1–2–2272.

75. SMA, No. C1–2–2396.

76. Renmin ribao, 9 May 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 ACFTU inspection team.

77. Gongren ribao, 21 May 1957.

78. SMA, No. C1–2–2407. In this case, all the Youth League members — except for the League secretary — participated in the struggle.

79. In a few instances, “enemies of the people” were charged with having incited the protests. A strike at the Yiya Electronics Factory was reportedly instigated by a staff member who had received intelligence training in Taiwan before returning to China from Hong Kong in 1953. He is said to have tried to “restore the blue sky” [i.e., raise the flag of the Kuomintang] in the course of the protest movement. SMA, No. C1–2–2407. “Counter-revolutionary” slogans were also detected at a few enterprises. On the walls of the bathroom of the China Machine Tool Factory, someone had scribbled in chalk “Down with Chairman Mao!” And on a blackboard at an iron implements factory, someone had written “Down with the Chinese Communist Party!” SMA, No. C1–2–2234. But such displays of overt hositility to the new regime were rare.

80. See Elizabeth J. Perry, “Labor's battle for political space: worker associations in contemporary China,” in Deborah Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton and Elizabeth J. Perry (eds.), Urban Spaces: Autonomy and Community in Chinese Cities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

81. SMA, No. C1–2–2407.

82. SMA, No. C1–2–2271.

83. Ruoyu, Lai, “Dangqian gonghui gongzuo de ruogan zhongyao wenti” (“Several important issues in union work at present”), reprinted in Gongyun lilun yanjiu cankao ziliao (Reference Materials on Studies of Labour Movement Theory), internal circulation document of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, October 1986, p. 87.Google Scholar

84. Qian Min and Zhang Jinping, “Study of the disturbances,” pp. 5–6.

85. Lai Ruoyu, 10 May 1957, “Zhengdun gonghui de lingdao zuofeng, miqie yu qunzhong de lianxi, chongfen fahui gonghui zai jiejue renmin neibu maodunzhong de tiaojie zuoyong” (“Overhaul the unions' leadership work style, intensify relations with the masses, thoroughly develop the mediating role of the unions in resolving contradictions among the people”), reprinted in Yan Jiadong and Zhang Liangzhi, Shehuizhuyi gonghui xuexi wenjian xuanbian, pp. 191–92.

86. As one manager remarked of the division between young and old, “Young workers are promoted by leaps and bounds while the old ones always remain at the same place under the ironic pretext of promoting their wages. At the time of the Hungarian and Polish incidents, some young workers manifested wavering in their thinking while the old workers maintained a firm standpoint.” Guangming ribao, 5 May 1957, translated in MacFarquhar, Roderick, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals (New York: Praeger, 1974), pp. 64–65.Google Scholar

87. Lai Ruoyu, 10 May, 1957, p. 194.

88. A useful analysis of stratification within the Shanghai proletariat can be found in White, Lynn T. III, Careers in Shanghai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), ch. 3.Google Scholar

89. Perry, Elizabeth J., Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

90. Oestreicher, Richard Jules, Solidarity and Fragmentation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Sabel, Charles F., Work and Politics: The Division of Labor in Industry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, David M., Edwards, Richard and Reich, Michael, Segmented Work, Divided Workers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Katznelson, Ira, City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States (New York: Pantheon, 1981)Google Scholar; Berger, Suzanne and Piore, Michael J., Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Honig, Emily, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

91. Important studies of the danwei in urban China include Henderson, Gail E. and Cohen, Myron S., The Chinese Hospital: A Socialist Work Unit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Whyte, Martin King and Parish, William L., Urban Life in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).Google Scholar

92. Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism, pp. 246, 249.

93. In 1957, intellectuals and trade unionists were not the only casualties of the Anti-Rightist campaign. Large numbers of workers were also imprisoned or packed off to years of labour reform for their involvement in the strike wave. Thanks to a Party directive stipulating that only intellectuals and cadres could be labelled as “rightists,” these indicted workers were designated as “bad elements” instead. See Chan, “Revolution or corporatism?” p. 33.

94. On the difficulties of applying the concept of “civil society” to modern China, see Wakeman, Frederic Jr., “The civil society and public sphere debate: Western reflections on Chinese political culture,” Modern China, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April 1993), pp. 108–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95. Chan, “Revolution or corporatism?” p. 37, adopts the appellation of “state corporatism” to characterize a trade union apparatus that could “become an advocate on behalf of the workers, in addition to mobilizing labor for production ….”

