"Both the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and the June Fourth Incident seventy years later were part of global upsurges in protest activity. Each was deeply influenced by foreign ideologies and experiences and each exerted, in turn, a significant impact on protest movements elsewhere in the world. In both instances, participants articulated demands as citizens; but the two cases differ markedly in the extent to which students and workers actually formed a political alliance to press a common demand for political inclusion."

Elizabeth J. Perry is the Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University and the incoming director of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.

For students of popular protest in twentieth-century China, the years 1919 (the May Fourth Movement), 1968 (the height of the Cultural Revolution), and 1989 (the Tiananmen uprising) are critical markers. Each of these key dates, it is worth noting, were watersheds not only in the history of Chinese protest but in the history of international protest movements as well.

One of the more arresting, yet relatively unexplored, features of modern protests is their tendency to erupt with remarkable simultaneity in different countries.¹ The revolutions of 1848 were perhaps the first major instance of this global "popcorn effect," but the twentieth century has witnessed an acceleration of the phenomenon ­ with the strike wave of 1919, the student revolts of 1968, and the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989. Although the various protests that occurred during each of these historical junctures certainly had nationally specific causes and consequences, the fact that they were part of a transnational process imbued the movements with added political dynamism. Conscious that they were actors in a drama of global proportions, participants tended to downplay particularistic demands in favor of more universalistic claims. This was especially clear in the case of workers, when labor-related issues were superseded by identification with a larger political cause. The willingness of workers to subordinate workplace grievances in favor of assuming a role as citizens was a notable characteristic of each of these world-wide upsurges.

This brief paper (a much longer and somewhat different version of which is forthcoming in Comparative Studies in Society and History) will explore the vicissitudes of worker-citizen protest through a consideration of two movements in the city of Shanghai, beginning with the May Fourth strike of 1919 and concluding with the June Fourth Incident of 1989. Both of these events, although distinctively Chinese (or even Shanghainese), were also part of a larger international process. Influences from abroad shaped the motivations and methods of Chinese participants, just as Chinese experiences exerted an impact on developments elsewhere in the world. While in 1919 the flows were largely from Europe to China, by 1989 there seems to have been something of a turnabout in the patterns of interaction.

The May Fourth Movement

The historic May Fourth Movement of 1919 began as a student demonstration centered in Beijing. However, not until the protest spread to China's industrial capital of Shanghai did it garner widespread social support and commensurate political influence. As Joseph Chen notes in his monograph on the subject, "The May Fourth Movement in Shanghai was an epoch-making event in modern Chinese history . . . the Shanghai movement may properly be regarded as a genuine popular movement involving all strata of the society. It may also be considered as the first true total movement ever to occur in the entire history of China."²

What distinguished the Shanghai wing of the May Fourth Movement was the massive participation of workers. Visiting student delegates from Beijing, in concert with student unions and other civic associations in Shanghai, proved successful in organizing a general strike in the nation's industrial capital.³ The week-long strike in Shanghai, involving some 60,000 participants, effectively immobilized the city and forced the hand of politicians in Beijing in a way that the student protests of the preceding month had been unable to accomplish. The government offered a public apology, released arrested student demonstrators, discharged three officials involved in the Paris peace talks, and refused to affix its signature to the Versailles Treaty.

Observers at the time were impressed by the political potential of the newly awakened working class. Li Lisan, an early Communist labor organizer, wrote shortly after the outbreak of the strike, "Before the May Fourth Movement, there was almost no recognition of mass power, but since then progressive youths . . . realize that the future of the national revolution requires arousing the broad masses, especially the worker masses, to participate."⁴

This was certainly not the first time that Shanghai workers had walked off the job.⁵ It was, however, the first instance of an en masse walkout that crossed industrial lines. The unprecedented cooperation went hand in hand with a newfound awareness of international developments. As a recent history of the Shanghai labor movement observes, "After the 1911 Revolution, and especially during the First World War . . . the ranks of the Shanghai working class expanded. Moreover, news of strikes by workers in the West circulated ceaselessly, stimulating struggles among the working masses."⁶ Japanese-owned cotton mills were the first to be affected in 1919, but soon the work stoppage spread to the shipyards, utilities, printing, tobacco, and transport industries. Significantly, the action was not limited to labor. It was part of a general strikea "triple stoppage" (san ba) ­ in which students, merchants, and workers joined forces in bringing to a halt academic, commercial, and industrial activities alike.

