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The Politicization of Women Workers at War: Labour in Chongqing's cotton mills during the Anti-Japanese War*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2013

JOSHUA H. HOWARD
JOSHUA H. HOWARD*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Mississippi, USA Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Building on recent scholarship that highlights social change caused by the Anti-Japanese War, this paper traces the politicization of women working in the cotton mills of Chongqing, the Nationalist wartime capital. Upon joining the workforce in the late 1930s, most cotton mill hands were young, uneducated women expected to endure hard work and remain physically confined to the factories. By 1945, women workers were at the forefront of a militant labour movement, writing manifestoes and petitioning government officials. This process of politicization stemmed from their decision to work in factories, which breached societal norms, and their experience of disciplined labour regimes and brutal working conditions, which fostered an incipient class-consciousness. Moreover, Nationalist-sponsored factory education campaigns had the unintended effect of leading women to challenge class exploitation and sexual discrimination. Their participation in the labour movement, which was fuelled by their struggle for economic justice and desire for higher social status, used both legal forms— especially petitions and letters to the press couched in the wartime nationalist rhetoric of shared sacrifice—and extralegal means, namely class violence. The paper concludes that the social changes and conflict that accompanied women's wartime work helped prepare the terrain for Communist rule.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 6 , November 2013 , pp. 1888 - 1940
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank Danke Li and Xiaoyun Howard for their help in tracking down several documents and facilitating oral interviews. I am also indebted to Chen Yunqian, Oliver Dinius, Arif Dirlik, Giancarlo Falco, Charles Postel, and the two anonymous Modern Asian Studies reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

References

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17 The following account draws on Chen Changzhi (1989). ‘Kangzhan shiqi qian Yu si da shachang de fazhan ji qi gongxian’ [Development and contribution of the four large-scale cotton mills that relocated to Chongqing during the Anti-Japanese War], Chongqing wenshi ziliao no. 31, pp. 50–51.

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20 Chen, ‘Chongqing jiqi mian fangzhiye fazhan genggai’, p. 98.

21 Ibid., p. 98.

22 Report from Chongqing Garrison Command (25 January 1946). Chongqing Municipal Archives (hereafter CQA), 0060 quanzong, 14 mu, 35 juan, p. 122.

23 Chen, ‘Chongqing jiqi mian fangzhiye fazhan genggai’, pp. 99–100.

24 Ibid., p. 100.

25 The development of the cotton industry was significant for Sichuan's industrialization, but production capacity in 1949, measured by total number of spindles, constituted only 4 per cent of China's capacity. Shanghai remained the dominant producer, using 47 per cent of all operating spindles, followed by Jiangsu (15 per cent), Shandong (9 per cent), Tianjin (7 per cent), and the Northeast (5 per cent). See ‘Zhongguo jindai fangzhi shi’ bianji weiyuanhui, Zhongguo jindai fangzhishi, pp. 254–55, 317.

26 For a similar definition of activism, as applied to her study of cotton mill workers in Taisho Japan, see Molony, B. (1991). ‘Women in the cotton textile industry’, in Bernstein, G. L. (ed.) (1991). Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 217–38Google Scholar.

27 yinhang, Chongqing Zhongguo (1935). Chongqingshi zhi mianzhi gongye [Chongqing city's cotton weaving industry], Zhongguo yinhang zongguanlichu yanjiushi, Chongqing, pp. 97–99Google Scholar.

28 Chen, ‘Chongqing jiqi mian fangzhiye fazhan genggai’, p. 103.

29 Sichuan sheng zhengfu gongkuang kaojitu, ‘gongchang diaochabiao’ (n.d.) in CQA, 0231 quanzong, 4 mu, 4 juan, p. 1.

30 The percentage of women in the total workforce is based on Zhonghua quanguo zonggonghui ziliaoshi fanyin (1955). ‘Zhanhou Yu shi fangzhi gongren yu gongren yundong’ [Textile workers and the labour movement in postwar Chongqing], (n.p.), Beijing, p. 3. The age estimate is based on a factory relief team survey of 3,100 cotton mill workers. According to the same survey, less than 2 per cent were over the age of 30. See zu, Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye (ed.) (1944). Zhanshi fangzhi nügong [Wartime textile industry women workers], Xinyun zonghui funü zhidao weiyuanhui, Chongqing, p. 3Google Scholar. CQA, 0235 quanzong, 5 mu, 142 juan (30 August 1949).

