How did the Chinese working class emerge?

[The emergence and development of the Chinese working class] The invasion of foreign capital began with the founding of shipyards, shipping companies, silk reeling, brick tea factories, and printing factories in the coastal cities of Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Wuhan, Chongqing, and Tienlue. The first industrial workers, mainly seafarers and shipping workers, were produced in these foreign enterprises. The development of Chinese capitalist enterprises first began with the military industry. As a result of successive defeats in foreign wars, from the 1860s onwards, Qing government bureaucrats began to found military industries, as well as mining, ironmaking and textile industries. From the 1870s onwards, some Chinese merchants, landowners and bureaucrats began to invest in modern industries such as cotton spinning, weaving and reeling. A number of workers were also generated in these factory enterprises. It is estimated that during the fifty years before the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, foreign businessmen opened about a hundred factories in China ****, with more than 34,000 workers, more than forty government-run factories, with more than 47,000 workers, and more than a hundred privately-run factories, with more than 34,000 workers. Taken together, there were more than 240 factories in ****, with more than 115,000 workers. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, imperialism in China expanded the scope, scale and speed of economic aggression, investment in railroads, mines, and all aspects of industry has developed greatly. Foreign direct investment in the operation and management of the Dianyue, the Middle East, Jiaozhi, Jinghan, Jingfeng, Jinpu, Huning, Jingsui and other railroads. By 1913, foreign capital in China built more than 10,000 kilometers of railroads, more than two dozen large mines, a variety of processing plants increased to one hundred and sixty-six, foreign-owned shipping industry and electrical, water, public **** transportation and other municipal industries have also had greater development. During this period, China's national industry was mainly coal and iron mining and textile industry, and the number of commercially-run industries also gradually increased. In these new Chinese and foreign enterprises a number of workers were created. By the time of the First World War, there were more than 600,000 workers in China's industrial and mining enterprises, plus more than a million seafarers and railroad workers***. During the First World War, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, the British, Russian, German and French imperialists temporarily relaxed their aggression against China because they were busy with the war. China's national industry, mainly the light industry of textile and flour industry, took the opportunity to get a relatively rapid development. 1913 to 1920 car, in the light industry of twenty-three trades, six hundred and seventy-five newly established factories. Flour industry, only two mills in 1900, increased to eighty-six mills in 1928. During this period, Chen Britain, France and two countries still maintain the original aggressive forces in China, Japan, the United States and the United States took the opportunity to expand the economic aggression against China. Japan in addition to force to seize all the German factories, mines and railroads in Shandong, but also took the opportunity to increase its industrial investment in Shanghai, Qingdao, Wuhan and other places, the construction of a large number of cotton textile mills. In the seven years from 1914 to 1921, Japan set up two hundred and twenty-three larger factories and mines in China (excluding factories plundered in China), while the United States also had a large increase in investment in China. With the rapid development of Chinese national capitalism and the opening of a large number of enterprises by Japanese and American imperialists, the Chinese proletariat grew rapidly, and by 1919 it had grown to about two million. [Characteristics of the Chinese working class] Compared with the developed capitalist countries, Chinese capitalism was underdeveloped. Although the Chinese industrial working class is small in number, it is the representative of the new productive forces, and in addition to the general basic characteristics of the proletariat, i.e., connected with mechanized industrial mass production and rich in organization and discipline, it also has a number of unique features. Firstly, a large part of the Chinese working class first arose in foreign capital enterprises, and is therefore older and more qualified than the Chinese bourgeoisie, and its social strength and social base are broader. Secondly, the Chinese working class was oppressed by imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism and feudalism and led an extremely miserable life. The working hours of the workers are very long, usually more than twelve hours a day, and