The limits of Chinese nationalism: Workers in wartime Chongqing, 1937-1945

For many Chinese elites, the central theme of the War of Resistance Against Japan was nationalism. As the wartime capital of the Nationalist government, Chongqing (Chungking) has served for many as a symbol of the strength of that nationalism in the face of Japanese aggression. However, examination of the experience of the city's working class during the war years reveals a tension between the rhetoric of nationalism and the reality of pervasive localism in the wartime capital.; During the early years of the war Chongqing's booming economy attracted workers from all over China. The majority of these immigrants were peasants from the countryside of eastern Sichuan, but a significant number came from war areas in central and eastern China. Sichuanese workers generally lacked the skills and connections that provided entry into better-paying jobs in factories, and often ended up in unskilled positions or apprenticeships where wages were low and hours long. In contrast, workers from outside of Sichuan often found that their native place ties with owners and foremen in many of the factories that moved to Chongqing from Shanghai and other industrial centers accorded them preferential treatment in the hiring process and on the shop floor. Differences in dialect, food preferences, and culture deepened the gulf between these two groups and worked further against the development of nationalist consciousness among Chongqing's wartime workers. Throughout the war years relations between workers were instead characterized by conflict, often violent, between locals and outsiders. The frequency of this conflict, as well as the violence with which it was often expressed, suggest that in the midst of China's national crisis, workers in Chongqing were inclined to rely on familiar local identities rather than broad nationalistic ones in defining their relationships with each other.