Elizabeth J. Perry. Shanghai
on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor. Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1993.
In this study of Chinese labor,
Elizabeth Perry sets out to prove that “different workers engage in different
politics” (p.239). Perry focuses on different types of laborers from different
parts of China to show the machinations, setbacks, and progress of the working
class in Shanghai.
Perry’s book is separated into
three parts. The first part, “The Politics of Place,” details how workers in
Shanghai were drawn from all over China. These “in-migrants” often brought with
them strong ties to their native places; these native-place identities
“afforded displaced workers a sense of belonging,” and were also crucial in
creating a distinctive labor consciousness and popular culture for each set of
workers (19). But Perry reminds her readers that native-place identities could
fracture a group of workers as well; “the politics of place was thus a
two-edged sword that both opened possibilities and set boundaries to the
development of collective action” (30).
The second part of her book,
“The Politics of Partisanship,” traces the interaction between groups of
workers and the fledgling Communist Party or Nationalist Party. Interestingly,
gangs figure prominently in this part of her book. The success (or failure) of
a party’s attempts at organizing unskilled and semiskilled labor was often
contingent on a gang’s endorsements of that party, as seen in the Communist
Party’s dependence on the “cooperation of turncoat gangsters” in gaining more
control over the labor scene (128). On the other hand, gangsters also depended on
their connections with a political party and labor association to redeem their
social status, as in the case of the influential Du Yuesheng.
“The Politics of Production,”
the last part of Perry’s book, looks at three industries – tobacco, textiles,
and transport. In these case studies, Perry finds that trade consciousness and
even divisions within a trade, such as gender divisions or skill
differentiations, were crucial in guiding and shaping labor protests. For
example, Perry finds that women were deeply attached to their rural roots, thus
making it difficult for them to identify with any one political group.
Obstacles such as these highlight the challenges in creating a unified labor
movement in which people identify themselves as members of one unified class,
rather than members of various unions and guilds.
Perry’s book has shown,
however, that successful, organized labor movements did occur in Shanghai. She
illustrates the problem inherent in studying Chinese labor history through the
lens of class consciousness; using this traditional approach transforms such
aspects of the working-class in Shanghai as the native-place identity into a
“feudal [impediment] to true working-class identity…” Instead, Perry claims
that “it is perhaps more accurate to understand [it] as the very stuff of which
labor activism was made” (29). Regardless of whether or not the workers of
Shanghai had a “true working-class identity,” they were still able to agitate,
sometimes successfully, for their rights. Furthermore, it is often easy to
assume that workers were a vacuous mass until the Communists came and infused
them with revolutionary fervor. However, Perry has revealed that oftentimes the
workers had the upper hand, and that parties had to negotiate on the workers’
terms to be able to exert a measure of political influence.
Perry’s book is a substantial
contribution to Chinese labor history for its careful detail and provocative
analysis. Scattered throughout her impressive scholarship are vivid images,
such as the “frowning movement” of the department store employees or the
gregarious “grand invitational” style of protest implemented by streetcar
workers. As Gail Hershatter comments, Perry “combines the social scientist’s
passion for order with the historian’s eye for compelling anecdote,” making a
reading of her book both enjoyable and informative.
Sharon Chen
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