31 Li, Echoes of Chongqing, p. 121.

32 Xuefu, Tao (1988). ‘Qian Chuan Yufeng shachang Hechuan zhichang gailue’ [Summary of the Yufeng Cotton Mill Hechuan branch factory relocation to Sichuan], in Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi xinan diqu wenshi ziliao xiezuo huiyi, Kangzhan shiqi neiqian xinan de gongshang qiye [Relocation of commercial and industrial enterprises to the southwest during the Anti-Japanese War], Yunnan renmin chubanshe, Kunming, p. 262Google Scholar.

33 xiaozu, Nanfangju dangshi ziliao zhengji (ed.) (1990). ‘Nanfang lingdaoxia de funü gongzuo’ [Women's work led by the Southern Bureau], in Nanfangju dangshi ziliao [Historical materials of the Southern Bureau], Vol. 5: Qunzhong gongzuo [Mass work], Chongqing chubanshe, Chongqing, p. 474Google Scholar.

34 Li, Echoes of Chongqing, p. 96.

35 Shujun, Huang (1986). Chongqing gongren yundongshi 1919–1949 [History of the Chongqing labour movement, 1919–1949], Xinan shifan daxue, Chongqing, p. 227Google Scholar.

36 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.), Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p. 3.

37 ‘Funü zhidao weiyuanhui gongzuo gaikuang’ [Overview of the women's advisory committee's work], Funü xinyun, 4:1, 1942, p. 24.

38 Another 16 per cent came from central Sichuan while the remaining 9 per cent had migrated to Chongqing from outside Sichuan province, especially from Hunan. ‘Yufeng shachang nan nü gongyou mingce’ (10 December 1948), CQA, 0235 quanzong, 3 mu, 36–37 juan.

39 Zhongguo nongmin yinhang, Buck, J. and Ch'iao Ch'i-ming (1942). An Agricultural Survey of Szechwan Province, China: A Summary and Interpretation by John Lossing Buck of a Full Report in Chinese by the Szechwan Rural Economics Survey Committee of the Farmer's Bank of China in Cooperation with the Department of Agricultural Economics, Farmer's Bank of China, Chungking, pp. 8, 13. A fuller discussion of agrarian conditions in eastern Sichuan is found in Howard, Workers at War, pp. 90–92.

40 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.), Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p. 3.

41 CYSGYZH, p. 309. In his survey of 600 women workers in Kunming, T'ien Ju-k'ang also found that the main reason women entered the factories was to ‘escape from various family troubles (the economic trouble being one of them), or to run away from the chains which social traditions impose on women’. See T'ien, J. (1944). ‘Female Labor in a Cotton Mill’, in Shih, K.China Enters the Machine Age: A Study of Labor in Chinese War Industry, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 181Google Scholar.

42 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.), Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p. 3.

43 According to one survey conducted at a Kunming cotton mill, 64 per cent (N = 634) of workers left their jobs before they completed one year of employment. See Epstein, I. (1949). Notes on Labor Problems in Nationalist China, Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, p. 41Google Scholar. For how labour mobility constituted a form of resistance, see Howard, J. (2003). ‘Chongqing's most wanted: Worker mobility and resistance in China's Nationalist arsenals, 1937–1945’, Modern Asian Studies, 37: 4, pp. 955–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 These reasons for labour mobility were listed in factory meetings where means were sought to restrict mobility. See CQA, 0231 quanzong, 5 mu, 15 juan, pp. 3–3b (7 October 1942).

45 Letter from Huang Yiqing to Li Guowei (8 December 1946) in Shanghai shehui kexueyuan jingji yanjiusuo (1980). Rongjia qiye shiliao: Maoxin Fuxin Shenxin xitong, Vol. 2: 1937–1949 [Historical materials on the Rong family business related to the Maoxin, Fuxin and Shenxin Mills, Vol. 2: 1937–1949], Shanghai renmin chubanshe, Shanghai, p. 372.

