workers' participation in management in communist china

PAUL HARPER

Workers’ Participation in Management in Communist China

Workers’ councils in Europe have been the subject of study for many years,’ but little attention has been directed to such bodies in the Asian Communist states. This paper seeks to redress that imbalance somewhat by presenting an initial study of the councils in Com- munist China, portraying broadly the fluctuations of Chinese workers’ participation in management since 1949 and relating these to the political milieu in which they occurred. Workers’ participation in the management of industrial enterprises in Communist China has had a checkered history since the Communist victory in 1949. For most of the past two decades the legal structures supposedly incorporating workers into managerial decisionmaking have been in existence and

1. See, for example, Adolf Sturmthal, Workers’ Councils: A Study of Work- place Organization on Both Sides of the Iron Curtain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964); Benjamin Ward, “ Workers’ Management in Yugo- slavia,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. LXV, No. 5 (October 1957). pp. 373-386; H. Gordon Skilling, “Crisis and Change in Czechoslovakia,” International Journal, Vol. XXIII, No. 3 (Summer 1968), pp. 256-265; and Anthony Sylvester, “Workers’ Councils: Guideposts for the Future? ” Prob- lems of Communism, Vol. XIII, No. 1 (January-February 1964), pp. 4348. For a discussion of worker participation in India as well as in Europe, see Nabagopal Das, Experiments in Industrial Democracy (New York: Asia Publishing House, 1964).

112 STWDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM

have operated in a manner similar to their counterparts elsewhere in much of the Communist world-that is, perfunctorily discussing and ratifying decisions made at higher levels by the Party and the managers in the factory. But there have been times when workers’ councils in China have functioned in such a way as to bring workers or their representatives into the decisionmaking process.

Sturmthal notes that “ Syndicalism, rather than Marxian communism, has been the origin of the movement to make seIf-governing workers the managers of their plant.” * Nowhere in the contemporary Communist world would the syndicalist notion of full control by the workers in their plant be accepted. Enterprises are run essentially to produce goods or services for the whole, not primarily for the economic interests of the workers in that plant. Yet some degree of involvement of the workers in management decisions has always been viewed as desirable in Marxism, if for no other reason than to meet the normative prescription that in a socialist society the proletariat should be master in its own house. The practical reasons are perhaps more important, especially in a developing nation such as China. Councils can function as a source of recruitment and education for managerial personnel with practical experience on the line, an important factor in a society where engaging in physical labor has tradi- tionally been culturally disparaged. And participation in fundamental production decisions can conceivably raise the work enthusiasm and discipline of those so involved. A knottier question, of course, is the degree of participation or power permitted the workers in determining questions concerning their own welfare, such as wages and reinvest- ment or division of profits, for here workers’ interests may not coincide at all with those of the national leadership. So a wide range of workers’ participation in decisionmaking can be found. Never have the Chinese reached or even sought the degree of industrial democracy to be found in Yugoslavia. But then, Yugoslavia is unique in this respect, among her European neighbors as well.

The trade unions have played a significant role in Chinese workers’ participation in management. Operationally the unions always functioned on behalf of the workers’ councils in any standing committee for management until the Cultural Revolution. The tasks of the unions, as laid down in the Constitution of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), are to be a “ school of administration, a school of management, and a school of Communism for the worker masses.“*

2. Sturmthal, op. cit., p. 23. 3. Preamble to the Constitution, in Chung-kuo kung-hui ti pa tz’u ch’iian-

kuo tai-piuo ta-hui chu-yoo wen-chien [Important Documents of the Eighth

WORKERS’ PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT IN COMMUNIST CHINA 113

As a “ school of management,” the unions early and earnestly began organizing workers’ councils of some sort and representing the workers in management. The unions consequently are given a greater role in this paper than in most studies of workers’ councils.

The sources used are chiefly published materials from mainland China, with occasional insights provided from interviews conducted in 1965 with refugee workers in Hong Kong. Reliance on published materials from China has its obvious disadvantages, including a lack of attention in the press to many details and questions of interest. Careful case studies have been done in depth of workers’ councils in Eastern Europe,4 but such studies in Communist China cannot yet be done on the scene. Thus, many important questions-such as the methods of selection of council members, who is selected, relations between cadres and workers on the council and between council and committee--cannot be treated in this paper, or are often considered mainly on the basis of partial or tentative information. Such questions await further study. However, the broader lines of Peking’s policies toward workers’ councils, with which this study is chiefly concerned, are reconstructed on a more solid basis. Finally, the reader must remember that China was and remains today a land of tremendous diversity. A general policy promulgated in Peking may be implemented in widely divergent ways in different regions, different industries, and even in neighboring enterprises. The power relationships of structures at the local levels, the agency exerting control or dominance, the degree of central control have not been uniform. Although, in the interests of readability, statements of the norm have not always been qualified in this paper, the reader should bear in mind the likelihood of operational variations.

In Communist China, workers have not been brought effectively and continuously into management decisionmaking in the enterprise. Trade union efforts to achieve such participation by the workers have been thwarted by shifts in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policy, notably in 1951-1952, 1957, and again in 1965-1966. Theoretically, the factory is to be run on the basis of “ democratic centralism.” Within an enterprise, the “ democracy ” in this concept entails mass supervision by the workers of the administrators through regular congresses of all the employees or their representatives, plus free discussion before reaching a decision. “ Centralism ” involves all

All-China Congress of Trade Unions] (Peking: Kung-jen ch’u-pan she, 1957), p. 81.

4. See, for example, Jiri Kolaja’s two works, A Polish Factory (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1960) and Workers’ Councils: The Yugoslav Experience (London : Tavistock Publications, 1965).

114 STUDIES IN CDMPAR4TIVE COMMUNISM

levels within the enterprise obeying higher levels, as well as the enterprise itself obeying the decisions of state or Party levels and working within the guidelines of central planning.

For the Chinese Communists, with their commitment to mobilizing the masses in order to effect industrial progress as well as political action, both of these elements-democracy and centralism-are essen- tial. Thus, the Chairman of the ACFTU could declare that if the factory operates only on the basis of centralized rule, then the leadership cannot help but become alienated from the workers; if the factory were run wholly by the workers in a purist sort of syndicalism, anarchy would be the result, and, though the workers in that factory might be satisfied, the interests of the whole country would not be served5 But each attempt by the unions to implement the democratic aspect of democratic centralism in China’s enterprises has ultimately suc- cumbed to an imposition of control by the enterprise leadership, centralist in fact and democratic only in name.

The Early Years

In the years immediately following take-over, or Liberation, several types of structures envisioned as “ schools of management ” for bthe workers were erected in many of China’s factories. The Com- munist Party at that point lacked sufficient skills within its membership to run the nation’s industry and commerce at all levels, so the old managers and administrative staff had to be utilized at the outset. But the Party did not readily trust such people, and, besides assigning CCP cadres to management positions to check on the old staff, the Party also used the plant’s workers to counterbalance the managers. The organizational form and nomenclature of these structures varied, as did their power. Lines generally differed for private, public and jointly managed enterprises. The first organizations for representing the workers in management were the “labor-capital consultative conference ” (lao tzu hsieh-shang hui-i) in private enterprises and the “ workers’ representative conference ” (kung-jen tai-piao hui-i) in state-operated plants.

The division of labor in running publicly owned enterprises was outlined at an urban work conference held in the Northeast Region

5. See Lai Jo-yil’s work report to the Eighth Trade Union Congress, in Eighth M-China Congress of the Trade Unions (Peking: Foreign Languages Ress, 1957), p. 32, for a discussion of the theoretical aspects of democratic centralism in the factory.


