FONEMAS OCLUSIVOS

During the first five-year plan (1953-57) when China took the Soviet approach to economic development, the textile industry was established in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of cotton-rich Henan. Although Zhengzhou had one large-scaled cotton mill before 1949, many years of wars had torn down the factory. Almost from scratch, the central government invested 176 million RMB and consecutively built five major state-owned cotton mills in Zhengzhou. The country reassigned tens of thousands of skilled textile workers and managerial cadres to

Zhengzhou from Shanghai and other provinces, such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan and Hubei to the newly built factories. By 1958, Zhengzhou hosted six major state-owned cotton mills and had one hundred thousand textile workers. Several women workers in a Zhengzhou textile mill gave the following accounts. They had worked in Shanghai‘s cotton mills before 1949 as child labour.

They are among the skilled workers relocated to Zhengzhou from the southern provinces in the

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1950s. As the first-generation of textile workers in new China, they experienced the whole era of Maoist socialism before they retired in the early 1980s when urban-centered economic reforms began in China. In their collective memories of the textile cotton mill during the Mao era, what stood out is a time of enthusiastic and voluntary dedication and commitment to building a socialist country as masters of the SOE, not just a time of material equality and psychological security featured by the moral economy. As an eighty-three-year-old woman worker described,

When I was 13 years old in 1939, I began to work in a Shanghai cotton mill run by the Japanese.

One day, I had a stomachache and had to rest by burying my head on a desk. The Japanese manager encountered this and asked me to his office. He disciplined me and threatened to dismiss me. Later, because of some Chinese people‘s help, I was fined and the incident was resolved. In the old society, my family often starved. My father pulled a rickshaw as a coolie. One day, he was very tired and slow paced with an obese man sitting in the rickshaw. In the end, the man did not pay and kicked him. It was the Communist Party that liberated us the poor people from exploitation and oppression in old societies. I felt so happy in new China. That is the reason why I did not hesitate to give up a comfortable life in Shanghai and responded to Chairman Mao‘s call to move to Zhengzhou, where life was very harsh in the 1950s, to train workers for the newly built factory. In the beginning, so many workers were not skilled and there were too many broken lines.

Other skilled workers and I often worked overtime to teach unskilled workers in the workshop without any break. Cadres forced us to go out of work to have a rest. But we often sneaked back to the workshop to continue our job. When I was single, seven days a week, from day to night, I stayed in the workshop to work. Some workers who relocated from the southern provinces complained lower wages and hardship in Zhengzhou. I told them it was good enough. If it were not for Chairman Mao who empowered us to be masters, we would still be under exploitation and oppression by the capitalists. Since we were masters of a socialist enterprise, we were under fair treatment by cadres and our state. The working conditions were improved. We were secure in terms of maternity and sickness leave. Co-workers helped each other. I often cooked delicious food for sick co-workers. In the old society, we laboured like the cattle and horses. The more we worked, the more we were exploited. Now we were working for our own state. The state is our home, and our home is the state.

This woman worker‘s memory highlighted the consciousness of ―masters of the country‖

by comparing her conditions in new China to the past ordeal of capitalist exploitation and suppression. Three features are distinct in terms of the masters‘ consciousness: voluntary enthusiasm for work, caring little about remuneration, and collectivism. Class-consciousness solely in terms of economistic interpretation is not applicable to the political subjectivity of the

―master‖ consciousness in a socialist enterprise. By contrast, Walder argues that the party-state moulded a compliant, cliental work force by splicing the material interests and status aspirations

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of urban workers to their employer enterprises, and by suppressing all ideas and vehicles for resistance.³¹² This explanation is not suitable at least to the first-generation SOE workers before market reforms.

Another retired woman textile worker‘s account echoed the political identity with

―masters of the country.‖ She explicitly emphasized the feeling of considering the factory as her own home. Like the first woman worker, she did not think of enterprise welfare and security as distinct in socialism, but the feelings of treatment as ―human beings‖ and ―masters‖ of their own factory:

In 1938 when I was still a child, I began to work in a Shanghai cotton mill owned by the Japanese.

Later in 1945, I continued to work in the factory taken over by the Guomintang government. In 1949, the Communist Party appropriated the factory and renamed it as Shanghai No.9 State-Owned Cotton Mill. I worked there until 1954 when the central government called for skilled textile workers to support Zhengzhou. I volunteered to leave Shanghai for Zhengzhou. I helped young workers in Zhengzhou and worked as a machine tender. I looked after 36 weaving machines at the same time by myself. I walked more than 40 kilometers per day in the workshop.