46 Quoted in Epstein, Notes on Labour Problems in Nationalist China, p. 42.

47 Ibid., p. 35.

48 Ibid., p. 37.

49 Li Yongxiang, ‘Wo zai junfang yi, er chang ji Yufeng shachang bagong qingkuang de huiyi’, CYSGYZH, p. 225.

50 Tu Chunhua, interview by author, Chongqing, 29 December 2005.

51 Zheng Suyan, ‘Huiyi kangzhan shiqi Chongqing de fangzhi nügong’ [Remembering the Chongqing women textile workers during the War of Resistance], CYSGYZH, p. 261.

52 Ministry of Economics notice (17 April 1939), CYSGYZH, p. 69.

53 Author unknown, ascribed to the Chinese Communist Party Eastern Sichuan Special Committee (1941). ‘Yuqu bannianlai gongyun gaikuang’ [Overview of Chongqing's labour movement during the past half year], SGYSX, p. 305.

54 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.), Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p.12.

55 Ibid., p. 7.

56 CQA, 0235 quanzong, 6 mu, 14 juan, p. 91 (23 February 1942).

57 Chen, ‘Kangzhan shiqi qian Yu si da shachang de fazhan ji qi gongxian’, p. 53.

58 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.), Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p. 8. These goals were specific to the industrial context but also formed part of the Nationalist government's efforts to mobilize political participation in support of the Resistance. See Mitter, R. (2011). ‘Classifying citizens in Nationalist China during World War II, 1937–1941’, Modern Asian Studies, 45: 2, p. 269CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 CQA, 0235 quanzong, 6 mu, 14 juan, p. 80 (7 October 1941).

60 ‘Yufeng shachang jiaoyuban jingshen xunhua mubiao ji gongyou zixiang duxun biao’ [Yufeng Cotton Mill Education Class goals of spiritual admonition to subordinates and workers’ self reflection and study guide], CQA, 0235 quanzong, 6 mu, 14 juan, p. 94.

61 ‘Yuqu bannianlai gongyun gaikuang’, SGYSX, p. 304.

62 Zhonghua quanguo zonggonghui ziliaoshi fanyin, ‘Yushi fangzhi gongren yu gongren yundong’, p. 16.

63 For a history of the organisation, see Huang, Chongqing gongren yundongshi, pp. 224–25.

64 CYSGYZH, p. 64.

65 CQA, 0053 quanzong, 14 mu, 2 juan, pp. 19–20 (30 May 1942).

66 Zhonghua quanguo zonggonghui ziliaoshi fanyin, ‘Zhanhou Yu shi fangzhi gongren yu gongren yundong’, p. 11.

67 CYSGYZH, p. 208.

68 Shanghai shehui kexueyuan jingji yanjiusuo, Rongjia qiye shiliao: Maoxin Fuxin Shenxin xitong, Vol. 2: 1937–1949, p. 373.

69 Ibid., p. 374.

70 CYSGYZH, p. 23.

71 Ibid., p. 250.

72 Li, Echoes of War, p. 121.

73 Transcript of interview with Duan Huichao (October 1959) in Shanghai shehui kexueyuan jingji yanjiusuo, Rongjia qiye shiliao: Maoxin Fuxin Shenxin xitong, Vol. 2:1937–1949, p. 368.

74 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.), Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p. 46.

75 CQA, 0061 quanzong, 5 mu, 9 juan, pp. 33–34 (13 March 1942).

76 Shehuibu mi zi [Ministry of Social Affairs confidential communication], CQA, 0053 quanzong, 14 mu, 2 juan, p. 9 (8 April 1942).

77 Chen Suzhen, ‘Guanyu Junfang yi, er chang yu Yufeng shachang bagong douzheng de huiyi’ [Regarding the strikes at the First and Second Military Textile Mills and Yufeng Cotton Mill], CYSGYZH, p. 214.

78 Zheng Suyan, ‘Huiyi kangzhan shiqi Chongqing de fangzhi nügong’ in CYSGYZH, p. 259.

79 ‘Meiyou ziyou, meiyou jiaoyu, meiyou wule, meiyou xiuxi’ [No freedom, no education, no entertainment, and no rest], Xinhua ribao, 17 July 1945.

