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ABSTRACT
Huang Baomei was not an average national model-laborer (laomo). The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) granted her this grand title to leverage her social status for promoting its goals of getting workers to work harder, produce more, and consume less. But Huang Baomei longed to look and act like a “modern girl” (modeng nülang), the well-dressed and well-groomed image which Shanghai women had aspired to over generations. She not only survived through political movements such as the Anti-Rightist Campaign, but also took advantage of the movement discourse to win the hearts of many. She faced tough opposition, but the CCP Shanghai Municipal Committee helped to elevate her popularity over more than a decade in Communist China. In examining her career, this paper shows how Huang introduced debates among CCP cadres and both reshaped and directed key concepts in CCP propaganda at local and national levels.
ABSTRACT IN CHINESE
黄宝妹并非一般意义上的劳动模范。中国共产党授予她劳动模范的称号，希望通过提升她的社会地位而在工人群体中产生正面的示范效应，以鼓励工人积极生产、提高产量、减少消费。但是黄宝妹却敢于追求时髦，她的形象和表现仿佛上海近代女性追逐的摩登女郎一般。黄宝妹不仅从政治运动中幸存下来，而且策略性地使用运动语言为自己赢得政治资本。关于黄宝妹的争议不断，但在上海市各部门的帮助下，她在中华人民共和国的前十年持续享有声誉。通过考察她的经历，本文旨在展示黄宝妹为何在中共干部中间引发争论，又是如何在地方与国家两个层面重塑了中共宣传中的关键概念。
Acknowledgements
We appreciate the comments received at the workshop “New Approaches and Materials of PRC History,” Freie Universität Berlin, August 2017.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In 1950, Hao Jianxiu (1935-), a woman worker of the State-owned Qingdao No. 6 Cotton Textile Mill, created a new spinning method characterized by active control over the machine, giving attention to cleaning, etc. This method was effective in reducing yarn breakage and shortening the time for connecting the ends of the yarn and reduced waste of raw materials. In June 1951, the National Committee of the China Textile Trade Union named this technique the Hao Jianxiu Working Method and promoted it in mills across the country.
2 In previous grassroots histories, most ordinary Chinese often were seen to have had difficult lives in the Mao era. They either struggled to survive (Hershatter, Citation2014) or suffered great hardships amid the political and social upheaval (Brown, Citation2015). Huang’s style and profile put her in front of the cameras and in the spotlight. Her glamor and star status provided a contrast to the earlier research.
3 These materials are from Neibu Cankao (Internal Reference), which is an internal publication of the Xinhua News Agency (China's official national news agency), which is mainly meant for a small number of senior leaders in China.
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Notes on contributors
Yajuan Liu
Yajuan LIU is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. She received a master’s degree from Peking University, and earned a PhD from Fudan University. Her main research interests include contemporary China, labor history and women’s history. She is now focusing on a program of “Cadre Students on the perspective of Class,” supported by the National Social Science Fund of China. Email: [email protected]
Matt Galway
Matt GALWAY is a lecturer in the School of Culture, History, and Language, the Australian National University. He earned a PhD degree from University of British Columbia. He taught previously as a Hansen Trust Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, and was a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. His new book, The Emergence of Global Maoism: China’s Red Evangelism and the Cambodian Communist Movement, 1949–1979, has been published by Cornell University Press. His research focuses on Global Maoism, Chinese Intellectual History, and Southeast Asian Studies. Email: [email protected]
Thomas Hoy
Thomas HOY earned a master’s degree in History at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is now an independent scholar who focuses on local history and Chinese Cultural History. Email: [email protected]