(Manchuria, then as now the most highly industrialized part of China) in May 1951 and subsequently approved by the CCP Central Com- mittee.e At that point in time, and particularly in the northeast with its numerous Soviet advisors, the system of “ one-man management ” prevailed. Under this system, the factory director was responsible for production in the enterprise. Although he was to consult and co- operate with the CCP committee in the plant, his decisions on production were final. His lines of responsibility and authority ran upward to the economic ministry under which his factory or mine fell, rather than through the enterprise’s CCP committee. The Party committee had “ complete responsibility for political thought ” and was responsible for “ ensuring and supporting the production work of the administration in the factory or mine.” The committee’s method of achieving this goal was to ensure the unity of administration, union, and the Party itself. The tasks of the trade unions were more specific : to organize the workers, to instill a class consciousness and new labor attitudes, to educate the workers culturally and technically, and to ensure the fulfillment of the production plan, while at the same time paying attention to improving the workers’ labor conditions and daily livelihood. This division of labor became the national model as the system of one-man management spread through China during recon- struction.

The unions, as schools for management, were also to organize the workers’ representative conferences in state enterprises. There is, unfortunately, little information on the operation of these workers’ councils. In fact, the lack of attention in the press to workers’ councils in state enterprises is in significant contrast to the frequent refer- ences concerning their counterparts in private enterprise. The workers’ representative conferences in the state enterprises became very much a rubber-stamp body for the “ factory management committees ” set up to act on behalf of the conference when not in session. The unions had representation on these management committees “ on behalf of the workers “; the rest of the committee was composed of administrative and CCP committee personnel. But of crucial importance was the fact that the factory director headed the management committee in state enterprises.’ With his essentially unfettered responsibility for production matters in the plant, he would as chairman be the dominant figure on the committee.

It appears that once the staff reorganization in newly public enter-

6. Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Northeast Bureau, on Party Leadership in State Enterprises, May 1951,” in Chieh-fang jib-puo [Liberation Daily], Shanghai, September 12, 1951.

7. Ibid.

116 STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUN!SM

prises had taken place and production was running smoothly, the administrative leaders ran the management committee. In mid-1951, the New China News Agency, reviewing the past year’s work on the first anniversary of the Trade Union Law, declared : “ In the past, the factory management committee in certain factories has been much devoted to formalism.” However, “ democratization ” was being effected under the Trade Union Law, with union cadres now on the committees and taking part in “ serious discussion of production plans.” * The democratization, however, was short-lived; the experimentation with industrial democracy was shelved at the end of the Ye=-

To best understand the approach to workers’ councils in China in the early 195Os, one must turn to the unions and their operations in that period.g In the months immediately following Liberation, a proletariat with high expectations had disrupted the restoration of production, often at the urging of trade-union organizers, and the regime faced a severe economic crisis in March-June 1950. Acting firmly, the Party instructed the unions to exert discipline and restore production, which they did, speaking strictly on behalf of management in state enterprises and siding with the owners in private enterprises. Then a rectification campaign in the latter part of 1950 re- versed this trend, with the unions being accused of having separated themselves from the worker masses. By 1951, the ACFTU, under the leadership of Li Li-San, had moved from siding with management and authority to an identification with and advocacy of the workers’ interests. Li was seeking to make the unions a power base operationally independent of the Party; the unions were later accused of pursuing autonomy and of a distinct trend toward “ economism,” a more or less correct evaluation by the CCP of the situation.lO

For our purposes, the main issue during this year of economism in China’s unions was the public battle over the standpoint of the union in a state-run enterprise. Here we find the familiar insoluble debate

8. New China News Agency [hereinafter NCNA], July 4, 1951; in Survey

of the China Mainland Press lhereinafter SCMP], No. 129, p. 13. 9. For a more extensive discussion of the unions in this and later periods,

see my “The Party and the Unions in Communist China,” China Quarterly, No. 38 (January-March 1969), pp. 84-119.

10. Kung-jen jih-pao [Daily Worker, hereinafter KJJPI, February 11, 1953; The Work Report of the Past Year of the All-China Federation of Labour (Peking: All-China Federation of Labour, May 1950), pp. 6-9; The Seventh All-China Congress of Trade Unions (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1953), pp. 52-53, 66-67; and “Speech by Comrade Li Li-sari,” Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Vol. II (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1956), especially pp. 253-255.

WORKERS’ PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT IN COlhMUNIST CHINA 117

over the role of unions in a Communist state-but with some argu- ments peculiar to the Chinese setting. Some argued that public enterprises are socialist enterprises, run by the state through the Party, the vanguard of the proletariat; thus there can be no antagonism or differences between the workers and the administration, since both belong to and serve the proletariat. Others argued that, socialist enterprise or not, the workers’ and administrators’ tasks were different and a division of labor existed. Therefore, the trade unions-the workers’ organization, by definition-must have a standpoint in practice different from that of the administration, one reflecting spectic- ally the interests of the workers in the particular factory. Furthermore, they argued, China’s political system was not a dictatorship of the proletariat, but a “ people’s democratic dictatorship,” reflecting the interests of several classes, not just the industrial working class. There- fore, the state-appointed administration in public enterprises had a standpoint that could not but be different from that of the workers, a single class. And the unions should represent those workers, if need be by opposing the administration.‘l One can surmise that in many public enterprises the unions would follow Li Li-San’s lead and press for greater participation by unions in the decisions of the management committee on behalf of the workers’ immediate and material interests. There was a marked upswing during 1951 in trade-union emphasis on workers’ Livelihood, welfare, and wages. However, Li Li-san was purged from his ACFTU leadership in early 1952, and from then until at least 1955 the unions neglected workers’ interests and con- centrated on the interests of the state, notably in working with management to increase production.12

We can say that workers’ participation in the management of public enterprises during the early years was chiefly effected through trade- union representation on factory management committees. Since both the outstanding producer and the political activist among the workers could become trade-union cadres, this did provide for some actual worker representation. The effectiveness of the workers’ representative conference and the management committee in making decisions for the factory fluctuated. As enterprises were taken over by the state, the initial surge would be for some significant workers’ role in these councils, particularly in late 1949 and early 1950. Then came a period when these structures were ignored, as a result of the economic crisis

11. See “ What Standpoint Should the Trade Unions Occupy? *’ Chung- kuo kung-ien [Chinese Workers], No. 15 (April 1951), pp. 22, 36.

12. Lai Jo-yti’s speech, in Eighth All-China Congress of the Trade Unions, op. cit., p. 44.

118 STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE COMMUNISM

in 1950. Then, briefly during 1951, with the ACFTU seeking to assert trade-union power, the management committee and the workers’ representative conference would be vehicles for the union in this endeavor at the plant level. Evidence is lacking as to what extent the democratization of management progressed in this early wave of economism, but in any case it died out in 1952 with the crushing of economism in the unions.

Following this, the role of the workers in managing their factory fell into disuse and for several years the factory director and the administrative persoMe simply made all decisions. “ Particularly since the introduction of the ‘ one-man responsibility ’ in many state enterprises of industry and communications during 1953, the workers’ representative conferences turned simply into conferences at which the enterprise leaders arranged tasks and the worker masses made a guarantee ” to fuElI those ta~ks.~~ The structures for industrial democracy were preserved, but the only function was to serve the administration. The attitude of the workers in Anshan’s Ta shih ch’iao (Great Stone Bridge) Magnesium Mine was perhaps typical after the brief flirtation with democracy had given way to state manipulation of the body: “ ‘ What does it matter if one talks about democracy?’ they shrugged. ‘ What difference does it make whether or not there is a workers’ and employees’ representative conference; isn’t it the same old routine, a big blow of wind and then it’s all past?’ ” l4

The demise of mass participation in management within the public sector is attested by the silence of the press on labor relations in state enterprises. The Communist leadership insisted that the interests of both labor and management were identical. This was made explicit by the authorities in their denunciation of ACFI’U efforts on the workers’ behalf in 1951. The ACFTU was accused of advocating such incorrect lines as : “ The administrative side should represent the interests of the whole and long-term interests, while the trade-union side should represent individual and immediate interests; the administration should represent production, while the trade union should represent distribution, etc.“15 After 1952. the unions and representative bodies in reality became an adjunct of the administrators.

13. “Gradually Introduce the System of Workers Congresses in State- Owned Enterprises,” Jen-min jib-pno [People’s Daily; hereinafter JMJP] editorial, May 29, 1957; trans. in SCMP, No,1547, p. 10.

