The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 Read Online Free PDF

sanatoria and holiday retreats. 18
    Conditions were much worse outside the capital. In Nanjing a worker earning less than 20 yuan a month for himself was unable to afford anything beyond the most basic daily necessities. But in 1956 one in ten people throughout the city lived in sheer destitution, making no more than 7 yuan a month. This was despite the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of undesirables in the years after liberation. Half of these paupers were people impoverished as a result of collectivisation. They ranged from unemployed rickshaw pullers and small shopkeepers hounded out of their trade to the family members of victims denounced as counter-revolutionaries. Some were workers fired from state enterprises, often for the slightest infraction of labour discipline. These people were marked for life, becoming untouchables, pariahs living on the margins of society, unable to find another job.
    Among workers in Nanjing, more than 7 per cent suffered from tuberculosis, 6 per cent had stomach ailments, another 6 per cent high blood pressure. Poisoning and work accidents were common. In the Nanjing Chemical Factory the concentration of harmful particles in the air exceeded the Soviet Union’s limit by a factor of 36. In the workshop dealing with saltpetre, ‘100 per cent of the workers, to varying degrees, suffer from poisoning,’ some of the worst cases causing an enlarged liver and spleen. Lungs infected with siliceous dust were common in glass and cement factories, while the number of trachoma and nose infections was ‘serious’. 19
    Comparisons with the years before liberation are fraught with difficulty, if only because so few detailed studies based on archival evidence are available. But the regime itself was keen to compare itself with its predecessor, and it enrolled its statisticians to come up with detailed, inflation-adjusted studies that went back to 1937, the peak of the nationalist era just before the onset of the Japanese invasion. Most were never published, and for good reason. They showed that in many cases life had been better two decades earlier. Workers in the Shenxin Textile Factory in Hankou, for instance, saw a steep decline in the amount of grain, pork and oil they could consume as well as the quantity of cloth they could buy after the revolution. By 1957, on average, a worker had an extra 6 kilos of grain per year, but almost half less pork, a third less edible oil and a fifth less cloth when compared with 1937. Many were malnourished. As Table 2 shows, the situation was hardly unique to that single factory, as workers were badly fed, badly clothed and badly housed, often in conditions not even equivalent to 1948, the height of the civil war.
     
    Table 2: Average Annual Consumption and Living Space for Workers in Wuhan, 1937–57
     
     
Grain
    (kilos)
Pork
    (kilos)
Oil
    (kilos)
Cloth
    (metres)
Housing
    (square metres)
Zhenyi Cotton Mill
1937
    1948
    1952
    1957
157
    150
    161
    147
8.8
    2.8
    7.8
    5.2
7
    4.5
    7.3
    5
10.6
    4.2
    8.7
    6
6.5
    2.7
    3.9
    3.9
 
 
 
 
 
 
Hankou Battery Factory
1937
    1948
    1952
    1957
170
    164
    153
    135
12.5
    10.7
    7.2
    5
8.5
    7.7
    6.6
    4.3
8
    8.3
    5.8
    3.9
4
    2.8
    2.1
    2.8
 
 
 
 
 
 
Wuchang Power Engine Factory
1937
    1948
    1952
    1957
172
    197
    151
    127
6.7
    6.6
    7.8
    5
5.9
    4.1
    9.3
    3.9
7.2
    4.6
    6
    4.7
4.6
    3.9
    4.4
    4.1
 
 
 
 
 
 
Wuchang Shipyard
1937
    1948
    1952
    1957
159
    146
    167
    146
8
    6.5
    6.5
    5
5.5
    7
    6.5
    4
7
    4.7
    10
    7
5
    4
    4
    4
     
     
    Source: Hubei, 28 March 1958, SZ44-2-158, pp. 24, 38, 47 and 59
     
    Even when by 1952 workers had witnessed some improvements, conditions invariably went downhill in the following five years. But these statistics mentioned only consumption, not the overall cost of living. From 1952 to 1957 living expenses went resolutely upwards. For the workers in the Shenxin Textile Factory mentioned above, the rent increased from 88 yuan a year in 1952 to 400 yuan five years later. In every factory