Restudy On The Hankou-beijing Railway Workers Strike

Hankou-Beijing Railway Workers Strike is one of the most influential historical events in modern Chinese revolution,which has a great influence on politics,economics,society and legal system of modern China.The occurrence of the Strike has the profound historical and social root.The geographical environment and cultural environment of Hankou-Beijing railway has the potential of evoking collective action.In the modern social transition,the development of railway in China is doomed to be a tough game.The prominent geographic location of Hankou-Beijing railway determined its extraordinary economic,political,and military value.The topography and climate characteristics of Hankou-Beijing railway along the route,on the one hand,was conducive to agricultural production and human life;On the other hand,it formed a terrible ecological environment,which was easy to cause natural disasters and form the great famine,thus bringing the serious survival crisis to the residents along this route.The geographical environment of the Hankou-Beijing railway has brought the nice income to its operation,but it was also easy to make it become a war focus.The humanities landscape of Hankou-Beijing railway along the route was also conducive to the potential factors of collective action.The formation of three regional centers--Changxindian,Zhengzhou and Jiang'an and the gathering of a large number of floating population provided the conditions for the formation of regional clique organization and the outbreak of the collective action.In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China,the political environment and social environment were unstable—domestic political upheaval,frequent regime change,warlords dogfight and rampant bandits.The Hankou-Beijing railway was a place of strategic importance,whose operation could not escape from the whole social environment.The interaction of volatile political environment and the bad social environment led to a series of railway crisis.At the same time,the railway,as“foreigners'foreign objects”,often became the target of irritating the Chinese workers to strike and inspiring people to nationalist sentiment.Hankou-Beijing railway was no exception.The long-term overlay of these problems increased the risk of the railway workers'collective action.The working conditions and living state of Hankou-Beijing railway workers are the potential factors of inducing their collective action.The labor conditions such as age structure,the gather-together of skilled workers and their gender often led to mass incidents.Other factors such as the monotony of life and the lack of entertainment culture led to the social mentality among workers of passive,forbearing,resentment and harsh.In addition,the workers'groups of Hankou-Beijing railway were faced with the serious survival plight in their work,life and legal system,but they could not express their own career aspirations and maintain their own rights and interests through legal channels.Therefore,Collective action became their unified and strong ways of resistance.In terms of workers'organizations,the worker organization of the Hankou-Beijing railway presented obvious occupational stratification.Whether it was occupational organizations,geopolitical organizations or other organizations,the worker organization became a barrier between the workers.The emergence of these organizations,on the one hand,became an important vehicle for unifying and strengthening workers powers;on the other hand,it caused workers'separatism.The superposition of these factors became an undercurrent of workers'moving towards activism.In the early days,with the help of communists,trade union organizations were established one after another around the route of the Hankou-Beijing railway.Under the leadership of the trade union,the Hankou-Beijing railway workers began to struggle,from the“gradual spark”to“form the potential of fire”.Hankou-Beijing railway workers gradually grew into a relatively mature revolutionary forces during constant struggles.In the 1920s,there were many factors to contribute to revolution:the social ideological trend at home and abroad;natural disaster;the Chinese Communist Party's intervention and the fears and high pressure precautions of Beiyang Government.The climax of the first labor movement in China created a strong atmosphere of revolution,which had a great impact on Chinese workers.With the continuous expansion of the working class,the class consciousness began to form,the unity consciousness gradually increased and the resistance struggle began to change from the free stage to the self-conducting stage.At the beginning of 1920s,there were serious natural disasters along the region of the Hankou-Beijing railway.The government's inability to deal with those disasters led to serious inflation and social panic,which was one of the economic factors causing the frequent strike of the Hankou-Beijing railway workers and even Northern Railway workers.After The Communist Party of China'intervention into the Hankou-Beijing railway,a variety of strategies and methods were used into transformation and utilization of the inherent regional clique of the Hankou-Beijing railway