Unlike previous labor disputes, workers participated in the May Fourth Movement less to press workplace demands than to take their newfound place as citizens alongside other sectors of urban society. As early as 1915, a Citizens' Patriotic Society had been formed in Shanghai to oppose Japanese incursions. The group spearheaded a highly successful boycott of Japanese goods, which spread from Shanghai across much of urban China later that year.⁷ It was not surprising, then, that the arrests of anti-Japanese protesters on May 4, 1919 in Beijing caused "the greatest excitement in Shanghai. The merchants, industrialists, and urban workers, stirred by this tumult, began to follow the leadership of the new intellectuals."⁸

As Chow Tse-tung explains in his classic study of the May Fourth Movement, the thinking of the "new intellectuals" of that day was shaped, above all, by French political ideas:

France's influence upon China in this period can hardly be exaggerated. From the beginning of the twentieth century, the political thought of the French Revolution had an almost unrivaled vogue among young Chinese revolutionaries and reformers. . . Chinese intellectuals in the May Fourth Movement were, in many cases, overwhelmingly dominated by the democratic ideas and liberalism of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France rather than the ideas of other Western countries. . . Introduced into China were also France's utopian socialism and anarchism . . . ⁹

That such ideas gained currency well beyond intellectual circles is seen in the utterances and proclamations of workers during the May Fourth general strike. The sense of belonging to a newly constituted citizenry is evident. A member of Shanghai's Copper and Iron Machinery Guild remarked, "We, the industrial workers, are also a part of the citizenry. While people from the commercial and educational circles are striving hard to save our nation, how could we, the industrial world, be left behind?"¹⁰ Similarly, craftsmen at a Shanghai machine tool factory wrote in a letter to the editor that "all who belong to the citizenry (fanshu guomin) share a deep sense of indignation."¹¹ A handbill distributed by the chauffeurs of foreign residents in Shanghai, explained their decision to strike as an act of citizenship:

A warning to our brethren:

As a result of our diplomatic defeat our national position is in great danger, so all our citizens feel the greatest indignation, the students suspending their lessons and going about to enlighten our people, while the merchants are stopping their business and praying for relief and salvation. Now, we, of the industrial world, who have the same conscience, feel it impossible to endure and remain inactive.

All factories on both sides of the Huangpu River have struck work. Therefore we chauffeurs, who are also citizens of this country, have decided to begin our strike on Monday next June 9, so that we may follow the same line of action as the students, merchants and laborers. Unless our common object is attained, we will never resume our work.

But, fellow countrymen, be careful not to do anything violent. Preserve order by all means. Please hand this to others when read.

The Citizens¹²

China's May Fourth Movement was of course sparked by the Paris peace talks following the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles, the terms of which threatened to convert Shandong province into a virtual colony of Japan, evoked a public outcry among Shanghai workers against foreign aggression and domestic capitulation alike. Embracing a heady new political vocabulary whose lineage could be traced directly to the French Revolution, Chinese urbanites voiced concerns as "citizens" of their infant Republic.

But these were not the only influences that extended from the Paris of Europe to the "Paris of the East," as Shanghai was then known. The year 1919 saw the spread of a global strike wave, which was especially pronounced in France.¹³ As in Europe, Egypt, the United States and elsewhere around the world, the work stoppage in Shanghai was in part a product of rampant post-war inflation.¹⁴ Significantly, however, striking workers expressed less interest in a wage increase than in political issues.

