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Workers' Politics in Shanghai

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Lynn T. White III
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The industrial sector of China, as of Japan and many other nations, is a “dual” economy. Jobs with radically different labor productivities tend to receive different wages; thus, there are many kinds of labor-capital relations. Some workers perform their duties—often with the aid of machines—on a relatively permanent basis; these people have secure job tenure. Others are marginal workers, “lumpenproletarians” as Marx called them; sometimes they have jobs, sometimes they are unemployed. Often these are seasonal farm workers. They live in factory dormitories when they can obtain temporary positions in the city, and they keep strong ties with the rural villages from which they came.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , November 1976 , pp. 99 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1976

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References

1 The most exhaustive treatment of Shanghai's early proletariat is Chesneaux, Jean, The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919–1927, trans, by Hope Wright (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1968); see pp. 89–94Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., pp. 54—57, 64, and 89–94.

3 The most accessible description is ibid., pp. 113–18.

4 The list is from an interview in Hong Kong, Oct 1969.

5 Laotung pao (Labor News), Shanghai [hereafter LTP], 4 July 1950.

6 Liu Ch'ang-sheng, Chairman of the Shanghai General Labor Union, report on ”Unemployment Relief in Shanghai,” to the All-Circles' Conference of 16 Oct 1950, China Monthly Review, Shanghai, Dec 1950. The novel is Erh-fu, Chou, Shanghai ti tsaoch'en (Morning in Shanghai) (Peking: Tsochia Ch'upan She, 1958), p. 18Google Scholar.

7 Cbiehfang jihpao (Liberation Daily), Shanghai [hereafter CFJP], 13 Nov 1952.

8 Liu Ch'ang-sheng, (n. 6 above).

9 Shanghai News, 16 Mar 1951.

10 New China News Agency [hereafter NCNA], Shanghai, 6 June 1951.

11 NCNA, Shanghai, 26 May 1952.

12 China News Service, 22 June 1955.

13 NCNA, 19 and 21 Apr 1954.

14 CFJP, 9 Jan 1955.

15 The number of Chinese, ages 5 to 24, increased in millions as follows: 1953, 225 m.; 1958, 255 m.; 1963, 300 m.; 1968, 350 m. UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs, Future Population Estimates by Sex and Age, Report IV, No. 31, ST/SOA/Series A (New York: United Nations, 1959), p. 31. Not all of these people were in Shanghai, of course; but their number affected immigration to that city.

16 14 Nov 1969 letter to me from a person who was privately looking for—and found—a job during late 1952 in Shanghai.

17 Interview in Hong Kong, Nov 1969.

18 Shanghai Shih Tsung Kunghui Tiaoch'a Yen- chiu Shih (Shanghai General Labor Federation, Investigation and Research Office), Kunghui ch'ingkung kungtso (Youth Work in the Unions), (Shanghai: Laotung Ch'upan She, 1951), pp. 1–2, ' 140–44.

19 NCNA, Shanghai, 7 May 1955.

20 NCNA, Shanghai, 18 Jan 1955, and CFJP, 2 Feb 1955. The simultaneousness and rounding of the reported data are somewhat dubious, thus the figure 30% is not mentioned in the text; but the qualitative conclusion still stands.

21 NCNA, Shanghai, 18 Apr 1956.

22 NCNA, 10 Jan 1956.

23 NCNA, Shanghai, 14 June 1956.

24 LTP, 12 June 1956. A summary of Chinese work policies, 1953—1965, can be found in Hoffman, Charles, Work Incentive Practices and Policies in the People's Republic of China, 1953–1965 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1967), pp. 84ffGoogle Scholar. For evidence that Mao never opposed material incentives in the socialist sector, see Grey, Jack & Cavendish, Patrick, Chinese Communism in Crisis: Maoism and the Cultural Revolution (London: Pall Mall Press, 1968), p. 63Google Scholar.

