The Chinese Labour Movement After 1949

The organized labour movement in China had come into existence prior to the establishment of the Communist Party in 1921 and unions had been active even before the turn of the century (see Chesneaux, 1969). As industrialization had been confined to the coastal areas and especially the large cities such as Canton (now Guangzhou), Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tientsin (now Tianjin), it is not surprising that the early workers’ organizations had started their life there (see Guillermaz, 1972; Chan 1981; Chen 1985 for further details).In China, the formal national union structure goes back to the early 1920s (see Littler and Lockett, 1983) with the setting up of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) in 1925 in Canton.