Industrial Reformers in Republican China (review)

242 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 Robin Porter. Industrial Reformers in Republican China. Studies on Modern China. Armonk and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. xviii, 276 pp. Hardcover $55.00, isbn 1-56324-393-8. Republican China, which covers roughly the period from 1912 to i949> faced die same economic and social challenge from industrial development as is posed for nations and workers in the 1990s by technology, corporate reengineering, job migration to low-wage areas, and foreign competition: namely, how to achieve a more productive economy while distributing equitably the benefits of change. A consensus view among economists is that too much inequality leads to instability and unacceptable unfairness, while too little inequality reduces incentives for productive people to get things done. Finding the acceptable balance is an unending task in a changing world. Robin Porter concentrates on efforts to bring fairness and equality, represented by wages and working conditions, to industrial workers in urban centers of China. After sketching in chapter 1 the effects, around the 1920s, of"modern industry " on workers with respect to wages, unemployment, health, safety, housing, methods of labor recruitment, and the number of workers, Porter moves on to consider the motivation, tactics, individuals involved, and results achieved by five specific organizations: the YMCA, the YWCA, the National Christian Council of China, the Shanghai Municipal Council, and the International Labor Organization . The first three are Christian organizations, and all five were essentially led and staffed by foreigners. Porter's study is thus a good companion to Charles Hayford's recent study on James Yen's work with mass education and reconstruction in the countryside1 and to David Strand's study ofworker organization in nonindustrial urban China.2 Foreigners were in the vanguard, says Porter, because modern industry was new to China and a "body of opinion and expertise" had already grown up in the World's leading industrial countries." Porter believes distinct differences existed in the motivation and approaches used by the five organizations. The YMCA (chapter 2) engaged in uplift and evangelism ahead ofindustrial welfare, believing that "a worker who could read and write and was well rested was likely to be more responsible and more amenable to the teachings of Christ than one who was not." Meanwhile, once employers saw the situation, they would recognize their social responsibility to workers. The YWCA (chapter 3) concentrated less on evangelism and more on improving the© 1996 by University status ofwomen workers. Porter gives die YWCA high marks for eventually seeofHawai 'i Pressmg me need to empower women ifthey were to improve their economic status, even though this might ultimately mean "letting go," with the possibility that the YWCA would become superfluous. The National Christian Council of China Reviews 243 (chapter 4), an umbrella organization for Protestant missionaries, helped to promote health and safety standards, but was diverted by splits in objectives between its staff and more conservative members. The Shanghai Municipal Council (chapter 5), established to govern the foreign concessions, was particularly involved with the problem of child labor, an effort which saw little success. The International Labor Organization (chapter 7) sent several visitors to China and established a China bureau but remained Eurocentered. Porter carefully documents his description ofindustrial reform activities in the five organizations with a useful and lengthy footnote and bibliography section (pp. 205-264) and also provides appendixes on wages, cost ofliving, and the 1923 and 1931 government factory legislation. Many of the information sources are located in the archives of the YMCA, the YWCA, the ILO, and die World Council of Churches. Despite all the work and good intentions ofPorter's five organizations, he concludes in the last chapter that "working conditions improved negligibly, ifat all, during the period under review" (p. 175). One obvious explanation is that the foreignness ofthe five organizations did not resonate in an increasingly nationalistic China and that pressure from outside was increasingly counterproductive. It is at this point, however, that I wished Porter's study had been more inclusive . The book tells a lot that is worth knowing about the five organizations and the people who led them, and not as much about die environment in which the organizations...