McQuaide, Shiling Zhao, “Shanghai labour: Gender, politics, and traditions in the making of the Chinese working class, 1911-1949” (1996)

Title : “Shanghai labour: Gender, politics, and traditions in the making of the Chinese working class, 1911-1949”

Author(s) : McQuaide, Shiling Zhao

Year : 1996

Type : Dissertation

Subject : History

Keywords : social;political;women;gender;party

University : Queen's University at Kingston

Language:Name : English

Support : Print

Abstract : Students of Chinese labour diverge widely in their approach to working class formation in China. Chinese historians tend to dismiss workers' pre-modern traditions as 'feudal remnants' relegating the skilled craftsmen to the position of a 'labour aristocracy' susceptible to political reformism. Working class solidarity and class consciousness tend to be depicted by Chinese scholars as rooted in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s leadership. Many western experts, in contrast, appreciate the key role played by traditional culture in workers' unionization, yet they emphasize the segmentation and differentiation of Chinese workers. Gender, as an analytic category, is understated by most scholars both inside and outside China, although this imbalance is being redressed by recent studies. This thesis explores the character of the making of the Chinese working class, drawing upon insights pioneered by E. P. Thompson, approaching class as a fluent relationship made and remade historically. Concentrating on Shanghai workers' activities in three major arenas--the workplace, the family, and the labour movement--this work examines how gender, pre-modern traditions, and national as well as international politics shaped and defined the experience of female and male workers in the Republican-era (1911-1949). The voices of Shanghai workers assumed distinct tones because of the meanings of region, skill, sex, and gang factionalism. Nevertheless, as this dissertation argues, during this period a new human relation formed that was rooted in the subordination of wage labour to capital. Workers started to express their class identity in daily conflicts with their bosses. Class consciousness manifested itself, and class solidarity superseded divisions and differences during two moments of intensified class warfare--the mid-1920s and late-1940s. Nationalism and the CCP's mobilization contributed considerably to working class formation and reconstitution in Shanghai. The labour upheaval in the late-1940s also indicates a developed working class maturity since women hands, who were usually followers in the 1920s, became central figures in the emerging working class politics of social transformation.