The similarities between French and Chinese protests in particular were hardly accidental. As many as 200,000 Chinese workers had been hired by European ­ especially French ­ factories during World War I to replace men who had left for the battlefield. In this recruitment drive, Shanghai craftsmen were explicitly targeted by French companies.¹⁵ Included among these overseas workers were a surprisingly large number (some 28,000 according to the estimate of Chow Tse-tsung) of intellectuals. As Chow notes, the implications of this cross-class mingling were profound:

In the first place, it provided a chance for Chinese intellectuals to live together with the workers and to begin to assume leadership. Previously, Chinese students abroad had come mainly from rich families, and few of them had done any hard work. By contrast, these student-workers came from the poor or middle class and for the first time did not follow the student tradition of belonging to a leisure class. With their assistance, a great number of industrial and social organizations were formed among the Chinese workers in France during the war years, such as ... the Labor Union, the Workers' Society, the Chinese Laborers' Society . . . and "self-government" clubs. . .¹⁶

This impressive organizational activity gave rise to a good deal of labor unrest, as well. Despite French industrialists' hope for a docile foreign workforce, Chinese employees in France launched some 25 recorded strikes between November 1916 and July 1918. When the Chinese were in turn displaced by militant Frenchmen at the end of the war, they headed home well-schooled in tactics of labor strife.¹⁷ The May Fourth Movement was to some degree a product of this "education abroad" experience. It was also part of a world-wide explosion of labor unrest that occurred that year.¹⁸

The Uprising of 1989

Like the May Fourth Movement seventy years earlier, the Tiananmen Uprising was inspired in large measure by international influences. The celebrated role of foreign ideas, political symbols, and popular culture is well known. An anecdote related by Craig Calhoun, an American sociologist then teaching in Beijing, illustrates the students' cosmopolitanism:

Around May 16, several of my Chinese graduate students and I were marching along Chang'an Boulevard on our way into Tiananmen Square. A reporter for a California newspaper strode alongside us and asked me to tell her what the students really wanted. "Ask them yourself," I said, "they speak English." She asked one, who replied simply, "Democracy." "What do you think democracy means?" she asked, as though of a child. My student responded with exaggerated humility, "Oh! You come from America. What does democracy mean to you?" The reporter stammered. "Well, er, um, you know, elections, I guess." "Ah," said the student, "yes. But I think more in terms of Rousseau and the model of direct participation."¹⁹

Despite the naivete of some journalists, members of the international press corps served as important conduits of information and encouragement to the protesters, as did Chinese students abroad. Moreover, the growing unrest in Eastern Europe heightened a general sense of global connectedness among the demonstrators.

Another key source of inspiration in 1989 was, of course, China's own May Fourth tradition. Students in Beijing had already made plans to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of that historic event, and they simply moved the date forward when they learned of Hu Yaobang's untimely death on April 15.

As had been the case with the original May Fourth Movement (and the Cultural Revolution as well), the uprising of 1989 began on Beijing campuses and was subsequently imported to Shanghai by student militants from the North. Unlike these previous incidents, however, the protest of 1989 did not elicit a rousing response from the workers of China's industrial capital. Although some workers sympathized with the student demonstrators in Beijing, especially once the hunger strike began,²⁰ this did not translate into a major political initiative among the Shanghai workforce.

One of the critical differences between the events of 1989 and the earlier movements was the absence in 1989 of any sustained effort by students to recruit workers to their cause. In contrast to May Fourth or the Cultural Revolution, the uprising of 1989 did not see concerted student forays into the factories of Shanghai.²¹ Thus when workers finally did take to the streets, their actions often ran directly counter to student initiatives.

After news of the June Fourth massacre reached the southern metropolis, students in Shanghai (in good Paris Commune fashion) began to erect barricades across the city to prepare for a general strike. Although these blockades ­ constructed of commandeered buses, street railings, concrete slabs and pipes ­ brought traffic to a complete standstill on June 5, the city did not shut down economically. Unlike May Fourth, workers refused to lend their support to student initiatives. Threatened with sanctions if they did not show up for work, many workers walked several hours to get to their jobs. The following day, unarmed worker pickets (gongren jiucha dui) began to tear down the student barricades. There were even reports of fighting between worker pickets and student groups, leading to several deaths.²² On June 8, a more systematic and effective use of worker pickets by state authorities was authorized by Mayor Zhu Rongji. Thousands of workers, organized into state-sponsored "propaganda teams" reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, were offered a full day's wage for three to four hours of demolition work. Within twenty-four hours, all the major student barricades had been removed.