80 Zheng Suyan, ‘Huiyi kangzhan shiqi Chongqing de fangzhi nügong’, CYSGYZH, p. 261.

81 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.), Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p. 35.

82 CYSGYZH, p. 21.

83 Ibid., p. 21.

84 Ibid., pp. 21, 24–25.

85 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.), Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p. 5.

86 Li, Echoes of Chongqing, p. 122.

87 CYSGYZH, p. 59.

88 Tu Chunhua, interview by author, Chongqing, 29 December 2005.

89 For the sisterhoods’ role in protecting women against the Green Gang, see Honig, Sisters and Strangers, pp. 209–17.

90 Li Yongxiang, ‘Wo zai Junfang yi, er chang ji Yufeng shachang bagong qingkuang de huiyi’ [Remembering my experiences in the strikes at the First and Second Military Textile Mills and the Yufeng Cotton Mill], CYSGYZH, p. 226.

91 Pi Xiaoyun xiaozhuan [Biography of Pi Xiaoyun], CYSGYZH, pp. 310–11.

92 Guomindang Sichuan Province Standing Committee Director Huang Jilu's letter to Sichuan Provincial Government, SGYSX, p. 413.

93 Wu, Qi (1986). Kang Ri Zhanzheng shiqi Zhongguo gongren yundong shigao [Draft history of the Chinese labour movement during the War of Resistance against Japan], Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, pp. 208–09Google Scholar.

94 Liu Shi (1950). ‘Kang Ri Zhanzheng zhonghouqi Chongqing de zhigong yundong’ [Chongqing staff and labour movement during the middle and late stages of the War of Resistance], in Nanfangju dangshi ziliao zhengji xiaozu (ed.), Nanfangju dangshi ziliao, Qunzhong gongzuo, p. 296.

95 ‘Yuqu bannianlai gongyun gaikuang’, SGYSX, p. 273.

96 Ibid., p. 295.

97 Chuandong Tewei (1941) report in SGYSX, p. 306.

98 Ibid., p. 307.

99 ‘Zhonggong zhongyang fuwei guanyu muqian funü yundong de fangzhen he renwu de zhishixin’ [Central Party Women's Committee directive regarding the direction and tasks of the present-day women's movement] (3 March 1939). Reprinted in Nanfangjü dangshi ziliao bianji xiaozu (ed.), Nanfangjü dangshi ziliao, Qunzhong gongzuo, p. 11.

100 SGYSX, p. 312.

101 CYSGYZH, p. 45.

102 Ibid., p. 200.

103 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.), Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p. 52.

104 Tu Chunhua, interview by author, Chongqing, 29 December 2005.

105 Li Yongxiang, ‘Wo zai junfang yi, er chang ji Yufeng shachang bagong qingkuang de huiyi’, CYSGYZH, p. 227.

106 A 1947 survey of 90 staff members of the Yufeng Cotton Mill Hechuan branch factory indicates that only eight were Sichuanese, 85 were male, and 70 had received education at a high school or more advanced level. See 36 niandu ge changchuku zhiyuan xueli jiguan fuwu nianxian nianling xingbei tongjibiao, CQA, 6 mu, 130 juan.

107 Chen, ‘Kangzhan shiqi qian Yu si da shachang de fazhan ji qi gongxian’, p. 53.

108 Xinhua ribao, 28 February 1944, p. 3.

109 Zhonghua quanguo zonggonghui ziliaoshi fanyin, ‘Zhanhou Yu shi fangzhi gongren yu gongren yundong’, p. 17.

110 CYSGYZH, p. 66.

111 CYSGYZH, p. 96.

112 In an effort to curb mobility and increase surveillance over their employees, the cotton mills fostered a prison-like, paternalistic environment. Ostensibly to maintain security, minimize the opportunity for theft, but also in reaction to gendered stereotypes of the cotton mill woman worker, management set up a gate admission system. The factories’ regulations were that if workers left the factory compound, they were to be issued with a pass to show the sentries stationed at the gate. For women workers, passes were normally issued every ten days for their one day off, but authorization typically involved doing extra work or giving a gift to their production supervisor. Some women received a pass only once every two months. See CYSGYZH, p. 22.

