Why the factories mattered
The Cultural Revolution started among students and intellectuals, but by the end of 1966 it had reached the workplace. Mao Zedong’s supporters in Beijing were hoping for support from industrial workers, who were officially the leading class in China’s revolution. At the same time, many workers had their own grievances: some were temporary or contract workers with fewer benefits than permanent staff, others resented managers or Party officials who controlled housing, wages and promotion. When the movement opened up room for criticism, these tensions quickly became part of it.
The Shanghai January Storm
The best-known workplace event of 1967 is the Shanghai January Storm, the seizure of power in China’s largest industrial city. The background lay in the last months of 1966, when a rebel organisation known as the Workers’ General Headquarters, with the young factory worker Wang Hongwen among its leaders, challenged the Shanghai municipal Party committee. A group of rebels briefly stopped a Shanghai-bound train at Anting in November 1966 to press their demands, and the incident became a test of how far the central leadership would support them.
In early January 1967, rebels took over two major Shanghai newspapers and held large rallies against the city leadership. The radical leaders Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, who had ties to the Beijing radicals, helped shape events. Mao and his circle publicly praised the rebels’ action, and people elsewhere took it as a signal that they too could challenge local authorities. In February a “Shanghai People’s Commune” was announced, in imitation of the Paris Commune of 1871. Mao reportedly disliked the name, and the body was renamed the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee, with Zhang Chunqiao at its head.
The Shanghai takeover was soon held up as an example for the rest of the country, and the committee form it adopted became the standard model.
Rebel worker organisations and “economism”
During the winter of 1966-67, workers formed many rebel groups of their own. Some had a political programme, but many were also about pay and conditions. Groups demanded back pay, bonuses, housing and better treatment of temporary workers, and in some places they used strikes, work stoppages or the seizure of funds to make their point. Central leaders condemned these demands as “economism”, meaning that workers were being bought off with material gains instead of pursuing revolution. Pressure was put on enterprises to cancel or reverse concessions, and Premier Zhou Enlai worked to keep transport, ports and essential industries running.
The result was confusing for workers. Many had joined groups to win better pay, then found that doing so was criticised as a political mistake. Other workers joined the opposite camp and defended their factory leaders and the existing system. Rival organisations in the same factory could therefore have very different aims.
Managers under attack
Factory managers, engineers and Party secretaries were among the most exposed groups. Accusations of following a “bourgeois line” or of caring more about production than politics were common. Managers were made to confess, wear signs or stand in front of crowds at struggle meetings, and some were beaten or removed. Bonus systems and other material incentives, which the radicals considered a revisionist method, were criticised and often abolished. Technical specialists could also be denounced for their education or foreign experience.
The effects on production were serious in many places, although the picture varies by industry and region. Transport interruptions, missing leaders, factional meetings and sometimes armed conflict made it hard to keep plants running. Official statistics later showed a decline in industrial output in the later 1960s compared with 1966, though the exact scale differs by source. The leadership repeatedly called on workers to “grasp revolution and promote production”, a slogan which expressed the dilemma: the movement wanted political change and expected the economy to continue.
The army steps in
In January 1967 the army was instructed to “support the left” and to help maintain essential services. In practice that often meant soldiers occupying factories, ports and rail depots to protect vital infrastructure and mediate between factions. These interventions were not always neutral, and local commanders were sometimes accused of siding with conservative groups. The most dramatic dispute of that kind came in Wuhan in July, when a local commander’s troops and a rebel group came into open conflict.
Revolutionary committees
The institution that came out of these struggles was the revolutionary committee. Meant to be a “three-in-one combination” of representatives of rebel groups, army officers and veteran cadres, such committees were set up at provincial, city and factory levels in 1967 and 1968. They replaced the old Party committees and management boards, at least on paper, and were intended to unite production and politics.
In practice the army and experienced officials often held the real power, and the rebel groups that had done the seizing found themselves pushed aside. In 1968 workers’ propaganda teams were sent into universities to take control from student factions, and many former rebels were disciplined or sent away. Wang Hongwen, by contrast, rose into the national leadership in the early 1970s before his fall in 1976.
Longer effects
The legacy for workers was mixed. Some gained a feeling of participation, and a few reforms, such as limited increases in the status of ordinary workers, lasted. For many others, the period brought disruption, informal blacklists and long-lasting distrust between colleagues. The idea that managers must be scrutinised by the shop floor sat uneasily with the need for discipline and technical expertise, and when economic reforms started in the late 1970s, many of the 1967 methods were reversed.
For comparison, workers elsewhere were also testing their power in these years. In France, the May 1968 strikes brought students and workers into a short-lived alliance, and the Hungarian reform era that began that year placed new emphasis on economic incentives, close to the opposite of the Chinese approach in 1967.