In my team, we helped each other in work and life. I even intervened to solve family disputes between co-workers and their spouses. Workers respected cadres and cadres thought of workers considerately. When it snowed, cadres cleaned up the snow to open a trail for workers. The trade union cadres were in charge of organizing movie watching. They never kept good seats for them and their families and friends. They thought of workers first. These trivial things reflected the relations between cadres and workers. At that time, we were so exhausted from work but we could endure it without complaint. The proudest thing is to be evaluated as a labour model. It is only nominal reward without substantial material interests, but workers were proud of that and everyone worked hard to compete for the reputation. During off-work hours, we did not rest and continued to meet to discuss technical issues or political education. This was voluntary. This was from our heart and we were willing to do so. A socialist enterprise is a home of workers.

Nowadays, our factory is gone. We feel that we lost our home. When we looked at the remnant of our old factory, we feel sad and our eyes are full of tears.

Although in the Maoist-era state socialism, workers prevailed over managerial cadres, the intellectuals, the bourgeois and the peasants in terms of political status, wages, welfare and employment security, the intensity of urban workers‘ labour was indeed tough. Although a woman textile retiree described the hardship in the workshop of the textile factory, she still thought the years were sweet:

312 Walder, ―The Remaking of the Chinese Working Class,‖ 166-70.

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The workshop was very noisy, hot, humid, and filled with floating swollen cotton flakes. I myself took care of 300 spindles and up to 600 spindles after expertise advancement in late 1950s. After eight hours, many workers‘ legs got swelling. Before 1980, the factory implemented the shift pattern which was called ―three teams three run‖ to operate the machines in the factory 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Workers were divided into three groups. Each group took morning duty, middle duty and evening duty every day. They switched their shift once a week. Workers did not easily recover from fatigue and it had a great impact on the health of workers. The evening duty was so intolerable. Workers often fell asleep and workshop leader had to wake them up. We were exhausted through the ―three teams and three run‖ and often felt tired. Up to now, I am still obsessed with the occupational diseases. However, at that time, workers kept energetic and no one was lazy. Workers were in solidarity in completing their work. If workers in the previous shift did not finish their work, they did not want to go off-duty and would continue until the work was finished. Pregnant women workers often voluntarily persisted to work until the last due days. They often went back to work before the fifty-four days of maternity leave were not over. Sometimes worker mother stayed on their work after their shift and caregivers came to complain that it was time to breast-feed the babies who were already so hungry. Managerial cadres also took the evening shift. They cared for our work and life. During the holidays, they often went to visit workers‘ families and praised skilled women machine tender workers as ―founding members‖ of the factory. That was a wonderful workshop.

The first-generation textile workers were proud of their contribution to new China as each factory‘s annual profit in the 1950s was equal to the original investment by the central government. The economic entitlement of SOEs alone could not explain what motivated them to sacrifice for the party state. Clearly, they were class conscious by comparing new China to their miserable conditions as employed labour before 1949. They identified themselves with the masters of the country under Mao‘s advocacy of socialist consciousness. For Chinese workers under the Maoist socialism, socialist consciousness is equal to class-consciousness, developing through workers‘ experiences of capitalist production in conventional interpretations of labour politics. As a woman textile worker retiree recalled,

I still miss the life during Chairman Mao‘s leadership, which was simple and passionate. Although the workload was heavy and hard, everyone was glad and rushed to work. It was common to do extra-work without letting others know. Workers were voluntarily willing to do more work. No one forced us to do so. At that time, if I was tired, I laid down in the workshop for ten minutes.

After I woke up, I continued to work.

Another woman textile worker further elaborated what the consciousness of ―masters‖

mean,

At that time, each worker had six morning shifts, six middle shifts and seven night shifts, which rotated each week. In addition, the factory regularly held meetings. Sometimes, several meetings

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were held in one day. Without supervision, coercion or penalty, workers were willing and voluntarily equated the factory with their own home. Workers came to work early and went off duty late. It was common to work while sick. Although the profit of the factory could build a new one each year, workers paid attention to saving production material and maintain equipment.

Workers often said, we would rather sweat more to guarantee products without any defects. After eight hours of work, workers also used their spare time to do voluntary labour. For example, workers themselves spent their spare and leisure time to construct the road to our factory.

The Subjectivity of “Masters” Lost: Second-Generation Textile Workers in