113 ‘Gongren yaoqiu gaishan daiyu’ [Workers demand improved treatment], Xinhua ribao, 23 July 1945.

114 Howard, Workers at War, p. 14.

115 Yang Jixuan, ‘Fuyuan qizhong Chongqing de gongchao’, pp. 63–64.

116 Hongtao, Xu (1947). ‘Chongqing laozi zhengyi wenti’ [The problem of Chongqing's labour capital disputes], Xin Chongqing [New Chongqing], 1: 2, p. 15Google Scholar.

117 Yang Jixuan (1948). ‘Fuyuan qizhong Chongqing de gongchao’ [Labour unrest in Chongqing during demobilisation], Sichuan jingji huibao, 25 June, pp. 63–64.

118 CQA, 0061 quanzong, 5 mu, 65–2 juan, p. 300 (20 December 1945).

119 Report of the Chongqing Department of Social Affairs Chief Xu Hongshou to Mayor Zhang Dulun (22 April 1946), CQA, 0053 quanzong, 14 mu, 21–3 juan, pp. 461–62.

120 Report of the Chongqing Department of Social Affairs Chief Xu Hongshou to Mayor Zhang Dulun.

121 CQA, 0053 quanzong, 14 mu, 29–3 juan, pp. 424–25, Chongqing Police Chief Tang Yi's report to Mayor Zhang Dulun (15 February 1946).

122 Chandavarkar, R. (1998). Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, c.1850–1950, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 175Google Scholar.

123 Li Yongxiang, ‘Wo zai junfang yi, er chang ji Yufeng shachang bagong qingkuang de huiyi’, CYSGYZH, p. 222.

124 Smith, S. (1994). ‘Class and gender: women's strikes in St Petersburg, 1895–1917 and in Shanghai, 1895–1927’, Social History, 19: 2, p. 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 He Dechao, ‘Kang Ri Zhanzheng shiqi wo zai Chongqing Yufeng shachang jingli de bagong douzheng’ [My experiences in the strike struggles at Chongqing's Yufeng Cotton Mill during the War of Resistance against Japan], CYSGYZH, p. 246.

126 Ibid., pp. 1–14.

127 Julian R. Friedman, ‘Visits to Chungking and Kunming’, 18 February 1946. ‘Enclosure in dispatch no. 117 from Shanghai (Consul General Paul R. Josselyn) to Secretary of State’, 28 February 1946, in US Department of State, Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of China, Microfilm Roll 49, 893.504/2–2846.

128 CQA, 0051 quanzong, 2 mu, 534 juan, p. 35 (18 January 1946).

129 Report of Fourth Shenxin Cotton Mill (21 January 1946), CQA, 0061 quanzong, 5 mu, 65–2 juan, p. 223.

130 CQA, 0060 quanzong, 14 mu, 35 juan, p. 120 (1946).

131 Yuhua report signed by Yuhua factory director and manager and union director for the Department of Social Affairs (28 January 1946), CQA, 0060 quanzong, 14 mu, 35 juan, p. 86.

132 CQA, 0061 quanzong, 11 mu, 397 juan, pp. 28–30 (26 January 1946).

133 Report of Mayor Zhang Dulun (31 January 1946), CQA, 0060 quanzong, 14 mu, 35 juan, p. 135.

134 Report of Mayor Zhang Dulun (31 January 1946); Li Xiangrong's police report (24 January 1946), CQA, 0060 quanzong, 5 mu, 64–2 juan, p. 216.

135 CQA, 0231 quanzong, 5 mu, 2 juan, pp. 29, 30b.

136 Order from Chongqing Mayor Zhang Delun with a list of workers in custody (19 February 1946), CQA, 0060 quanzong, 5 mu, 64–2 juan, p. 222.

137 Production was facilitated by the role played by women representatives. On 29 January, Yuhua union director and women worker representatives met with the Nationalist government's Civilian and Legal Executive (Wenfayuan) which implored them to accept the 60 per cent bonus. It is not known what concessions were given to the labour representatives, only that, upon returning to the mills, the representatives received the consent of women workers to resume work on 4 February. Police reports (31 January and 6 February 1946), CQA, 0061 quanzong, 5 mu, 64–2 juan, pp. 253, 57.