25 NCNA, Shanghai, 17 Dec 1956.

26 Hsinwen jihpao (News Daily), Shanghai [hereafter HWJP], 25 Nov 1956.

27 HWJP, 27 Mar 1957.

28 NCNA, Shanghai, 26 Nov 1956.

29 HWJP, 8 Nov 1956.

30 Hsinmin pao wank'an (New People's Evening Gazette), Shanghai [hereafter HMPWK], 8 May 1957.

31 HWJP, 16 May 1957.

32 These examples are from HWJP, 24 June 1957—but almost any day that June will do.

33 HWJP, 26 June 1957.

34 Ch'ingnien pao (Youth News), Shanghai [hereafter CNP], 22 Jan 1957.

35 HWJP, 24 June 1957.

36 Chanwang (Prospect), Shanghai, 33 (31 Aug 1957), p. 20. Howe (Employment and Economic Growth in Urban China, 1949–1957 [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971], pp. 38–40) has made the best available effort to estimate the numerical unemployment rate in Shanghai for the end of 1957; I think his conclusion about the general range of unemployment is quite sound.

37 Howe, Wage Patterns and Wage Policy in Modern China, 1919–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973), p. 153. On Mao's trip to the First Textile Factory to see posters: Jenmin jihpao (People's Daily), Peking [hereafter JMJP], 22 Sept 1957.

38 HWJP, 17 Mar 1958.

39 Liu Ch'eng-jui et al., “Contradictions in the Piece-Wage System Enforced in Industrial Enter-prises,” and “A Discussion of the Problem of Piece-Wages,” Chiaohsueh yu yenchiu (Teaching and Research), 9 (4 Sept 1958).

40 HWJP, 19 Oct 1958.

41 The largest of these meetings was the Shanghai CCP Congress of Jan 1959; NCNA, Shanghai, 19 Jan 1959.

42 HWJP, 13 May 1958.

43 NCNA, Shanghai, 9 Apr 1959.

44 This justification for contract labor was re- ported by an ex-cadre, interviewed in Hong Kong, Nov 1969. See also the statement of Ts'ao Ti-ch'iu (n. 58 below).

45 See, for example, the reverent and non-economic way in which automation (tzutunghud) is discussed in Ning T'ao et al., Shanghai Wuching huakungch'ang ti tansheng (The Birth of the Wuching Chemical Plant at Shanghai), (Shanghai: Shanghai Jenmin Ch'upan She, 1965), pp. 60–61.

46 NCNA, Shanghai, 26 Nov 1961.

47 Chih-cheng, Su, “Shanghai's Industrial Progress,” Peking Review, 22 (9 June 1959), pp. 10–12Google Scholar.

48 JMJP, 26 June 1961.

49 NCNA, Shanghai, 17 July 1959.

50 NCNA, Shanghai, 28 Jan 1962.

51 JMJP, 5 June 1962.

52 Laotung (Labor), 14 (18 Aug 1962); tr. in Survey of the China Mainland Press, Hong Kong [hereafter SCMP), 334, p. 15.

53 Interview with refugee student (not from Shanghai) in Hong Kong, Dec 1969. Also, interview with ex-worker of Shenhsin Tool Factory, who obtained a job through a station of the Shanghai Labor Bureau in 1962; Union Research Institute, Hong Kong [hereafter URI], Apr 1966.

54 A literal translation of the colloquial expression “hsia ma” (‘getting off the horse’) which an excadre interviewee liked to use to describe this process. This metaphor has many usages in modern political Chinese.

55 “T'iaocheng, kungku, ch'ungshih, t'ikao.”

56 Interview in Hong Kong, Dec 1969. This nationally minded ex-cadre, not from Shanghai, did not mention whether lane or street factories sometimes hired labor without recommendations. But his point is valid for permanent jobs in large enterprises.

57 NCNA, Shanghai, 21 Mar 1960.

58 Wenhui pao (Documentary News), Shanghai [hereafter WHP), 26 Sept 1964.

59 See Lewis, John Wilson, “Commerce, Education, and Political Development in Tangshan, 1956–69,” in Lewis, J. W. (ed.), The City in Communist China (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1971), p. 163Google Scholar.

60 “Shehui ch'ingnien hsuehhsi tsu” or sometimes “shehui ch'ingnien hsuehhsi pan,” Hsinmin wanpao (New People's Evening News), Shanghai hereafter HMWP), 25 Mar 1964.

61 HMWP, 10 Feb 1964.

62 “Shanghai Newsletter” in South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 11 April 1964. This informative column was written by a non-Communist Russian long resident in Shanghai.

63 HMWP, 15 Sept 1965.

64 Chungkuo ch'ingnien (China Youth), Peking, 12 (16 Sept 1964), article by a League branch secretary in a Shanghai rubber factory.

