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The International Labour Organization and the Labour Question in Republican China, 1919–1938

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The Internationalisation of the Labour Question

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ((PSHSM))

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Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between the International Labour Organization and the state in Republican China in the inter-war period. During the years 1919–1937, the ILO and the Chinese government collaborated over the promulgation of labour legislation and the uniform enforcement of Chinese labour laws throughout China. Relying on Chinese- and English-language archival documents, Teh situates this collaborative relationship in a changing global context in which the governance of labour became fundamental to the sovereignty and legitimacy of a nation-state. Although this collaborative relationship did not ultimately achieve the desired results, it presaged a configuration of labour governance centering on the nation-state, which became normalised in the post-1945 global order.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Shenbao, 7 June 1919.

  2. 2.

    Jean Chesneaux, The Chinese Labour Movement 1919–1927. Translated by H.M. Wright (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968).

  3. 3.

    Ma Chaojun, Zhongguo laogong yundong shi (Taipei: Zhongguo laogong fuli chubanshe, 1959): 131; Zou Dian and Liu Zhen, Zhongguo gongren yundong shi hua (Beijing: Zhongguo gongren chubanshe, 1993): 31.

  4. 4.

    Chesneaux, The Chinese Labour Movement: 385.

  5. 5.

    William H. Sewell Jr., Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005): 274.

  6. 6.

    Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labour Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 14.

  7. 7.

    Philip Richardson, The Economic History of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 27.

  8. 8.

    Chesneaux, The Chinese Labour Movement: 42.

  9. 9.

    Da Chen, Zhongguo laogong wenti [The Chinese Labour Question] ([Shanghai: Shangwu, 1929]; Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1990): 19. Citations refer to 1990 edition.

  10. 10.

    Gail Hershatter, The Workers of Tianjin, 1900–1949 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993).

  11. 11.

    Chesneaux, The Chinese Labour Movement: 100; Minguo shiqi shehui duocha congshu: chengshi longgong shenghuo juan: 334–336. Hereafter known as MSSDC.

  12. 12.

    MSSDC: 365–376.

  13. 13.

    MSSDC: 286–288.

  14. 14.

    Chen, Zhongguo laogong wenti: Table 13.

  15. 15.

    Chen, Zhongguo laogong wenti: Table 15.

  16. 16.

    Chen, Zhongguo laogong wenti: Table 15: 151–164.

  17. 17.

    Smith, Like Cattle and Horses: 171.

  18. 18.

    Smith, Like Cattle and Horses: 132.

  19. 19.

    Chesneaux, The Chinese Labour Movement: 291.

  20. 20.

    Chen Ta, “The Labour Movement in China,” International Labour Review 15, no. 3 (1927): 345–346.

  21. 21.

    Smith, Like Cattle and Horses: 215–216.

  22. 22.

    Chen, “Labour Movement”: 349.

  23. 23.

    C.S. Chan, “Social Legislation in China Under the Nationalist Government,” International Labour Review 19, no. 60 (1929): 63–64.

  24. 24.

    Hung-Ting Ku, “Urban Mass Movement: The May Thirtieth Movement in Shanghai,” Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 2 (1979): 197–216.

  25. 25.

    Chan, “Social Legislation”: 63–64.

  26. 26.

    Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951).

  27. 27.

    Yifeng Chen, “The International Labour Organization and Labour Governance in China, 1919–1949,” in China and ILO Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, ed. Roger Blanpain (Alphen aan der Rijn, NL: Wolters Kluwer, 2014): 39.

  28. 28.

    “Gongchang fa,” Hunan caizheng huikan 12 (1930): 3–10.

  29. 29.

    “Gongchang fa”: 3–4.

  30. 30.

    Wagner, Labour Legislation in China: 194.

  31. 31.

    Zhongguo di’er lishi dang’anguan ed., Zhonghua minguo shi dang’an ziliao huibian (Nanjing: Fenghuang chubanshe, 1991), no. 8: 428–429. Hereafter referred to as ZMSDXH.

  32. 32.

    Da Chen, “Labour Movement”: 351; Yifeng Chen, “The International Labour Organization”: 36.

  33. 33.

    Pär Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgement: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012): 26.

  34. 34.

    Dong Wang, “The Discourse of Unequal Treaties in Modern China,” Pacific Affairs 76, no. 3 (2003): 399.

  35. 35.

    League of Nations, International Labour Conference: First Annual Meeting, October 29, 1919–November 29, 1919 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920): 231.

  36. 36.

    League of Nations, International Labour Conference: First Annual Meeting.

  37. 37.

    North China Daily News, 5 December 1928.

  38. 38.

    ZMSDXH, no. 31: 182–183.

  39. 39.

    C. Pône, “Towards the Establishment of a Factory Inspectorate in China,” International Labour Review 35, no. 5 (May 1932): 594–595.

  40. 40.

    Pône, “Towards the Establishment of a Factory Inspectorate”: 599–601.

  41. 41.

    Pône, “Towards the Establishment of a Factory Inspectorate”: 602.

  42. 42.

    Pône, “Towards the Establishment of a Factory Inspectorate”: 603.

  43. 43.

    Pône, “Towards the Establishment of a Factory Inspectorate”: 603.

  44. 44.

    ZMSDXH, no. 31: 183–184.

  45. 45.

    ZMSDXH, no. 31: 183–184.

  46. 46.

    ZMSDXH, no. 31: 185.

  47. 47.

    ZMSDXH, no. 31: 187.

  48. 48.

    ZMSDXH, no. 31: 191.

  49. 49.

    Quoted in Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai: 218.

  50. 50.

    ZMSDXH, no. 31: 193.

  51. 51.

    ZMSDXH, no. 31: 185–186.

  52. 52.

    Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai: 210.

  53. 53.

    Letter from Sir. J. Brenan to Sir M. Lampson, 1 March 1933, FO 371/19251, National Archives, Kew.

  54. 54.

    Augusta Wagner, “The International Labour Organization and the Regulation of Labour Conditions in China,” Yenching Journal of Social Studies 2, no. 1 (July 1939): 7.

  55. 55.

    League of Nations, Record of Proceedings, International Labour Conference: Seventeenth Session, Geneva, 1933 (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1933), 509.

  56. 56.

    League of Nations, Record of Proceedings, International Labour Conference: Seventeenth Session: 513–514.

  57. 57.

    League of Nations, Record of Proceedings, International Labour Conference: Twenty-Third Session, Geneva, 1937 (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1937): 568.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Limin Teh

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for History, Leiden University, Leiden, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

    Stefano Bellucci

  2. Department of History, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland

    Holger Weiss

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Teh, L. (2020). The International Labour Organization and the Labour Question in Republican China, 1919–1938. In: Bellucci, S., Weiss, H. (eds) The Internationalisation of the Labour Question. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28235-6_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28235-6_13

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