138 ‘Ji qian nügong de yaoqiu’ [Several thousand women workers’ demands], Xinhua ribao, 1 February 1946, CYSGYZH, p. 121.

139 Telegram from management to Chongqing weisi zongsilingbu (n.d.), CYSGYZH, p. 120.

140 ‘Ji qian nügong de yaoqiu’, Xinhua ribao, 1 February 1946.

141 Letter from Chongqing Police Chief Tang Yi to Mayor Zhang Dulun (10 February 1946), CQA, 0053 quanzong, 14 mu, 29-3 juan, p. 292.

142 Yufeng Cotton Mill Industrial Union (10 February 1946), CYSGYZH, p. 122.

143 Chongqing Police Chief Tang Yi reports to Mayor Zhang Dulun (12 February and 14 February 1946), CQA, 0053 quanzong, 14 mu, 29–3 juan, pp. 342, 347.

144 Letter from Pan Shijing to Zhang Chaoyi, company commander of 85th Division (12 February 1946), reprinted in CYSGYZH, p. 122.

145 ‘Yufeng shachang gongchao zhong, “feiji” dashang gongren’ [An ‘airplane’ beats a worker in the midst of the Yufeng Cotton Mill labour strife], Xinhua ribao, 17 February 1946.

146 CQA, 0053 quanzong, 14 mu, 21–3 juan, p. 353 (appendix 2).

147 ‘Yuhua fangshachang gongren oubi gonghui zhiyuan zhi qiyuan ji jingguo’ [The cause and process by which a Yuhua cotton mill worker kills a union official] (circa Spring 1940), CQA, 0053 quanzong, 14 mu, 31 juan, p. 9.

148 ‘Sichuansheng zhengfu guanyu fangzhi Gongchandang pohuai Guodahuiyi duice’ [Sichuan provincial government countermeasures to prevent the Communist party from disrupting the National Congress], SGYSX, p. 421.

149 In a survey of 114 female and 49 male textile workers in Kunming, close to 50 per cent of women respondents viewed factory conditions as bad, while two-thirds of all male respondents affirmed that factory conditions were either tolerable or good. See Epstein, Notes on Labor Problems in Nationalist China, p. 41.

150 CYSGYZH, p. 6. Further evidence of unity between male and female workers is shown in a case at the Yuhua Cotton Mill where union leaders and sub-foremen met with factory management to press for wage adjustments for the predominantly male labourers, who had been receiving one-quarter of the wages of their female skilled counterparts. Similarly, only women workers were receiving meals at the cafeteria, leading the union to hope that ‘single male workers will receive the same treatment as female workers’. See CQA, 0051 quanzong, 2 mu, 530 juan, pp. 3–4 (31 July 1945).

151 CYSGYZH, p. 71.

152 ‘Yufengchang babai duo gongren qingyuan’ [Eight hundred workers of the Yufeng factory petition], Xinhua ribao, 17 March 1946.

153 Zhonghua quanguo zonggonghui ziliaoshi fanyin, ‘Zhanhou Yu shi fangzhi gongren yu gongren yundong’, p. 13.

154 Ministry of Economics notice (17 April 1939), CYSGYZH, p. 68. For an analysis of how tuberculosis influenced the consciousness of garment workers and forged a common language of labour, see Bender, D. (1999). ‘A hero . . . for the weak: Work, consumption, and the enfeebled Jewish worker, 1881–1924’, International Labor and Working-Class History, 56, pp. 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

155 Chen, T. (1949). ‘The labour policy of the Chinese government and its reactions on industry and labour’, International Labour Review, 59: 1, p. 54Google Scholar.

156 CQA, 0053 (Chongqingshi zhengfu), 14 mu, 33 juan, p. 32.

157 Xinyun funü zhidao weiyuanhui wenhua shiye zu (ed.) Zhanshi fangzhi nügong, p. 53.

158 Zhonghua quanguo zonggonghui ziliaoshi fanyin, ‘Yu shi fangzhi gongren yu gongren yundong’, p. 11.