The official Shanghai gazetteer offers the following account:

On June 8, the municipal committee decided to establish the "Shanghai Preserve Transportation Propaganda Teams." That evening, after Mayor Zhu Rongji's televised address, more than 5,000 pickets at 33 large and medium-sized enterprises through out the city formed "propaganda teams" to converge from all directions on three command posts in the city center. By four in the morning on the 9th, more than 5,000 propaganda team members together with armed police and public security personnel, riding in trucks and holding high banners, took to the streets to clear away all obstructions. At the same time, more than 100,000 workers' pickets organized by each district sprang into action. By dawn, the 48 remaining obstructions had all been removed . . . Zhu Rongji offered praise: "The Shanghai workers' pickets took action early this morning, restoring Shanghai's transportation and ending the disorderly situation. You have performed a great service for the people of Shanghai!"²³

As an eyewitness to the events concluded, "While the Shanghai workers sympathized with the students' concerns and silently supported many of their activities, they did not have the courage or the necessary level of commitment to take major political risks."²⁴

The gulf separating workers and students in 1989 was not unique to Shanghai, and was not attributable only to worker cowardice. The reluctance of intellectuals to reach out to a labor constituency was also a factor. A laborer in Chongqing recalled,

The workers could see that participation was being strictly restricted by the students themselves, as if the workers were not qualified to participate... Moreover, in Beijing the issues that the students raised had nothing to do with the workers. For example, Wuer Kaixi in his speeches only talked about the students. If he had mentioned the workers as well, appealed to the workers, appealed to them in a sincere manner, the workers might really have come out in a major way.²⁵

Chinese workers, allies of the Chinese intellectuals?

The year 1989 was most assuredly a turning point in world history, albeit one that brought few political reforms within China. Limited as China's own uprising proved to be, in terms of both democratic ambitions and political results, the stirring spectacle in Tiananmen Square served nonetheless as an inspiration for other, more consequential protests elsewhere in the world. The demise of Communist regimes across Eastern Europe later that year was undoubtedly accelerated by the Chinese uprising, which had attracted unprecedented media coverage throughout the European continent. Most notably in Warsaw, but in other East European capitals as well, workers joined students in pressing claims for citizenship that led ultimately to revolutionary outcomes.²⁶ Ironically, the Tiananmen Uprising may have exerted a greater impact abroad than at home.

Conclusion

Both the May Fourth Movement of 1919 and the June Fourth Incident seventy years later were part of global upsurges in protest activity. Each was deeply influenced by foreign ideologies and experiences and each exerted, in turn, a significant impact on protest movements elsewhere in the world. In both instances, participants articulated demands as citizens; but the two cases differ markedly in the extent to which students and workers actually formed a political alliance to press a common demand for political inclusion. That difference, I would suggest, goes some distance toward explaining the divergent outcomes of the two movements. Whereas May Fourth led to a public government apology and foreign policy reversal, June Fourth spelled repression and retrenchment.

Despite the ignominious end to the 1989 uprising in China, it is nonetheless certain that the memory of June Fourth will continue to inspire popular protests in that country. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Chinese political culture is the tendency for successive generations to interpret anniversaries ­ even tragic ones ­ as political opportunities. Although each of these movements may have originally been part and parcel of international history, they have also acquired a unique significance in the Chinese context. It is important to note, moreover, that the celebration of past anniversaries has certainly not inhibited later Chinese generations from improvising on inherited patterns.²⁷ One has every reason to look forward, therefore, to future movements in which citizenship will figure not only as rhetoric, but also as reality.

Endnotes

¹ Important efforts to come to grips with global cycles of protest include Doug McAdam and Dieter Rucht, "The Cross-National Diffusion of Movement Ideas," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 528 (1993): 56-74; and Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994): chapter 9.

² Joseph T. Chen, The May Fourth Movement in Shanghai (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1971): 194.

³ Wen-hsin Yeh, The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republican China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1990): 132-133.