14. An-shun jih-pao [Anshan Daily], July 3, 1957; see also “Organize the Worker and Employee Representatives to Examine Administrative Manage- ment Work,” Tien yeh kung-jen [Electrical Industry Workers], February 28, 1957. 15. KJIP, February 11, 1953.


The labor-capital consultative conference in the private sector was endowed with certain powers, which its counterpart in public enterprise lacked, that made it a potent instrument for use by the Party or union against the capitalists. The critical need to restore production after 1949 necessitated the incorporation of privately owned enterprises into the economy, while wooing the capitalists; the official economic policy was “to develop production and bring about a prosperous economy through the policies of taking into account both, public and private interests, of benefiting both labor and capital.” But the national leadership armed itself against the abilities, network, and financial power of the private owners. A “ Directive on Establish- ing Labor-Capital Consultative Conferences in Private Enterprises ” was promulgated by the Central People’s Government in early 1950.‘8

The labor-capital consultative conference was set up in all private enterprises having more than fifty employees, and could also be established in smaller plants. It performed the role of a management committee in the public sector. It was composed of an equal number of representatives from each side, with the factory owner, director, and trade-union chairman all ex-officio members. To cite the example of some factories in Tientsin, each side usually had four or five members. For management, besides the chairman of the board of directors and the factory manager, representatives would be selected from among board vice-chairmen, the personnel director, business affairs director, and the engineers. On labor’s side, besides the trade- union chairman, representatives were usually selected from the vice-chairmen and other union cadres; the secretary of the CCP branch in each factory was also included as a representative for labor. When considering narrow disputes, the head of the concerned workshop or department and a worker would also be invited to sit on the conference.1T

The chairmanship of the consultative conference was to be alternated between labor and capital with each meeting, unlike the permanent chairmanship of the management committee by the factory director in state enterprises. Both sides would agree on the frequency of regular conference sessions, usually once a week and outside of working hours, and on extra meetings when deemed necessary. The matters on which labor and management could consult in the

16. An English text of the Directive may be found in The Z’ra& Union Law of the People’s Republic of China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1952), pp. 33-38.

17. Lao tzu hsieh-shang hui-i me Labor-Capital Consultative Conference] (Peking: Kungjen ch’u-pan she, 1950), p, 10.


conference covered a wide range of concrete problems. Of first priority were questions concerning the drawing up and implementing of collective agreements and any matter concerning production or the production plan. Other subjects for discussion were the bonus systems and disciplinary measures, work practices and training for the workers, administrative rules affecting employees, safety measures and sickness benefits, and, most critically, questions concerning wages and hours and the hiring, firing, and promotion of workers. In some areas (not too carefully specified in the literature), such as utilization of personnel and administration of business affairs within the enterprise, although consultation was to take place, the capital side had the right to make the final decision. Nevertheless, labor also had the right to reject that decision.18

Although the conference was in itself no more than an organ for discussion between the two sides with agreement the desired goal, and lacked any “ business management or administrative responsibility,” l8 teeth were added to labor’s side in various ways. One of these was through the circumstance that the Party branch secretary would most likely sit on labor’s side in the conference. Capital’s representatives would always be aware that they were to some extent “ the enemy ” in the state’s ideology, however much the state might need their skills for the transitional period. And the Party secretary was the most obvious agent of the state in the private enterprise.

The legal procedures for settling labor-management clashes placed another weapon in the hand of labor. The official “Rules of Pro- cedures for Settling Labor Disputes ” stipulated that if labor and capital in an enterprise could not resolve a dispute-when the consultative conference reached a deadlock-it was to be referred to the local labor bureau for solution .20 In many cities, the practice of leading cadres holding concurrent posts meant that labor bureau officials were powerful figures, often with a trade-union background. For example, in the early 1950s in Shanghai, the major center of private industry and commerce, the head of the Municipal Labor Bureau was Ma Ch’un-ku. who was also a Deputy Secretary of the Municipal CCP Committee and a long-time leader in the labor movement. Other examples could be cited. Thus the leaders in the governmental agency having final jurisdiction would be inclined not only ideologically but also in terms of their professional attitudes to favor labor’s side in a dispute with private management. And their web of professional rela-

18. Ibid.. pp. 9-11. 19. Ibid., p. 1. 20. A text of these Rules, provisionally drafted at the national level, may

be found in The Trade Union Low of rhe People’s Republic of China, pp. 27-32.


tionships, always important in the Chinese environment, would be tied to the unions in the factories. The capitalist would always be aware that he might be hauled before the local labor bureau, where he could expect little sympathy, if he could reach no satisfactory agreement with labor in the consultative conference.

In general, we may conclude that the labor-capital consultative conference, despite the fact that it had no legal authority or responsibility, was a more effective instrument for bringing workers and workers’ interests into management decisionmaking in the private enterprise than the factory management committee in the public enterprise. The consultative conferences were not necessarily dominated by the factory director, as were the management committees. The Party branch secretary was identified with labor in the private enterprises. And while, according to the accepted ideological line, in public enterprises both the administration and the workers belonged to and served the proletariat and supposedly had the same interests, in private enterprises the owner and managerial personnel could not argue that their interests were those of the proletariat. A capitalist was still a capitalist and the machinery worked against him.

In mid-1951. Peking conceived of labor-capital relations as falling into three stages after Liberation. 21 The first stage was a period of confusion lasting through the early months of 1950, when frightened capitalists closed factories and workers struck almost at will, “ neither side understanding the policy of ‘ mutual benefit to labor and capital through developing production.’ ” The second stage was a period of a “ temporary setback ” for the nation’s industry and commerce during March-June 1950, with a number of labor disputes and a conservative trade union approach in the consultative conferences. In this stage, the labor-capital consultative conferences stressed compromise at the expense of class struggle. In fact, trade-union officials in some factories served as representatives of the capitalist side in the conferences, while labor’s representatives in some plants approved the owners’ proposals for reducing wages and welfare benefits, “ thereby seriously leaving the masses.” 22 This same conservative tendency, as noted earlier, was also found in state enterprises. It was wholly in line with the CCP policy of the moment, since the regime was of necessity at this point most interested in restoring production and some measure of economic stability. The third stage, from July 1950 through 1951, found the economy on the upswing and labor disputes dropped sharply, with the consultative conferences working smoothly.

21. NCNA, July 9, 1951; in SCMP, No. 136, pp. 11-12. 22. “ What Standpoint Should the Trade Unions Occupy? ” p. 36


The consultative conference became increasingly less important, however, after 1952. The proportion of total production attributable to the private sector steadily declined, especially as the First Five: Year Plan (1953-1957) got under way. As planning worked its way down to the lower levels in both the public and private sectors, there was less room for maneuver by either labor or management. Follow- ing the Five-Anti Campaign against businessmen in 1952, private entrepreneurs were more and more brought under indirect government control through orders placed by the state.18 The expectations of “ business as usual ” under the Communists, which many capitalists had presumed would last a long while as a result of the leadership’s statements in 1948-1949, were swept away in the vigorous attacks of the campaign. After 1952, there were few businessmen who did not feel intimidated by the state, pessimistic and cautious. The state became a partner in management in one way or another, making the eventual nationalization in 1955-1956 a relatively smooth and easy affair.

The peak of workers’ and unions’ influence in private enterprises was probably reached in 1952, during the Five-Anti Campaign. The unions led the workers in the denunciations of and attacks on the employers, and the labor-capital consultative conference was the stage for bringing pressures to bear.24 Various committees and workers’ teams would attack the businessmen, but the consultative conferences provided the organizational channel for employers to submit to governmental control, with labor’s side in the conference pressing the state’s interests. But, as is the pattern in mass campaigns, the pendulum swinging too far brought excesses in workers’ activities against employers; production was to some extent threatened. To counteract this, as the campaign ended, the conferences became structures through which the unions worked not so much to give workers a platform for continuing the class struggle as for turning the workers’ attention to production. The unions themselves under- went reform at this time, the culmination of a “ democratic reform movement ” to weed out corrupt union leaders that had begun in 1951. The campaign brought many new activist union members into

23. The Five-Anti Campaign was directed against bribery, tax evasion, cheating on government contracts, theft of state property, and stealing state economic information. For an excellent case study of the many facets of the campaign, see John Gardner, “The Wu-fan Campaign in Shanghai,” in Chinese Communist Politics in Action, ed.. by A. Doak Bamett (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 477-539.

