The Rebellion of Temporary Workers and the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Before examining the rebellion of temporary workers in greater detail, it may be useful to set out, in brief, the events of the first months of the Cultural Revolution, when labour unrest was at its peak.

Shanghai was at the centre of labour unrest during the early Cultural Revolution, but the movement as a whole began in June 1966 in Beijing. Its earliest manifestation – the student Red Guards, who emerged in middle schools and universities that month – was dominated by the children of high-ranking cadres. These young people focused their attacks on teachers and members of the old cultural and intellectual elites. Mao gave his blessing to this movement, but from August 1966 the agenda and targets began to change, as other students, and eventually workers, entered the fray. Some scholars describe this period as the "People's Cultural Revolution", which lasted until a conservative backlash began in earnest in January 1967.³⁰

A few weeks into the movement, on August 18 1966, the CCP Central Committee issued a decision on the direction of the Cultural Revolution, marking a shift from the purge of cultural elites to an attack on "capitalist roaders in power inside the Communist Party". The decision emphasized the right to form mass organizations.³¹ One of the first leading figures to come under pressure was President Liu Shaoqi, who was finally purged that autumn. The major accusation against Liu was that he had suppressed the student movement in the summer by sending work teams to the universities to curb the Red Guard's activities.

Many students who had been labelled as "rightists" or "counterrevolutionaries" by the work teams or school authorities during that period fought for rehabilitation. Under the slogan "rebellion is justified", all manner of grievances against local party apparatuses began to be aired. Revolutionary groups took the interpretation of Mao Zedong Thought, the core of CCP ideology, into their own hands. Mass organizations published unauthorized transcripts of speeches and quotations by Mao and other central leaders in their newspapers.

As time went on, conservative mass organizations, also called the "protecting-the-emperor faction", were formed to defend local party committees against the rebels. Local cadres mobilized CCP and Communist Youth League members, labour activists and loyal workers. Some elite "old" Red Guards from the early days of the Cultural Revolution had grown disillusioned, as they watched the movement turn against their parents from August onwards, and they therefore supported the conservatives. The move to restore order was met, in October, by a new campaign against "the reactionary bourgeois line", meaning the suppression of the rebel movement by officials. Widespread revolt broke out against cadres all over the country. As dissent concerning local authorities grew, the Central Committee finally allowed workers to join the Cultural Revolution, as long as they did so outside of work hours. As a result, the movement spread to the whole urban population.

During the "People's Cultural Revolution", the government's ability to control the fledgling rebel movement was tested. Young people who had been sent down to the countryside under the centrally mandated "Up to the Mountains, Down to the Villages" programme demanded to be allowed to return to the cities. Many of those who had suffered in the campaigns of the pre-1966 period sought rehabilitation, and disadvantaged groups "hijacked" the rebellion to promote their own economic and political interests.³² In Shanghai in particular, temporary workers were a major force in the Cultural Revolution, calling for secure, permanent posts in the state-owned enterprises. The first attacks on the local authorities in Shanghai were student led, but in November 1966, workers began to press for their own right to form city-wide rebel organizations. Their request was refused, and on November 10, around 1,000 workers led by Wang Hongwen's Shanghai Revolutionary Rebel Worker Headquarters commandeered a train and set out for Beijing to petition the central government. They were halted at Anting on the outskirts of Shanghai, and their refusal to disembark resulted in all traffic on the Beijing line being halted for over 31 hours. As the Anting Incident unfolded, the mayor of Shanghai, Cao Duiqi, demanded that the workers immediately return to their units. Wang's rebels refused to back down until their demands had been met: the recognition of their mass organizations and an acknowledgement that their actions were legal. They also demanded public criticism of Cao Duiqi and the handling of the conflict by the higher authorities.³³ Zhang Chunqiao, the negotiator sent by the Cultural Revolution Leading Group from Beijing, eventually signed off on the rebels' demands with Mao's support.

The Anting Incident showed that grassroots pressure could persuade the CCP leadership to ally with rebels against local party authorities, even in the country's most important industrial city. Only a few thousand workers had joined the initial Shanghai rebellion. After the success in Anting, however, rebel workers' organizations in other cities were emboldened, and many called for official recognition. On December 12, the Central Committee declared the right of workers to participate in the Cultural Revolution and to form their own mass organizations, with the proviso that production should not be disturbed.³⁴ For the first time since 1949, the central leadership recognized independent workers' organizations that were not integrated into the state apparatus. This might have represented an opportunity for progress in workers' rights, but the change did not last for long.³⁵ It should be noted that many workers remained suspicious of the rebel forces: between November and late December, the party leadership in Shanghai was able to mobilize significant numbers of workers in a counterattack by the conservative Scarlet Guards. Another critical point to note is that the students' and workers' rebel movements drew on very different demographics. In contrast to many of their student counterparts, rebel workers often had good class status, and more than a few had been party members before 1966. From August 1966 onwards, many of the student rebels were the children of intellectuals and capitalists – victims of previous purges who had much to gain from a shake-up of the political order. By contrast, industrial workers "inside the system" were one of the most privileged groups in China.

Why, then, did permanent workers participate at all? Without doubt, some had grievances against the system of one kind or another, and the Cultural Revolution offered a rare opportunity to air them. In fact, however, the main demand of the rebel permanent workers in Shanghai was for the right to participate in the Revolution at all, since this would offer them the possibility of improving their political status through performance. In Maoist China, the access to party or army membership, higher education and social status within society was linked to class status, family background and political performance. People could do little to change their official class status or family background, but could improve the party's evaluation of their performance by engaging in political activism. The extent to which rebellion was about raising one's political status was made clear after the movement, spearheaded by Wang Hongwen's Rebel Workers' Headquarters, took over power from the municipal authorities in January 1967. From this point on, activists from the heady days of the Anting Incident began to claim the label of "old rebels", meaning that they had attacked the authorities when it was dangerous to do so and the fate of the rebel groups had remained uncertain. This privileging of early participation recalled the boast of "revolutionary cadres" from the pre-1949 days, of having joined the party before its victory was assured. The Cultural Revolution offered those born too late to be revolutionaries the chance to perform their own acts of political daring. For permanent workers therefore, the main goal was participation rather than any critique of categorization or of the system of class status.

The foregoing paragraphs have captured only a snapshot of the multiple competing interests at work among the conservative and rebel factions during the "People's Cultural Revolution". For Mao and the other CCP leaders, the complex, shifting alliances of this period presented a serious problem. The leadership was left in the unenviable position of trying to propel some aspects of the movement while at the same time limiting others. Leaders remained keen to harness the energies of the masses, but at the same time they worried that widespread strikes and factional infighting could put economic development at risk.

More seriously still, from the Party Central's perspective, the attempts of rebel organizations to coordinate at the national level represented a potential challenge to the CCP's monopoly on state power. This was – as it remains to this day – a line that could not be crossed. By the end of 1966, the central government had halted the so-called "big link-up" of rebel groups, as well as the free train travel that had allowed Red Guards to easily connect with groups far from home. The slogan of the day, the double-headed "grasp revolution, promote production", gave some indication of the balance the party leadership was attempting to strike. Temporary workers, soldiers on active duty, public security staff and labour camp inmates were banned from forming their own rebel organizations; the occupation of archives and public security offices was also outlawed. The "People's Cultural Revolution" came to an end, and the rebel organizations shifted their focus to a goal acceptable to the leadership: "seizing power" from suspect local officials.