in some cases as many as sixteen to twenty hours. The wages of Chinese workers were very low; around 1919, the daily wages of workers were one or two to three or four silver dollars, while the price of rice at that time was often about ten dollars per quintal. This level of wages was only one-seventh of the wages of British workers of the same kind at that time and one-fourth of the wages of Japanese workers. In many factories, wages were calculated on a daily basis, and all vacation pay was deducted on a daily basis. When an accident occurs and work is stopped, the wages for that day are calculated on time, and with prices constantly rising and real wages constantly falling, it is difficult for workers to maintain even a minimum living. There are no laws to protect labor in China, no unemployment benefits, no minimum protection for the lives of workers, and no due subsidies for illness or injury in the line of duty. The safety equipment in the average factory or mining enterprise is very bad and there are an alarming number of accidents. In the Fushun coal mine under the control of the Japanese imperialists, which is claimed to care for labor insurance, according to the statistics of 1913, the number of disaster accidents amounted to two thousand ninety-eight, with three thousand one hundred and forty-eight deaths and injuries, and in 1917 alone a gas explosion killed nine hundred and twenty-one people. According to the survey of Tangshan Kailuan Coal Mine in early 1920, this mine mine often suffocated, through the water, tile fire, example of collapse or coal seam downfall and other accidents, in the mine due to these accidents and the death of an average of four people per month, the number of injuries than the number of deaths more than two times. Digging coal by hand, transported by horse-drawn carts, if a cave-in or other accidents, the mines are busy saving the horses, regardless of the lives of the miners, because the death of a horse is worth one hundred and eighty dollars, and the death of a worker only out of the pension fee of forty dollars. In the modern enterprise also commonly practiced a variety of feudal exploitation system, plus the contract labor system, contract labor, foster labor, etc.. The system of contract labor, that is, by the big foreman to the capitalist contracted a certain amount of work, and then subcontracted to the small foreman, the small foreman and then contracted to hire workers, layer by layer for exploitation. Such as the Kailuan Coal Mining Bureau of coal, all by the foreman package digging. Kiln packers, according to the rules to the big package out, and then small work for hire, hired small workers, eight hours a day down the well, wages but twenty copper plate. The foremen also used methods such as gambling and debt lending to make the workers poorer and poorer, and they became lifelong laborers. The bonded laborers are teenage workers (mostly young girls from rural areas) who are exploited by both the capitalists and the bonded laborers. The foreman of the labor contractor enters into a contract of bondage with the family for a very low bondage fee, usually for a period of three years. During this period, the worker loses all freedom. Under the oppression of the capitalist and the foreman, they perform heavy labor, and all their wages go to the foreman, with only a small amount of money barely enough to support the worker's own food and lodging. Foster workers are child laborers hired by the capitalists, who are only provided with food and lodging for three to five years, and are still required to work for the capitalists after they have completed their training, with extremely low wages. In addition, workers can be fired, fined, beaten, have their wages deducted and be searched at will. Capitalists and foremen can even set up torture devices to torture and execute workers. The exploitation of female and child workers is even worse, as their working hours are the same as those of adult male workers, but their wages are only one-half of those of adult male workers, and they are humiliated and bullied from time to time. Chinese workers have no democratic rights in politics. There is no freedom of strike and freedom of speech. The imperialist and warlord governments set up regulations such as the Temporary New Penal Laws and the Regulations on Public Security Police, rejected the legitimate demands of workers and arbitrarily beat and shot them. For example, the strikes of the Hanyang Arsenal workers and the Beijing postal workers in 1913 were suppressed by the warlords, and some of the strike leaders were sentenced to death and some were forced to commit suicide, while the striking workers of the Anyuan Coal Mine in 1915 were treated as bandits. The oppression and exploitation suffered by the Chinese working class is rare in the world, so they are resolutely and thoroughly revolutionary. They are particularly capable of fighting. Thirdly, the Chinese working class is highly centralized. Although there are not many industries