24. Ibid., pp. 526-532. See also my “Trade Union Cultivation of Workers for Leadership,” in The City in Communist China, ed. by John W. Lewis (Stanford : Stanford University Press, 1971).


cadre positions, so that the consultative conference became more than ever a place where genuine workers served on a body concerned with management decisions. But with the increasing direction of private enterprise by the state after 1952, the focus on production and de- creased concern with workers’ welfare led to a dwindling role of the labor-capital consultative conference.

The Rebirth and Early Demise of Workers’ Councils

The years 1956-1957 in Communist China are often viewed as the most understandable by Western observers. This was the time when the leaders were following the patterns that developing nations are expected to follow. Emphasis was placed on specialization and the inculcation of professional attitudes in cadres, replacing the enthusias- tic but uninformed revolutionism of the early years. Skills were being rewarded with material incentives and prestige. Efforts were being made to reincorporate the intellectuals as full members of society, whatever their origins, after Chou En-lai’s speech of January 1956, with the leadership admitting it needed their talents to build a new China. Rural collectivization (agricultural producer cooperatives) and nationalization of almost all industry and commerce had just been effected in a comparatively smooth fashion. The First Five-Year Plan was on its way to becoming a solid success, despite some difficulties. The leadership at that time appeared committed to a planned, orderly approach toward the goal of rapid modernization, but also willing to experiment and relax controls. The winds of change following Khrushchev’s speech to the Twentieth CPSU Congress were reaching China as well as the rest of the Communist world. And one of the changes was the institution of workers’ councils which, while still limited in power, would briefly bring workers into greater participation in management than ever before.

The battle between expertise and politics, however, went on. In the industrial sector it focused on the question of decentralization. Central controls in Chinese industry were probably more effective in these years than at any other time. Vertical rule had become tirmly embedded as the principle of control. Vertical rule, copied from the U.S.S.R., places the chain of command downward from a central agency (the pertinent ministry) through regional or provincial branches to the director of the enterprise at the local level.2s The director is

25. For a detailed discussion of vertical and dual rule in Communist China, see Franz Schumann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 88-90, 188-194; see also


chiefly responsible up the line to the central offices. Dual rule, on the other hand, entails a sharing of controls by the central agency with some body outside the particular “ system.” This can be a regional or local organ, like the commune in Yugoslavia.2E or it can be a body in the enterprise with a chain of command outside the industry- specifIcally, the Party committee in the plant. With dual rule, there exists a structural conflict between the branch and committee principles of governance, and either the central agency or the committee is apt to become dominant. Enhanced by growing specialization and professionalism, vertical rule was the mode in China, especially in heavy industry.

The respectability lent to the system of one-man management and vertical rule by its Soviet origins was, however, sharply challenged after the Kao-Jao affair. Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih were accused of having sought to displace the top CCP leaders in the early 1950s. Kao headed the Northeast Region and Jao the East China Region, the two most highly industrialized areas in China. During the Korean War, the Party, military, governmental, and industrial apparatus in their respective regions were gathered into their hands. With this local power base, they challenged the leaders in Peking but were eventually defeated and purged. Especially in the Northeast, Kao had implemented the one-man management system early and it had spread from there to the rest of China. Following the defeat of Kao and Jao, the national leadership cast a more critical eye on the system of one- man management and the whole concept of vertical rule. The leadership role of the Party in the Communist state can be circumvented by such principles of management, and those within the leadership who placed politics above expertise could point to Kao as an example of how vertical rule could usurp the Party’s leading role. They argued for the imposition of dual rule, with the collective leadership of the CCP committee at the source, the factory, sharing power with the central agency.

CCP policy on dual rule shifted at the Eighth National Party Con- gress in September 1956. Li Hsiieh-feng, Director of the Industry and Communications Work Department of the Central Committee, declared that the Party had “decided to put into effect the system whereby the director (or the manager) takes the responsibility of the enterprise under the leadership of the Party committee-that is, a

Chou Fang, Wo kuo kuo-chia chi-k’ou [The-State Machinery of Our Coun- try] (Peking : Chung-kuo ch’ing-nien &u-pan she, 1955). especially pp. IOl- 102.

26. Stunnthal, op. cit., pp. 95, 105, 113; and Kolaja, Workers’ Councils: The Yugoslav Experience, pp. 28, 65-66.

WORKERS’ PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT IN COilMUNIST CHINA 125

system of leadership which combines the collective leadership of the Party with individual responsibility.” 27 Stressing the mass line, he suggested that in the past the Party in the enterprise had become separated from the masses by its subservience to the director; he also made it clear that under collective leadership lateral rule by the Party Commitee would prevail.

Lai Jo-y& then Chairman of the ACFTU, spoke to the Party Congress on the work of the unions. Reviewing the state of democracy in industrial management, he too stressed the need for a return to the worker masses. Although the unions might need the guidance and help of the Party in the plant, he pointed out that it was the union’s responsibility not only to “ educate the workers and employees to take a correct attitude toward the interests of the state ” but also to “ organize them to safeguard their personal interests.” 28 Li Hstieh- feng, in his speech, had suggested the replacement of the trade- union-sponsored workers’ representative conferences with “ workers’ congresses ” elected for a one-year term by the workers in each plant.2Q But Li was chiefly concerned with mass participation in matters concerning production. Lai Jo-y& however, called for representative bodies of workers to exercise supervision over all facets of management. Declaring that all organizations and persons were ultimately responsible for production, Lai noted that the particular role of the unions was to “ protect the welfare and democratic rights of the mass of workers and employees.” 3o He called for a strengthening of the union’s role in representing the workers’ interests by concentrating on rejuvenation of mass supervision in management through the workers’ representative conferences. A renewal of these organs of industrial democracy was necessary, since “ at the present time this platform has in general become a platform for cadres only, and so has lost its significance. This state of affairs must be changed.” 81

The Party leadership, then, was interested in CCP control over the factory through the “ collective leadership ” of the Party committee, and in accordance with the postulates of the mass line was desirous of tapping the creativity of the workers in production through workers’ councils. The trade-union leadership-an integral part of that Party

27. Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Vol. II, 304-305.

28. Ibid., p. 239. 29. Ibid., p. 314. 30. Ibid., p. 237. 31. Ibid., p. 243. See also Li Hstieh-feng’s characterization of the decline

of the workers’ representative conference @. 310): “ The director makes a report, the Party committee gives instructions, the trade union issues a call and the masses give their pledges.”


leadership-was more interested in fostering worker participation in all areas of management, including the material interests of the workers, through the councils. This was a harbinger at the highest levels of the coming clash between the unions and the CCP, for the unions were at this point once more embarked on the path of economism and were seeking ways to achieve operational autonomy from the Party. They found strong support for economism and independence even at the highest levels of the Party; revelations of the Cultural Revolution make it clear that Liu Shao-ch’i, Honorary Chairman of the ACFTU and long identified with the labor movement, backed the unions in 1956-1957.82 The Party leadership was not even unified on the question of decentralization. The system of vertical rule was still perceived as useful by some, inasmuch as it dovetailed with specialization and material incentives based on skill. They wanted to decentralize control to the enterprise and local level but still keep it in the hands of experts within the agency, rejecting the idea of control by the collective body of generalists with a political and spiritual incentive orientation, the CCP committee.88

The unions reflected this Party dispute during 1956-1957, for they also operated under the principle of vertical rule and were shifting attention to workers’ welfare in accordance with the emphasis on material incentives of 1956. In the preceding years the union leaders had established close ties with their particular ministerial branches in the government; the regional trade-union councils had declined in importance after 1953 and the industrial union structures-so suitable for vertical rule-had been strengthened; and the unions were given a large role in the plant in propagandizing and instituting the wage reforms of 1956, which stressed material rewards for technical com- petence and generally raised wages, thereby encouraging attention to workers’ welfare. The crisis in Party-union relations lasted into the fall of 1957, and the question of workers’ congresses and the role they would play in management beyond production matters was a visible part of that crisis.