96. See the references in n. 57. This is not to deny the utility of such categories for explaining certain aspects of contemporary Chinese political behaviour. The peculiar blend of moral rhetoric and self-interested clientelistic manipulation — highlighted by both Shirk and Walder – is indeed a striking feature of those areas of activity most affected by the state's presence. Often, however, it appears that divisions which issued from socioeconomic differences were rationalized in political terms. The omnipresence in China of a Manichean political discourse – which portrays conflict at the top of the system as two-line struggle and at the bottom of the system as contradictions between activists and non-activists – has perhaps skewed the understandings of both ordinary Chinese citizens and outside observers.

97. Oksenberg, Michel, “Occupations and groups in Chinese society and the Cultural Revolution,” in The Cultural Revolution: 1967 in Review (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1968), pp. 1–39Google Scholar; Lee, Hong Yung, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Rosen, Stanley, Red Guard Factionalism and the Cultural Revolution in Guangzhou (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982).Google Scholar

98. Interviews with former Shanghai Red Guards, 25 May 1987 and 2 July 1987. See also Lynn White, III, “Workers' politics in Shanghai,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 105–107; and Walder, Andrew G., Chang Ch'un-ch'iao and Shanghai's January Revolution (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1978)Google Scholar, ch. VI. As Walder points out, “contract and temporary labor … formed a large reservoir of radicalized workers and constituted some of the most active and vocal of Shanghai's mass organizations, virtually all of whom were reportedly aligned with the Rebel camp” (p. 45).

99. In other cities as well, those disenfranchised by socialism proved militant in 1956–57. Shanghai may have experienced an especially high level of protest, thanks to its history of labour unrest, the size and concentrated living and working conditions of its labourers, and the sympathetic attitude of its trade union. But other places (Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Tianjin, Jingdezhen, Shanxi, Hebei, Chongqing, Guangxi) also reported a high incidence of protest, led by apprentices, temporary workers and the like. See the citations in n. 18 as well as Renmin ribao, 10 May and 15 July 1957.

100. See Perry, “Labor's battle for political space.”

101. On this point, I take issue with Wang Shaoguang's stimulating analysis of the contemporary Chinese labour movement in which he argues for a newfound horizontal solidarity among the Chinese working class. See his “Deng Xiaoping's reform and the Chinese Workers' participation in the protest movement of 1989.”

102. See Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: China, 30 January 1991, p. 67, for a description of temporary and contract workers turning to “‘regional gangs’ which often create disturbances … For instance, fifteen strikes took place in Longgang Town in Shenzhen, with eight of them instigated by Sichuan workers, three by Guangxi workers, two by workers from south of the Chang Jiang, and two by workers from Hunan.” The phenomenon of regional gangs serving as the organizational nucleus of labour strikes is highly reminiscent of pre-1949 patterns. Whether such patterns have, however, qualitatively changed as a result of the socialist experience remains to be studied.

103. The classic English-language treatment of this subject is Chesneaux, Jean, The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

104. Wales, Nym, The Chinese Labor Movement (New York: J. Day, 1945), p. 11.Google Scholar

105. On the activities of students in these events, see Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N., Student Protest in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

106. The lack of co-operation was mutual; in fact, relations between workers and students were sometimes overtly hostile. See Renmin ribao, 8 August 1957 and Chengdu ribao, 9 July 1957 for descriptions of violent encounters between the two groups.

107. Sorel, Georges, Reflections on Violence (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950), p. 127.Google Scholar

108. Shorter, Edward and Tilly, Charles, Strikes in France, 1830–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 106–107.Google Scholar

109. Surh, Gerald Dennis, Petersburg Workers in 1905: Strikes, Workplace Democracy and the Revolution, University of California at Berkeley Ph.D. dissertation, 1979.Google Scholar

110. Friedheim, Robert L., The Seattle General Strike (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).Google Scholar

111. This point is developed in Low-Beer, John R., Protest and Participation: The New Working Class in Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

112. Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism, pp. 40, 159.

113. As Walder observes, “Long the lynchpin of social and political control in urban China, in mid-May 1989 work units suddently became centers of political organizing and protest.” Walder, Andrew G., “Workers, managers and the state the reform era and the political crisis of 1989,” The China Quarterly, No. 127 (September 1991), p. 487.Google Scholar

114. See Ping, Lu (ed.), A Moment of Truth: Workers' Participation in China's 1989 Democracy Movement and the Emergence of Independent Unions (Hong Kong: Asia Monitor Resource Center, 1991)Google Scholar; and Walder and Gong, “Workers in the Tiananmen protests.”

115. The point is elaborated in Perry, Elizabeth J., “Intellectuals and Tiananmen: historical perspective on an aborted revolution,” in Chirot, Daniel (ed.), The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left: The Revolutions of 1989 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), pp. 129–146.Google Scholar