Overview

This pathbreaking book offers the first in-depth study of Chinese labor activism during the momentous upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Arguing that labor was working at cross purposes, the authors explore three distinctive and different forms of working-class protest: rebellion, conservatism, and economism.

Drawing upon a wealth of heretofore inaccessible archival sources, the authors probe the divergent political, psychocultural, and socioeconomic strains within the Shanghai labor movement, convincingly illustrating the complexity of working-class politics in contemporary China.

Key Themes

The authors explore three forms of protest: rebellion, conservatism, and economism. Labor, they argue, was working at cross-purposes through these three modes of militancy promoted by different types of leaders with differing agendas and motivations.

As they convincingly illustrate, the multiplicity of worker responses to the Cultural Revolution cautions against a one-dimensional portrait of working-class politics in contemporary China.