in modern China, they are mainly located in a few big cities, so the industrial proletariat is more concentrated and concentrated in a few big factories and mines. According to incomplete statistics from thirteen provinces, between 1900 and 1910 there were one hundred and fifty-six factories and mines employing more than 500 people, with a total of 240,035 workers, of whom forty foreign factories and mines accounted for almost half. Of the one hundred and fifty-six factories and mines,--there were sixty-five with more than one thousand people, **** one hundred and fifty-two thousand four hundred and fifty-two; and there were two with more than ten thousand people, **** twenty-five thousand and ninety. According to a survey of Shanghai in 1934, workers in enterprises with more than 500 workers accounted for 57 percent of the total number of workers in Shanghai, and most of them were concentrated in textile, coal and iron ore, fertilizer-making, transportation and other enterprises. In terms of area, Shanghai and several other big industrial cities had a concentration of 100,000 to hundreds of thousands of workers each. According to a survey conducted by the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions in 1925, there were half a million industrial workers in Shanghai alone, and together with several nearby industrially developed cities such as Wuxi and Nantong, there were about one million industrial workers in the three towns of Wuhan***. In the three towns of Wuhan *** there are 400,000 workers, in Tientsin 300,000, in Hong Kong 250,000, in Guangzhou 100,000, and in Shenyang and other cities, industrial and mining areas in the three eastern provinces *** there are 600,000 workers. Although the Chinese industrial proletariat is a minority in the national population, because it is so concentrated, it is not only conducive to the unity of the class as a whole, but also to fighting, and it is easy to form a strong political force in the revolutionary struggle. Fourthly, the Chinese working class, apart from the industrial proletariat, consists of about twelve million wage laborers and shopkeepers in the small handicrafts of the cities, and the proletariat in the countryside (i.e., the hired peasants) and other proletarian voices in the towns and villages are still a huge number. If we add the semi-proletarians in the countryside - the poor peasants - the number of proletarians and semi-proletarians of all kinds in the country greatly exceeds half of the national population. The oppression and exploitation to which they are subjected are very cruel. At the same time, the fact that the majority of the Chinese industrial proletarians come from the peasantry, which has broken up the property market, makes them form a close alliance. These characteristics made the Chinese working class the most advanced and revolutionary class in the Chinese revolution. [Early Spontaneous Struggles of the Chinese Working Class] From the day of its birth, the Chinese working class has been engaged in continuous struggles against exploitation and oppression. In the 1850s and 1860s, the earliest organization of porters, the Guangzhou Packing Workers' Federation, appeared in Guangzhou. 1858, more than 20,000 municipal workers and porters in Hong Kong went on strike and returned to Guangzhou in a struggle against the occupation of the city by the British and French invading forces. This was the earliest recorded general strike in China. According to incomplete statistics, during the sixty-odd years from 1840 to 1904, there were about thirty written records of workers' struggles ****, an average of less than one per year; during the nine years from 1905 to 1913, there were about seventy strikes ****, an average of about eight per year; and during the period from 1914 to May 1919, there were more than one hundred and twenty strikes ****, an average of more than twenty per year. In 1918 alone there were thirty-three strikes throughout the country, and in 1919 the number increased to sixty-seven. The early spontaneous struggles of the Chinese working class evolved in scale and form. At first it was individual or a small number of workers who resisted by quarrelling with their employers, complaining to the government offices, destroying machinery and equipment, looting warehouses, burning raw materials or products, and so on. Later on, it gradually developed into idling and strikes of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of workers with some kind of organization and leadership. Especially during the First World War, allied strikes and general alliance strikes began to appear in Shanghai and Hong Kong in several enterprises or even in the whole industry. For example, in October 1914, the Ningbo seafarers of the three shipping companies in Shanghai, China Merchants, Taikoo and Jardine held an allied strike to demand wage increases. In December of the same year, the Shanghai Yellow Cab workers held an allied strike against the increase of cab rent, and in 1915, the workers of the Anyuan Coal Mine went on strike against the cruel exploitation and against the foreign engineers who took the side of the foremen who beat up the workers. In 1916, the workers of the Printing Bureau of the Ministry of Finance of the Peking Government, the sand tilters in Shanghai, and the workers of the British Cigarette Company in Shanghai demanded for higher wages and held strikes. 