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by S. A. Smith. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. x + 366 pp.US$64.95 (Hardcover), US$21.95 (Paperback). ISBN 08223-2783-X (Hardcover), 08223-2793-7 (Paperback)
This fine book offers a new perspective on workers, unions, and strikes in Shanghai in the 1920s. Stephen Anthony Smith wants to show the importance of nationalism for the labour movement. He argues in particular that the upsurge of labour protest and organization, from the 1925 May 30th movement to Chiang Kai-shek's 1927 suppression of labour, was an expression less of class consciousness (as Chesneaux1 asserted in his classic tome of over three decades ago) than of militant nationalism. In support of this view he offers a narrative rich in detail, some old, much new. In February 1925, after a Japanese factory super-visor struck a 12 year-old girl for napping on the job, other workers walked out in protest. The Communist Party, taken by surprise, quickly picked up the nationalist theme. "Japanese capitalists treat Chinese labourers like cattle and horses," proclaimed the striking workers' manifesto, "Rise and fight for the prestige of China." After May 30, when British-officered police killed a dozen demonstrators, the anti-imperialist strike spread to 200,000 workers and other classes too: thousands of students and small merchants also became involved, supported by contributions from Chinese capitalists. Out of this cross-class nationalist movement came an explosion of trade unionism. In early 1927, when workers rose to support the Communist Party in nationalist revolution against warlords, Shanghai unions had 821,000 members, compared to perhaps 16,000 in 1923.
In his earlier chapters Smith intertwines dual narratives of the growth of nationalism and of the labour movement going back to...