workers so that a unified labor organization of the whole railway network was established,which laid an organizational foundation for revolutionary work.In the face of“Radicalism”sweeping the whole country and the increasingly growing workers'demonstration,the Beiyang government took strict preventive measures and high pressure policy.During this period,workers'demonstration,political infighting and extremism interwove.It can be predicted that Hankou-Beijing Railway Workers Strike broke out as a result of multiple factors such as society,nature,economy and politics,etc.not by promoting a single factor,nor by the call of the Communist Party of China for people to response.The occurrence of the Strike aroused strong reaction from all walks of life.The attitude and response of all the parties towards the Strike are closely linked with the interests of their own.After the Strike,the alliance between the industry,academia and the business disintegrated..Business and military authorities formed an alliance,jointly resisting and destroying the Strike.The industry and academia supported each other and actively contacted the business,brewing a larger rebellion undercurrent.Finally,due to the strict prevention of the government of Beijing,the national strike planned by the industry and academia failed to achieve.But after this incident,the brutal nature of the Beijing government was completely unmasked,arousing strong condemnation from all sectors of society—“overthrowing the Warlords”became the consensus of all sectors of society.Thus,during this period,the awakening of civil rights consciousness became an irresistible trend of history.After the outbreak of the Strike,the Beijing government adopted the principle of“alternating kindness with cruelty”into the Strike,gradually quelling this Strike and the revolt undercurrent nationwide,and temporarily resolving this serious political crisis.However,from the perspective of the government of Beijing,it mainly used the passive response of“extinguishing a fire”.From the point of view of modern state,the ruling idea and the means of governance of the Beijing government undoubtedly lagged behind the needs of the times.After the February 7th Massacre?1923?,the Kuomintang,the Chinese Communist Party and all walks of life at home and abroad started an active relief work for the workers dead in this Strike and their families,achieving good relief effect.The intricacy and complexity of the first KMT-CPC cooperation and the split crisis embedded in this cooperation could be seen through the cooperation and conflict in the relief work of the two parties.The failure of the Strike has produced a double social effect:it has brought about both serious negative effects and positive social effects.The February 7th Massacre?1923?not only brought great hardship to the Hankou-Beijing railway workers,but also made Chinese Communist Party's work of labor movement suffer a serious defeat.However,this Event has a positive impact on the Chinese revolution course and social reform.On the one hand,it led to the deterioration of political reputation of the Beiyang government,thus“overthrowing the Warlords”and“overthrowing imperialism”became the consensus of people across the country,which caused the restructuring of Chinese revolutionary forces and the adjustment of revolutionary strategy.In addition,this Strike also contributes to the process of China's labor legislation.“Take history as a mirror”is the basic social function of history,thus summing up the success and failure of history is necessary.Through the people's awareness of the Event,it can be found that the Strike is not a simple strike,which contains a more profound social change and social contradictions behind the Event.It is not only the product of the times,but also the product of interaction and fierce collision of the multielement such as the political,economic,military and cultural factors.Similarly,the failure of the Strike is also the result of a variety of factors.It can be reflected from this Strike that the failure indicates that this revolutionary force—the Young Communist Party and the working class—is not mature enough and there are still many problems to be improved.After the February 7th Massacre?1923?,under the constant shaping of the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party,“February 7^th”has become multiple symbolic meanings of political symbols containing“anti warlords”and“anti imperialism”.Throughout the period of the Republic of China,“February 7^th”memorial is not only a barometer of the relationship between Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party,but also a powerful tool of social mobilization in the revolution of modern China.The possession and interpretation of The Kuomintang and the Communist Party of“February7^th”has also experienced a process of change—from the possession of both parties to competing with each other,and then to the Communist Party of China'control by itself.This process,on the one hand,reflects the gradual mature of the political mobilization and the ability to manipulate the discourse of the Communist Party of China;on the other hand,it reflects the growing process of the Communist Party of China as a new revolutionary force.