1917, the miners of Shui Kou Shan in Hunan Province and the workers of the British and American Tobacco factories in Shanghai held strikes with 3,000 workers each, while the printing workers of the Chung Hwa and Wen Ming bookstores in Shanghai held a strike in March 1917 to support the printing workers of the Commercial Bookstore. In March 1917, the printing workers of Shanghai's Zhonghua and Wenming bookstores went on strike to support the struggle of the printing workers of the Commercial Press. There were also industry-wide strikes by handicraft workers. These growing strikes were mainly the spontaneous economic struggles of workers who could not tolerate living conditions worse than that of a cow or a horse, who could not tolerate brutal abuses, and who opposed wage deductions and demanded higher wages, and some of them were clearly anti-imperialist and anti-feudal in nature, thus contributing to the improvement of the consciousness of the working class in China. However, at that time, the proletariat did not yet have its own political party and a unified trade union leadership, and was still in the state of a self-contained class. In the struggle against imperialist aggression, the Chinese working class resisted heroically: in 1884, during the Sino-French War, the Hong Kong Ship Repairing Factory refused to repair warships for the French invaders; in 1903, more than 10,000 miners in Mengzi, Yunnan Province, took part in the Lin'an Uprising staged by the capitalists; and from 1907 to 1909, miners in Tongguanshan, Anhui Province, under the leadership of the Mining Trade Union, struggled to abolish the British-led mine in Tongguanshan, which had been opened by the imperialists. In 1912, with the support of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the workers in Anqing actively participated in the opium-burning campaign, and in 1915, during the campaign against the twenty-one unequal treaties proposed by Japan in an attempt to destroy China, the Chinese workers employed by the Japanese factories in Shanghai, Hankou, and Changsha held strikes and demonstrations and actively participated in the campaign of boycotting Japanese goods. On November 14, 1916, more than 1,700 workers in the French Concession in Tianjin, including porters, shopkeepers, servants, and inspectors, went on strike, and the struggle lasted until March 1917, when they finally won victory. in the winter of 1919, workers in the Taochong Iron Mine in Fanchang, Anhui Province, went on strike against the control and exploitation of the Japanese imperialists (each ton of iron was worth 20 yuan, but the Japanese paid only 5 yuan), and won victory. The struggle was victorious. Most of the early struggles of the Chinese working class were concentrated in the coastal cities and in the mines and railroads, which was determined by the characteristics of imperialist encroachment. From the very beginning of the early struggles of the Chinese working class, the opposition to imperialism was emphasized, as well as the opposition to the feudal landlord class and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, and the task was so onerous and arduous that it was rare for the workers' movement in any other country. In China, the working class came first and then the bourgeoisie, and the Chinese working class was stronger than the bourgeoisie from its birth, which is also rare in the world. The early struggles of the Chinese working class were spontaneous and the organizations were primitive, such as gangs and guilds. The working class in this period was at the stage of self-containedness, and most of its struggles were economic; even if there were some political struggles, it was not an independent political force, but participated as a follower of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. It has neither a political leadership of its own nor a unified trade union organization, but relies on a number of folk secret societies. These organizations neither reflect the fundamental interests and demands of the proletariat, nor can they achieve victory in the struggle and realize the historical mission of the working class. The growth and expansion of the Chinese working class and the development of the workers' movement laid the class basis for the formation of its own unified organizations, the trade unions, and its vanguard, the Chinese ****anufacturing party. As soon as it was formed, its vanguard, the Chinese ****anufacturing party, strengthened its leadership of the movement of its own class, enabling it to make a gradual transition from the stage of self-initiation to the stage of self-actualization