65 Interview with an ex-worker of the Car Repair Plant, who reported the period 1963–65, URI, Mar 1966. Cadres at this factory received anywhere from 40 to 130. Medicine for permanent workers was free, and sick wages could be received upon testimony of a doctor—although, in that case, bonuses and overtime wages could not be allowed during the same pay period.

66 Interview with an ex-cadre, not from Shanghai, who was well acquainted with the system used nationally; Hong Kong, Jan. 1970.

67 Bruce MacFarlane, Visit to Shanghai (stenciled notes, apparently Sydney, 1968), diary entry of 18 April 1968. This clock factory had an authorized wage spread of 40 to 100. The average wage without bonus was 70; average total compensation was more than that.

68 See ibid., 20 Apr 1970 entry.

69 This increment was computed by multiplying receipts and recipients in each category, then averaging. The salary percentag e estimates are based on official wage norms for various grades of workers; but since the application of these norms is in practice uneven, the conclusions are stated in broad ranges. Basic data are from the interview cited in n. 65 above.

70 Hoffman (n. 24 above), pp. 35–42, describes insurance schemes for death, sickness, injury, disability, and retirement. He shows the relation of these non-contributory plans to the Soviet models from which they were taken in the early fifties. Benefits were in proportion to wages; when non-union workers were covered at all, union members received higher payment.

71 Townsend, James R., Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1967), pp. 189–90Google Scholar, shows how this issue came up in 1957–58, just as it later did during the Cultural Revolution.

72 Interview with an Overseas Chinese from Thai- land who joined the Shanghai Shenhsin Tools Factory (URI, Apr 1966); he reported that favored employees in that plant's high temperature workshops might be given as much as 45 catties of grain per month.

73 See HMWP, 4 July 1964.

74 Interview wit h an ex-worker of Shanghai Nan - yang Brothers Tobacco Factory, who reports the period 1959–65; URI, Feb 1966.

75 Interview with an ex-employee of the Shanghai Mining Machines Factory, URI, Oct 1967.

76 Interview with an ex-employee of the Shanghai Communications Bureau, who reports the period c. 1956 to c. 1965.

77 Barry Richman, Industrial Society in Communist China (New York: Random House, 1969), Table 9-i, pp. 754–56. However, NCNA, 4 Mar 1965, claimed that over one-third of the technical staff in the Shanghai No. 1 Steel Mill and Shanghai Oil Refinery were female, and 50% of the researchers in the Municipal Insecticide Institute were women.HMWP, 8 Oct 1964, has information on female technical workers (in the Shanghai Yinghua Petroleum Plant) who praised the Party for urging them to obtain technical educations. But as recent interview research done by certain scholars who can get visas to China indicates, these cases were in fact somewhat rare. Many more women in Shanghai were affected by the fact that the city's textile in-dustr y absorbed 20,000 young workers in 1964; NCNA, Shanghai, 25 Apr 1965.

78 Richman, (n. 77 above), pp. 150–51.

79 Ibid., pp. 734, 712, 813, 837, 869, 855, and elsewhere as in the index. Thi s battery factory was highly unusual in that it awarded larger bonuses to managers than to workers. It produces “White Elephant” brand batteries, which are prominent in Hong Kong and some other overseas markets.

80 Interview with ex-worker in the Shanghai No. 1 Iron and Steel Factory, URI, Oct 1963.

81 Interview with a Kansu man assigned in Mar 1966 to the Shanghai Mining Machines Factory. He traveled to Kwangtung and then Macau in Oct 1967, disguised as a Red Guard; URI, Oct 1967. When presented with these data, a Westerner who had traveled to China felt this salary spread was not greater than normal; but an ex-resident of Shanghai tended to disbelieve the figures and at one point said, “Impossible!” Interview research has its trials. The existence of some major wage spread in urban China has been well attested, however.

82 Interview with an ex-worker of the Shanghai Machine Tools Factory, reporting on th e period 1960–63, URI, Jan 1964.

83 NCNA, Shanghai, 31 June 1966. Mrs. Jack Grey has communicated to me that she found a similar boost in workers' CCP memberships in Canton at the same time.

84 JMJP, 26 Dec 1966 (tr., SCMP, 3852, p. 1).

85 These issues are taken from an interview at the Shanghai Diesel Pumps and Engines Factory, conducted by Bruce MacFarlane (n. 67 above), 21 Apr 1968.