⁴ Li Lisan, "Zhongguo zhigong yundong gailun" [A general discussion of the Chinese labor movement], 1919, quoted in Wang Jianchu and Sun Maosheng, Zhongguo gongren yundongshi [A history of the Chinese labor movement] (Shenyang: Liaoning Workers Press, 1987): 53.

⁵ Shen Yixing, Jiang Peinan, and Zheng Qingsheng, eds., Shanghai gongren yundongshi [A history of the Shanghai labor movement] (Shenyang: Liaoning Workers Press, 1991): 28-36; Elizabeth J. Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993): chapters 2-3.

⁶ Shen Yixing, et. al.: 29.

⁷ Shanghai jindaishi [The modern history of Shanghai] (Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 1987), Vol. II: 6-7.

⁸ Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960): 151-152.

⁹ Ibid.: 35-36.

¹⁰ Shen bao, June 9, 1919.

¹¹ Xinwen bao, June 7, 1919.

¹² North China Herald, June 14, 1919, p. 717. Emphasis added.

¹³ James E. Cronin, "Labor Insurgency and Class Formation," Social Science History 4 (1980): 126.

¹⁴ Minguo ribao, October 12, 1919, presents an analysis of the labor strife in China as well as in other countries which attributes the underlying cause to wartime inflation.

¹⁵ Shi bao, December 14, 1916.

¹⁶ Chow, 1960: 38-39.

¹⁷ Chen Sanjing, Huagong yu Ouzhan [Chinese workers and the war in Europe] (Taipei, 1986): 142-44. On at least two occasions Chinese workers also acted as scabs to break strikes among French dockworkers and gas workers. See Ta Chen, Chinese Migrations, With Special Reference to Labor Conditions (Taipei: Chengwen Publishing House, 1967): 150.

¹⁸ In 1919, major strikes erupted not only all across Europe, but also in the United States, Canada, and Egypt. See, for example, Kenneth McNaught, The Winnipeg Strike, 1919 (Don Mills, Ont.: Longman, 1974); Francis Russell, A City in Terror: 1919, the Boston Police Strike (New York: Viking, 1975); Liam Cahill, Forgotten Revolution: Limerick Soviet, 1919 (Dublin: O'Brien Press, 1990); David Brody, The Steel Strike of 1919 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

¹⁹ Craig Calhoun, Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994): 243-244.

²⁰ On May 18, the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions issued a statement that "Workers in the city have expressed universal concern and sympathy for the patriotism of the students who are demanding democracy, rule of law, an end to corruption, checking inflation, and promoting reform. The municipal council of trade unions fully affirms this." Foreign Broadcast Information Service (May 22, 1989): 91.

²¹ Roger W. Howard reports a brief effort by students in Changchun to take their protest to the auto workers, but this attempt came late in the movement (after the declaration of martial law) and lasted only a day or two. See Howard, "The Student Democracy Movement in Changchun," in Unger, 1991: 61-62.

²² Shelley Warner, "Shanghai's Response to the Deluge," in Jonathan Unger, ed., The Pro-Democracy Protests in China: Reports from the Provinces (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1991): 218-227. Warner credits Zhu with averting "a situation in which Shanghainese turned on each other, which seemed to be developing into a most likely scenario around the 7th of June with sporadic clashes already occurring between workers and students." (Warner, 1991: 230).

²³ Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, ed., Shanghai gongyun zhi [Gazetteer of the Shanghai Labor Movement] (Shanghai: 1996): 514.

24 Warner, 1991: 230-231.

²⁵ Quoted in Anita Chan and Jonathan Unger, "Voices from the Protest Movement in Chongqing: Class Accents and Class Tensions," in Unger, 1991: 120. See also, for Beijing, Andrew G. Walder and Gong Xiaoxia, "Workers in the Tiananmen Protests: The Politics of the Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 29 (January 1993).

²⁶ On worker involvement in the East German case, see Jeffrey Kopstein, "Chipping Away at the State: Workers' Resistance and the Demise of East Germany," World Politics 48 (April 1996): 391-423.

²⁷ Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).