Ch’en Yung-wen, Director and Editor-in-Chief of Kung-jen jib-pm [Daily Worker] and later to be purged as a “ revisionist,” made a trip to Yugoslavia and other Eastern European lands in the fall of 1956. Much of his time in Yugoslavia was spent investigating the system of workers’ councils there. On his return, Ch’en wrote a series of articles on Yugoslav trade union work -for publication in Ku&en

32. See, for example, “The Struggle Between Two Lines in China’s Trade Union Movement,” Peking Review, No. 26, I%8 (June 28, 1968), pp. W-20.

33. See Schumann, op. cit., pp. 284-293.


jib-puo. These articles were carefully noncommittal, mostly a straight- forward description of the functioning of Yugoslav unions and councils, with no discernibly undue emphasis on the weak or strong points of such organizations.‘J*

Yet Ch’en was obviously favorably impressed and inclined toward the manner in which the unions and councils operated in Yugoslavia, for in the end such noncommittal articles as his in a Chinese Com- munist publication about such a markedly different system with no accompanying denunciation for educative purposes imply a serious consideration, or at least a sufferance, of that system. It should be remembered that 1956 was a time of suspension in the normally vitriolic attacks on Yugoslav Communism, a time when the Chinese leadership was gingerly considering changes akin to the more liberal brand of Tito’s socialism. Ch’en’s trip was a result of these improved relations. The system of workers’ councils which he described, with the attendant enhanced role of the trade union and lessened role of the Party, was the direction in which the economists in the ACFTU would have liked to move China’s unions.

Democratization of management under workers’ congresses became the dominant theme of Lai Jo-yti’s speeches following the Eighth Party Congress.8s The end of 1956 and the first months of 1957 were a time of experimentation with workers’ congresses, a time when the now moribund workers’ representative conferences and management committees were being reformed and given temporary powers on trial in various plants throughout China. The format of experimentation was fluid: in November 1956, Lai Jo-yii suggested a management committee under the leadership of the workers’ congress, a committee with authority, indeed a committee having “ equal status with management.” 8e This committee might be elected either by workers’ congresses or by the trade-union member conference in the plant. In January 1957, Lai suggested that both the management committee and the congress of either all the workers or all the union members should have the right to pass resolutions which management must follow

34. These articles, “Yugoslavia’s ‘System of Workers Own Management ‘,” KJJP, November 29-December 1, 1956, are translated in SCMP, No. 1435, pp. 38-45.

35. Se43 the s ummaries of his speeches to a national conference of trade union cadres in joint public-private enterprises, NCNA, November 23, 1956, trans. in SCMP. No. 1422, pp. 2-4, and NCNA releases of November 25 and 29, 1956, trans. in SCMP, No. 1423, pp. 10-11; his speech at a trade union conference in January 1957, NCNA, January 9, 1957, trans. in SCMP, No. 1449, p. 3; and at a conference of directors of metallurgical plants and mines, NCNA, March 7, 1957, trans. in SCMP, No. 1487, p. 22.

36. NCNA, November 29, 1956; in SCMP. No. 1423, p. 10.


“ within the area covered by the state plan and without contradicting directives from above,” and to recommend managerial appointments and removalsa

By March 1957, the union leadership had chosen among the various methods being tested for bringing the workers into decisiomnaking. “ Workers’ representative congresses ” (Ku&en tai-piao ta-hui) were to be elected by the workers, meet regularly, and make proposals and decisions that would be carried out by the enterprise’s already existing trade-union committee between congresses. Managers would be required to report to the congresses, which would have the right to criticize and make proposals on production plans. Further, going a step beyond any powers given to earlier workers’ conferences, the congress “ would have powers to decide matters concerning the workers’ interests and benefits as to the use of factory bonuses and state appropriations for labor safety,” and to appeal over the heads of factory management to superior authorities to revoke management decisions and to recommend appointments or removals of leading enterprise officialsa Thus the unions, by organizing the elections, guiding the congresses, and supervising the implementation of wide- ranging congr&sional proposals by the plant’s administration, would at last be operating a meaningful school for management for the workers.

On May 29, 1957, the CCP officially approved the institution of strong workers’ congresses. A Jen-min jib-pao (People’s Daily) editorial of that date entitled “ Gradually Introduce the System of Workers’ Congresses in State-Owned Enterprises ” signalled Party acceptance of Lai’s campaign for union leadership in democratizing factory managementas Not all of the earlier proposals were accepted, however. The congress, elected for a one-year term and meeting two to four times annually, would have the right to scrutinize, discuss, and pass resolutions pertaining to production, fiscal, technical, and wage plans and-to expenditures for bonuses, labor safety, welfare funds, medical expenses, trade-union funds and “ other expenditures on worker amenities.” Although there was no right “ to decide ” on such

37. NCNA, January 9, 1957; in SCMP, No. 1449, p. 3. 38. NCNA, March 7, 1957; in SCMP, No. 1487, p. 22. 39. Translated in SCMP, No. 1547, pp. 10-12. As with many such key

directives, specific suggestions for methods of implementation were presented in an accompanying article on the experiences of five enterprises in Shen- yang (Mukden), where the system had been-in effect on an experimental basis since January (also in SCMP, No. 1547, pp. 12-15). Within the ACFTU, the CCP directive had been anticipated-but without such specific detail-by an article in the mid-May issue of Chung-kuo kung-jen: “ Carry Out the Super- visory Function of Workers’ Congresses ” (No. 9, 1957, pp. 6-7).

WORKERS’ PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT IN COkMUNIST CHINA 129

matters, as Lai had proposed earlier, the implication was that the trade-union committee in the plant, which would be responsible for carrying out resolutions between sessions of the congress, would have the duty of pressing for implementation of all congressional resolutions, provided that they did not run counter to higher directives. The right of the congress to appeal to higher authorities for revocation of administrative directives remained, but recommenda- tions for appointments to managerial positions were dropped as a prerogative of the workers’ congress.4o On the other hand, the right to request dismissal of managerial personnel remained. In this way, the leadership retained complete control over the assignment of personnel without the chance of possibly embarrassing demands from below, while at the same time the congress could function as an educative body when mobilizing mass denunciation of an official whom higher levels wanted to remove-and for legitimizing that removal.

The possibility of jurisdictional disputes arising between the workers’ congress and the general meeting of the basic-level trade- union organization was eliminated by combining the two bodies. Henceforth, the regularly convened workers’ congress would supplant the union general membership meeting. Since most workers in modem industry were by that time union members anyway, and since the trade-union committee would function as the executive body of the workers’ congress and convene the sessions, there was no need for overlapping bodies at the mass level. And the Jen-min jih-pao editorial also specifically stipulated that the plant CCP committee was not to arrange a hard-and-fast agenda for the congress. Free criticism and expression of views were the desiderata, and, although the Party committee should guide the congress on important matters of principle, there should be no impairment of the masses’ voice. At the same time, the editorial warned that the Party committee must take care that “the workers’ congress and trade-union committee do not hinder the system of responsibility borne by the factory super- intendent in administration.”

Following the publication of this editorial, the new system was rapidly established throughout China. But this attempt to institu- tionalize industrial democracy was almost immediately subverted, as

40. The argument advanced by JiWP for this stand was as follows: “ Inas- much as state enterprises are owned by all the people and not collectively owned by the workers of the enterprise concerned, the leading administrative personnel of the enterprises should be appointed by the state administrative organs representing the interests of all the people and should not be elected by the workers’ congress.”

c.c.-5


the Party retreated from its policies of liberalization and reacted to the criticism of the CCP with the Anti-Rightist Campaign after June 1957. The efforts of the union leadership to create effective worker participation in management was embroiled with the rise of economism, at which the Party also struck. A powerful workers’ congress was stillborn, as the Party reacted to perceived threats to its power and imposed controls over this body.

