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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 26, 28 June 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Chinese labor movement was silent for about 20 years after Chiang Kai-shek took power in 1927. The movement rose strongly again after V-J Day.
During the Japanese occupation, half of China and the eastern sea coast was under Japanese military control. At this time it was almost impossible for the workers to fight, although their living standard rapidly went from bad to worse.
With the defeat of the Japanese imperialists, a political vacuum existed for a while. The labor movement, which was already fermenting during the Japanese occupation, grasped the opportunity and emerged into the open.
For the first time, the workers openly battled for two major demands, the “Rehabilitation Fee” and “Victorious Allowance,” winning on both issues by their powerful strikes.
After the Kuomintang took over the power from the Japanese, they were forced to concede to the workers the right to strike and to organize into trade unions.
The workers’ victory pushed the movement to a higher level. Strikes soon spread to every industrial city, centering especially in Shanghai. According to statistics of the Social Affairs Bureau of the Shanghai municipal government, there were more than 2,000 strikes from September, 1945 to April 1946, involving FOUR MILLION WORKERS. These are the official figures. The actual numbers were far higher. The sliding wage scale was won the first time by the Chinese workers in the course of this gigantic strike wave.
The material base of the Kuomintang regime had been deeply undermined. Even Washington’s economic and military aid was largely in vain because the violent Stalinist-led peasant war was exhausting Chiang Kai-shek’s regime. This regime is weaker than it has ever been before. The fact that it is still in power is primarily due to the opportunist policy of the Chinese Communist Party rather than the help of American imperialism.
When the labor movement first surged forward, the members of the Chinese Communist. Party were far from Shanghai in the “guerilla area” of the mountainous hinterland. Shortly afterward, the Stalinists dispatched members to Shanghai and penetrated the mass movement. With their policy of class collaboration, they dampened the workers’ militancy and helped end the strike wave. It was then that the Kuomintang began banning strikes, arresting a lot of the militant workers, and restraining the unions.
The economic crises again came to a head in February 1947. The capitalist government announced an emergency law of freezing wages, and thus plunged the workers into a condition of semi-starvation. The Railway and Postal Workers Unions thereupon called a national convention at Nanking to prepare for a general strike. The workers in Shanghai went out on a general strike just after Labor Day in 1947. Over 200,000 workers from the main industries, a quarter of the labor population of Shanghai, participated in the strike. The government was forced to retreat and announced the partial abrogation of its policy of freezing wages.
In September 1947 under the influence of their “left” line throughout the world, the Stalinists called an adventurous strike at the Shanghai Tramcar Co. Due to lack of preparation and the strike’s isolation, it was badly defeated and more than 200 workers were dismissed by the company. The movement temporarily declined because of this defeat.
In February 1948, the workers of the Shen Sun Cotton Mill called a sit-down strike for a yearly allowance and rice as well as coal rations. The Stalinists led the workers into another impasse by ordering unprotected workers
to fight against the policemen. Several policemen were wounded in the course of the fight and withdrew from the scene. After a few minutes, the Shanghai-Woosung Garrison troops were mobilized. Thousands of soldiers and policemen, equipped with tanks and armored cars, surrounded the mill, fired upon the strikers with machine guns and tear gas shells. The unarmed workers, most of them. women, resisted desperately and with unusual heroism. Unfortunately the whole action was not prepared for by the Stalinists. About 400 workers were injured or killed in this engagement. We see here how the Stalinists exhaust the resources of the working class.
In order to wipe out the labor movement, the government at the present time arrests a lot of the active union members. Despite the treacheries and adventuristic policies of the Chinese Communist Party which was responsible for the defeats, the movement has not been wholly destroyed. A new crisis will again thrust the labor movement forward.
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