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SHANGHAI ON STRIKE: The Politics of Chinese Labor. By Elizabeth J. Perry. Stanford (California): Stanford University Press. 1993. ix, 327 pp. (Tables, photos.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 0-8047-2063-0.
PASSIVITY, RESISTANCE, AND COLLABORATION: Intellectual Choices in Occupied Shanghai, 1937-1945. By Poshek Fu. Stanford (California): Stanford University Press. 1993. xvii, 261 pp. (Maps, photos.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 0-8047-2172-6.
"DIFFERENT WORKERS engage in different politics" Elizabeth Perry tells us at the conclusion of this masterful study (p. 239). Rather than being a uniform proletariat with a strong class consciousness molded by the Communist party, China's industrial workers were shaped largely by their individual origins, their gender, and their position in the workplace. In this thoroughly researched work, Perry gives us a richly textured and subtly nuanced portrait of the Shanghai working class. Her study is based on research at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (where she consulted transcripts of interviews with workers done in the late 1950s and early 1960s) and the Shanghai Municipal Archives, as well as the Shanghai police files and the rich trove of new publications from China. Perry also grounds her study in the framework of the labor history being done on other countries.
In the first part of her study, "The Politics of Place, 1839-1919," Perry examines the way in which...