Although the formal powers of the workers’ congress remained the same from 1957 until the Cultural Revolution, the purpose of the congress was soon diverted. Emphasis quickly turned to utilizing this body as another instrument to aid in production and support for the administration, while its roles as a school for management and democratic supervision over the administrators and as a vehicle for pro- tecting workers’ own interests withered quickly.‘l The advent of the Great Leap Forward shifted the movement wholly away from the factory level. The new trend in the “ reform of industrial management ” accompanying the Leap was aimed at the production team level, and involved both the managerial cadre spending time at labor on the line and the workers in the team making some collective decisions concerning the work of the basic production unit?2

Li Hsiieh-feng, writing in August 1958 as the Great Leap Forward moved into high gear, drew a picture of the congresses as chiefly concerned with production in the mass movement, but also involved in reforming the “irrational rules and regulations ” set up by the “ bourgeois ” managers and experts. Linking the factory-director responsibility system with the workers’ congresses provided the “ per- fect organizational forms ” to carry out the democratic centralism of Party committee leadership. “It goes without saying,” he noted, “ that there is absolutely nothing in common between our system of workers’ congresses led by the Party committee and the ‘ workers’ self-government ’ claimed by the leading clique of the Yugoslav

41. “ Report on Trade Union Work To Establish Workers’ Congresses,” NCNA, August 24, 1957; in SCMP, No. 1603, pp. 4-8.

42. See the JMJP editorial, “An Important Beginning for Reform of Industrial Management,” May 7, 1958, trans. in SCMP, No. 1774, pp. l-4. For an example of how this worked at the production team level, see “ Com- bine Professional Management with the Participation of the Masses in Management,” KJJP, July 19, 1959, trans. in SCMP, No. 2080, pp. 11-16. In this account of a Harbin bearings factory, management by the masses functioned at the level of the 300 working units in the plant. Cadres labored with the workers and each unit assumed responsibility for servicing machines and controlling its tools; this was the extent of mass management. The workers’ congress in the factory is mentioned in one sentence.


Communist Party. Our system of workers’ congresses is a system of democracy and centralism under which the workers take part in industrial management under the single leadership of the socialist state and the Communist Party; it is democracy guided by centralism and is a true and most extensive democracy.” *a One cannot but agree with Li that, ideologically and operationally, there has not been much in common between Yugoslav and Chinese workers’ councils.

This interpretation of industrial democracy lasted into 1965. Workers’ congresses were described as one element in the system of management of an enterprise, but an element mostly of value as an aid to the leadership rather than as a genuine supervisory or critical body. Cadre participation in labor was far more heavily stressed than worker participation in management.14

In 1965 a new emphasis on the mass line occurred in Chinese industry, a part of the general movement that was to culminate in the Cultural Revolution. One facet of this effort to combat bureaucratism was to strengthen the workers’ congresses in selected factories as pilot projects for a nationwide resurrection of the congresses by bringing their operations more in line with the powers officially held since 1957. Apparently there was even an extension of these powers on an experimental basis to the election by the workers of directors and deputy directors of the plant. 45 But this scattered overhaul of the congresses was only a brief flickering to life, for it was quickly super- seded by the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. But the experimentation in 1965 did reveal the irrelevance of the congresses in previous years. One plant declared that the representatives on its congress were nominees of the leadership and in fact were mostly cadres rather than workers. And since 1957 the emphasis had been on

43. Li Hstieh-feng. “On the Question of the Mass Line in Industrial Man- agement,” Hung ch’i [Red Flag], No. 5, 1958 (August 1, 1958); trans. in Extracts from China Mainland Magazines, No. 143, pp. 9-12.

44. Ma Wen-kuei, “ Industrial Management in China,” Peking Review. No. 9, 1965 (February 26, 1965), pp. 20-24. See also “ Militant Role of China’s Trade Unions,” Peking Review, No. 20, 1965 (May 14, 1965) pp. 26- 29, which states: I‘ The trade union should support the management in every sphere of its work,” and that the Party committee leads the workers’ congress, an organization mentioned only in passing @. 29).

45. !3ee Barry Richman, Industrial Society in Communist China (New York: Random House, 1969), pp. 255-256. However, as Richman found when he pressed the managers and Party leaders he interviewed in 1966, these elections were cut-and-dried affairs of unanimous approval by the time workers had any say. Higher levels made suggestions, committees in the plant screened the candidates, and, as with other elections in China, the workers were presented with a single candidate.

132 STUDIES IN COMPARATIV‘E COMMUNISM

tasks assigned by the plant leadership and the congress pledging to fulfill those tasks, without attention to the demands of the workers.4B

Interviews of refugee workers in Hong Kong who had left the mainland before 1965 confirm this unprepossessing view of workers’ congresses. No worker interviewed had much to say, favorably or otherwise, about these bodies. In contrast to attitudes toward the unions, there was no identification with the congresses. They failed to relate themselves to the congresses, nor did their responses suggest any feeling on their part that these bodies allowed worker participation in the management of the enterprise.

Yet, at the bottom, at the production-team or work-group level, there appears to be a high degree of democratic participation in decisionmaking. Free and open discussion of all sorts of questions relating to the team’s productivity-absenteeism, individual production records, time spent at meetings and not on the job, suggestions for technical changes-is encouraged and has often existed. In the meetings of the trade-union small group, often coterminous with the production team, individuals’ welfare and livelihood problems have been discussed and solutions sought. Leaders of the groups have been selected by the members, though with guidance from the plant’s Party, union, and administration. Furthermore, in the period between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the production group would periodically hold a p’ing-ting hui-i, or rating meeting, in which sometimes the wages of each member, more often the division of the monthly or quarterly bonus, would be determined. These matters of distinct importance to the individual have been decided by his colleagues, not the administrators. And, as Richman notes, there is a high level of communication and interaction between workers and managerial personnel in the factory in China,4T helped along by the practice of cadres working periodically on the line. One might argue that workers have been best able to exert indirect influence in managerial decisions through this technique of having the managers take their turn on the workshop floor.

Revolutionary Committees in the Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution has provided a new platform for workers who would engage in managing the factory: the revolutionary committee. Studies of the revolutionary committees, especially at the basic

46. “ Metallurgical Works of Shenyang Improves System of Workers’ Con- gress,” KJJP, October 13, 1965, trans. in SCMP, No. 3576, pp. 11-13.

47. Richman, op. cit., p. 257.

WORKERS’ PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT IN COhlMUNIST CHINA 133

levels, have not been made, and details concerning their operation, membership, and structure are sparse. But some general patterns and policies are discernible, enabling us to form some picture of worker participation in management at the present time.

The Cultural Revolution moved into the factories in December 1966. The following year was the time of greatest chaos during the Cultural Revolution, and the summer of 1967 witnessed widespread disruption and factional struggles throughout China’s industry2s In the earlier stages of the Cultural Revolution, there appears to have been reluctance to disturb industrial production; the Resolution adopted by the Eleventh Plenum in August 1966 cautioned against interference with the work of scientists, technicians, and industrial workers. But the administrators in China’s industry had been too closely tied to the CCP apparatus through the principle of “ collective leadership ” since 1956 to escape for long. Mao’s objective in the Cultural Revolution has been to ensure that China will follow a “ revolutionary ” path when he and his aged colleagues leave the scene, not what he perceives as the neo-bourgeois path of the Soviet Union. In order to assure “ revolutionary successors,” it was necessary to smash the CCP apparatus, which had become stagnant and bureaucratized, and, especially in the period of recovery from the Great Leap Forward, oriented towards professionalism, specialization, expertise, and material incentives. But when the Red Guards and others of the Maoist persuasion sought to attack the Party and the administrators in the factories, it appears that most of the regular industrial workers chose to support the Party and industrial bureaucracy, not the Red Guards. In Anshan, China’s foremost iron and steel center, battles between workers and Red Guards became so violent by July 1967 that furnaces were damaged and production simply halted; the whole city was finally placed under direct military control.49 In Wuhan, where clashes occurred all spring and summer, the dominant mass workers’ organization was anti-Maoist. Although it was disbanded, the organizations that replaced it, not necessarily Maoist, represented the workers on the Municipal Revolutionary Committee, where they were to guide the Red Guards and students.50

As conflict mounted in Shanghai during that summer, the Maoist city leaders attacked “ anarchism ” of various factions, a “ mountain-

48. For a discussion of the consequences to one sector of industry, see Chu-yuan Cheng, “The Effects of the Cultural Revolution on China’s Machine-Building Industry,” Current Scene, Vol. VIII, No. 1 (January 1, 1970).

