Class Formation at the Periphery: Salt Workers and the May Thirtieth Movement in Republican China

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Abstract

Drawing on extensive archival sources, local industrial gazetteers, newspapers and published document collections, this article examines the process of class formation among salt workers in Republican China. Following the collapse of the Qing salt administration, the expansion of capitalist forces, and intensified imperialist exploitation, increasing numbers of salt laborers lost control over production and became wage workers subjected to multilayered economic and political deprivation. In response, they mounted various forms of resistance, drawing on traditional cultural resources to construct solidarity and collective identity. Yet such traditional frameworks limited cross-regional and cross-industrial connections, constraining the emergence of a unified “class.” Meanwhile, early labor organizing led by intellectuals and leftists rarely reached salt workers, unintentionally marginalizing them within the broader labor movement. Within this context, the May Thirtieth Movement, a nationwide anti-imperialist patriotic movement, became a crucial catalyst for the class formation of salt workers. This process was underpinned by two mechanisms. First, the movement introduced salt workers to anti-imperialist patriotic nationalism as a new ideology of struggle and accelerated their entry into political struggles. It also created an opportunity for other worker-related radical ideologies to be advanced. Second, it expanded the capacity and willingness of various political parties to organize workers. Consequently, salt workers’ modern unions and associations rapidly emerged, integrating new forms of solidarity and philosophies of struggle that fostered class consciousness. Although the subsequent fate of communist party organizers was marked by adversity, these organizing experiences left a lasting imprint on salt workers’ self-organization and identity. By focusing on the salt worker case, this article highlights how working-class formation can unfold through social movements not explicitly centered on labor, particularly for peripheral groups excluded from mainstream organizing.

Author

• Xianni Zhang, University of Michigan