49. Tokyo Shimbun, August 22, 1967; Sankei, Tokyo, August 22, 1967. 50. Hupei Daily editorial, on Wuhan radio, August 17, 1967.


stronghold mentality,” and the generally “ economist ” attitudes amongst the workers. Unions were discredited as having followed a “ revisionist worker movement line.” Liu Shao-ch’i was blamed for all this. He and the Party apparatus were accused of having led the unions to give priority to “ money, welfare, production, experts, and technique ” instead of class struggle, ideological education, and “ grasping revolution to promote production.” s1 The unions then led the mass of workers down this non-revolutionary, non-Maoist path.

Not all workers opposed Mao’s Cultural Revolution, of course. In the 196Os, a system had grown up whereby workers or peasants under the aegis of a municipality or a suburban commune were contracted out to industry. Most such workers could not rise above the level of casual laborers, had no job security, received none of the benefits of union membership, and were poorly paid; yet they would be on the fringe of the category “ industrial worker,” if not within it.“* There would be every reason for these worker-peasants to join the Red Guards when they came to the factories, hoping that their own positions would be improved after old patterns were smashed. They would also be joined by those regular workers who had been wronged (or felt themselves to have been) by the factory leadership, including those workers who were CCP members but had been unable to rise in the stagnating hierarchy or who sincerely believed in the rightness of Mao’s views. The intense factional struggle in the factories was halted gradually during 1968, as Peking ceased support of factional activities by revolutionary mass organizations and had the military impose controls.

During 1968-1969 revolutionary committees were established, beginning at provincial levels and then dropping to factories and other basic-level institutions, to replace the shattered Party and administrative apparatus. The revolutionary committee has three components: the military, revolutionary cadres, and the masses. In reality, the personnel of the committees varies widely at basic levels. In factories concerned with the defense industry, a PLA representative may be the committee chairman, but in other factories there would appear to be no military representation at all. In many factories, the threefold alliance is of cadres, workers, and technicians. The “ revolutionary cadres ” form many types: the managerial and Party leaders who sided with the Maoists from the beginning (or appeared to, since they

51. !3x Chieh-fang jib-pao, July 15, 1967; JMJP, December 1, 1967; and “The Struggle Between Two Lines in China’s Trade-Union Movement,” Peking Review, No. 26, 1968 (June 28, 1968), pp. 17-21.

52. See “ Sources of Labor Discontent in China: The Worker-Peasant System,” Current Scene, Vol. VI, No. 5 (,March 15, 1968).

worucE& PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT IN COMMUNIST CHINA 135

saw that this would be the successful new wave); those who were attacked, but remained in leading posts and were named to the revolutionary committee while undergoing endless self-criticism and ideological rectification; low-level cadres who led the attack on their leaders and then replaced them when the committee was formed; and, in many areas where non-Maoist leaders are in control (though they necessarily mouth the correct phrases), much of the former factory leadership. Many of the veteran administrators and technocrats who were displaced during the Cultural Revolution are being rehabilitated and will probably be found on reorganized revolutionary committees or in the new Party structure; but since they have been the object of attack for up to three years now, it may be expected that they will remain suspect and thus will behave with great care and caution.5s

The worker representatives on the revolutionary committee are of the greatest interest to us in a study of workers’ participation in management. Despite the initial resistance to the Cultural Revolution by the workers, the mass line and its implementation have necessarily enhanced their role. Reliance on the masses and worker participation in management are the natural forces for Mao in his battle against bureaucracy, and against the increased emphasis on specialization and “ bourgeois authorities ” and the gradual return to vertical rule in the industrial ministries that marked the pre-Cultural Revolu- tion period. Thus, we see the disparagement of technicians and of reliance on foreign technology, the massive cuts of administrative personnel who have been sent into production work, while the press is full of reports on successful technical innovations by the workers.5’ The creativity of the worker masses is a basic assumption of the mass line. In a country where advanced technical skills are still at a pre- mium, there is merit in the argument of utilizing the innovative energy of the masses-though one may doubt the long-range wisdom of wasting the skills of the highly trained scientist or technician.

Mao’s views on running the enterprise were outlined in 1960 in his “ Constitution of the Anshan Iron and Steel Company,” which was virtually ignored by industry until the Cultural Revolution. This Constitution laid down five principles consistent with Mao’s past and present views on the operation of the mass line : politics in command; strengthening the Party leadership; going in for the mass movement

53. See “The Revolutionary Committee and the Party in the Aftermath of the Cultural Revolution,” Current Scene, Vol. VIII, No. 8 (April 15, 1970).

54. Richman, op. cit., pp. 253, 785-786, notes that while many such mass innovations are simplistic, some are genuine advances; but when one probes deeper, one finds that the discredited techni$ans often played a significant but unmentioned role.


in a big way; the system of cadre participation in productive labor and worker participation in management, reforming irrational rules and outdated regulations, and close cooperation between cadres, workers, and technicians; and carrying out the technological revolution.55 This has reportedly been widely adopted as the guideline for China’s enterprises. Workers, particularly veteran workers, are to occupy center stage. In organizing the management of enterprises, “ it is necessary to have the workers as the main force and the revolutionary leading cadres as the backbone, and at the same time bring into full play the role of the technicians.” 56 But the centrality of the workers as proclaimed here hardly means worker control of the enterprise. There may indeed have been times during the factional struggles of 1967-1968 when leading cadres abdicated all responsibility, leaving initiatives in the factory to the revolutionary organizations of the workers. But the leaders of such organizations have been coopted onto the revolutionary committees, which now constitute the management board for the enterprise. This is nonetheless a significant advance over the pre-Cultural Revolution days, when the management committee would have been composed of the CCP committee, the top administrators, and the Party group-but no workers.

The workers’ representatives on the revolutionary committee are often genuine workers, activists thrust forward in the Cultural Revolu- tion and now ripe for advancement. Some of these workers were faction leaders; many have presumably been pared away by Peking’s periodic calls for weeding out the “ anarchists ” and “ ultra-leftists ” in the last two years, but others have survived the fluctuations and twists in Peking’s directions. It should also be pointed out that many workers were members of the Party before 1966; those who have moved onto revolutionary committees will be in a position to play leading roles in the new Party branches now being built. The new Party committees will eventually be leading the revolutionary committees.5’

To cite one of the stories on Party building, serving as the usual exemplar for other enterprises, a new Party branch was founded in April 1968 in a section of a Peking colliery.5* The 25 members of the

55. See “Two Diametrically Opposed Lines in Building the Economy,” in JMJP, August 25, 1967.

56. “Long Live the Victory of Constitution of Anshan Iron and Steel Company,” Peking Review, No. 14, 1970 (April 3, 1970), p. 15.

57. See “The Revolutionary Committee and the Party in the Aftermath of the Cultural Revolution.”

58. l ‘ A Party Branch Full of Vitality,” Peking Review, No. 28, 1969 (July 11, 1969). pp. 8-11.

worucERs’ PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT IN cdM~rrr~1.5~ CHINA 137

branch constitute 17 percent of all the workers and cadres in the section. In July 1969, the committee of the Party branch consisted of five persons, all of whom had joined the CCP between 1949 and 1966, but four of whom are “ new people who came to the fore during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” Three are workers who con- tinue their regular shift work; the other two are cadres who “ take part in labour as often as they can.” The cadres help the workers to learn leadership principles and to study Mao’s works; the workers on the committee provide some moral courage for the two cadres, who “ are not so bold in work,” an understandable caution after the Cultural Revolution. In light of the underlying clash between professionalism and revolutionism in the Cultural Revolution, it is of interest to note that, although four of the five CCP committee members in this ex- emplary unit first rose to leading positions in the Cultural Revolution, all are described as “ veteran ” workers and cadres.

In the general process of Party rebuilding, the CCP has turned to the workers as a primary source of recruitment for the iirst time since the early 1950s. At the Twelfth IPlenum of the CCP. held in October 1968, a major theme was that, now that those in the Party committed to the Liu Shao-ch’i path had been rooted out, it was necessary to replenish the ranks with new Maoist members, specifically workers. The Plenum’s communique declared: “Take into the Party fresh blood from the proletariat-above all, advanced elements with Communist consciousness from among the industrial workers.” 5s The Ninth Party Congress in April 1969, which elected several un- known workers to the Central Commitee, reafhrmed this policy. It remains to be seen, however, whether China’s workers, long indoc- trinated by essentially economist union cadres and professionally oriented Party and industrial administrators, will in the long run provide the revolutionary successors Mao has so desperately sought.

In the factories, though there is no evidence that formal workers’ councils exist, the workers are carefully consulted by the administrators; their opinions are sought and often listened to.OO When mass meetings are held in the workshop or department, the long-criticized

59. The communique can be found in a supplement to Peking Review, No. 44, 1968 (November 1, 1968). See also the Hung ch’i editorial, “ Absorb Fresh Blood from the Proletariat,” reprinted in Peking Review, No. 43, 1968 (O;c&ere25, 1968),. pp. 4-7.

: “ Cnucrze ‘ Experts Run Factories ’ Till It Stinks, Greet Upsurge of New Leap Forward,” Kuang-ming jih-pao [Bright Daily], January 29, 1970, trans. in SCMP, No. 4599 (70-07), pp. 96-102; “A Party Branch Which Links Itself Closely with the Masses,” Hung ch’i, No. 1, 1970 (January 1, 1970), trans. in Selections from China Mainland Magazines, Nos. 671-672 (70-01), especially pp. 83-85; and “A Party Branch Full of Vitality,” p. 7.


old cadre or technician is unlikely to sneer at the workers’ suggestions. Specific powers granted to the workers are not often mentioned, but in China’s largest synthetic petroleum plant, the Fushun Number One Plant in the Northeast, a workers’ finance supervisory group was set up in early 1969 with a network extending throughout the shops and teams in the plant. While the group does not seem to have a veto, it does “ firmly suggest how to set things right,” usually in disapproving expenditures on new machinery and suggesting self- reliance.61 It serves the Maoist state policy in this fashion, while it probably also helps spread attention to frugality among all the workers. Such groups could bring workers into genuine supervision over financial aspects of production decisions, an area that has been historically one of the more difficult and less successful functions of workers’ councilse2

For the present, the mass line of Mao Tse-tung rides triumphant in decisionmaking in the factory. The workers or their representatives on the revolutionary committees have probably a greater role in managing their own enterprises than ever before. Ironically, the unions, which fought in 1957 for workers’ congresses with some real powers and then lost the battle just as they attained that goal, are now defunct just when the workers have achieved some direct say in the enterprise decisiomnaking body. There is no evidence that the union structures are functioning or even exist at any level other than the national; like most mass organizations, they appear to have been simply displaced in the struggles of the Cultural Revolution.

Conclusion

Industrial democracy has not been conspicuously successful in China. Representative bodies of workers have not taken a significant part in the decisionmaking process of management at the enterprise level, with the exception of a period in the early years when the labor- capital consultative conference in private enterprises was utilized as a means of coercing or hectoring the capitalists. Efforts to empower worker-representative congresses as partners in management, pursued chiefly by the trade unions in the public sector in 1951, then throughout industry in 1957 and once again in scattered experimentation in

61. “Northeast China Petroleum Plant Re%olutionary Committee Relies on Workers to Supervise Enterprise’s Finances,” NCNA, April 18, 1970, in SCMP, No. 4644 (70-17), pp. 69-71.

62. Stunnthal, op. cit., pp. 177-178.


1965, have foundered on ideological intraParty conflict. The Cultural Revolution provided a new platform from which the workers might engage in management of the factory. Undoubtedly, in some plants, for some time, ad hoc workers’ organizations virtually took over the running of the enterprise. But such cases were probably not very widespread and certainly not permanent; the revolutionary committees have drawn those workers’ leaders into the new managerial body. Furthermore, the goals of the Cultural Revolution in no sense included the establishment of workers’ councils that would control decisionmaking in industrial enterprises; such a view was labelled “ anarcho-syndicalist.” Rather, the aim was to destroy the old industrial bureaucracy and Party in the plant and to rejuvenate management with revolutionary successors more attuned to politics and elimination of status differentiations than to expertise and material incentives. In practice, it would seem, this has meant rather the involvement of cadres in production than the involvement of workers in plant-level decisionmaking, a repetition of the situation that obtained in the the earlier mass movement, the Great Leap Forward.

The workers’ representative bodies that have existed over the past two decades have not necessarily been composed mainly of workers. As the efforts to enhance workers’ congress powers in 1957 and 1965 revealed, such bodies have-even when not dominated by cadres- been essentially a board that met merely to approve decisions already made by the plant leadership. And the plant trade-union committee, rather than a distinct executive body elected by the workers’ congress, has been the standing committee representing the congress in managerial conclaves, at least until the Cultural Revolution.

It is ironic that Communist China, with its persistent stress on the “ mass line ” and recurrent mass movements, with its predilection for human rather than technical organization, with its approval of and tendency toward decentralization, has been so reluctant to establish workers’ councils with genuine powers. This is partially to be ex- plained by the Party bureaucracy’s fear of letting anybody arise with autonomous powers. Certainly the circumstances surrounding the immediate subversion of the newly granted powers to workers’ congresses in 1957 suggest this; the unions, fighting for powerful congresses, had challenged the Party, and when the unions lost, so did the workers’ congresses. Standing in opposition to the Party bureaucracy and technocrats is Mao Tse-tung, but he has shown even less interest in workers’ councils. It must be remembered that not since his early years in the CCP, nearly half a century ago, has Mao been particularly close to or even much concerned with the industrial workers. The groups with which he has felt the greatest affinity are the

140 STUJXES IN COMPARATIVE COM?4UNISM

peasants and the army. Liu Shao-ch’i has been the leader most closely identitied with the industrial proletariat and its interest group organization, the trade unions. Thus, even though Mao has been the most notable exponent of decentralization of authority, he would not be in favor of the ultimate purpose of the workers’ council, decentralized control of the enterprise by its workers. The workers’ interests in running the plant, after years of indoctrination by an increasingly professional and materially oriented Party and trade union bureaucracy, simply would not coincide with the Maoist vision-and Mao Tse-tung must be as aware of this as anyone else. Workers’ councils, then, have had few advocates besides the unions and some technocrat allies in the Party leadership.

Yet, despite the generally melancholy history of workers’ participation in management outlined here, Communist China would provide an environment for effective workers’ councils, should they be seriously essayed. Variants of the workers’ council have existed for a long time; the Chinese are not unfamiliar with the concept and techniques. Although circumstances have worked against meaningful workers’ participation most of the time, there have been brief moments when fairly extensive powers were exercised by congresses and unions. The policies and the many factors favoring a decentralized economy, especially since the Cultural Revolution, are particularly conducive and appropriate to the institution of workers’ councils. And finally, the participation of workers in management decisionmaking is wholly fitting to the ideology of Maoism since the Cultural Revolution, with its emphasis on the role of workers in rebuilding the Party, on the creativity of the masses, and on the denigration of experts; and workers’ councils are an eminently sensible way of routinely combatting bureaucratism in the enterprise. Expanding from the degree of democracy long extant at the production team level, and even relying on the workers’ congress structures and powers that have officially existed-even if misused-for years, workers could play a significant role in the management of the enterprise in the post-Cultural Revolution era.