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Schools 
 into 
 Fields 
 and 
 
 Factories 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2021 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/schoolsintofield01 chan 
 
SCHOOLS 
 LINO 
 PIEE DS 
 AND 
 
 FeO iO URGETS 
 
 Anarchists, 
 the Guomindang, 
 and the 
 National Labor 
 University 
 in 
 Shanghai, 
 
 1927-1932 
 
 Ming K. Chan & Arif Dirlik 
 
 Duke University Press 
 Durham and London 
 1991 
 
© 1991 Duke University Press 
 All rights reserved 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 on acid-free paper ~ 
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data 
 
 appear on the last printed page of this book. 
 
To educators and students everywhere 
 who have made it their cause to 
 overcome privilege and dehumanization 
 
 in education 
 

 
WR 1) ANREP 4d ep CHD 
 
 — Reyne: mad onegy RS Gia ee 
 
 Pe 
 
 
 

 
Contents 
 
 Acknowledgments xi 
 t Introduction 1 
 
 2 Anarchism and the Labor-Learning Ideal in 
 Chinese Revolutionary Discourse 16 
 
 3 Anarchists and the Guomindang: The Founding 
 and Goals of Labor University 45 
 
 4 The Structure of Labor University: Physical 
 Plant and Curriculum 72 
 
 5 Labor University Faculty and Scholarship 119 
 
 6 Laoda Students, Organizations, Campus Life, 
 and Politics 152 
 
 7 Labor Education Programs and Outreach Activities 183 
 8 Politics, Finances, and the Demise of Laoda 227 
 9 In Retrospect 269 
 
 Appendix. Number, Distribution, Age, and 
 Provincial Origin of Laoda Students, 1928-31 277 
 
 Notes 295 
 Bibliography 323 
 
 Index 333 
 

 
Acknowledgments 
 
 This work would not have been possible without the generous help of 
 the following colleagues and friends in locating and acquiring sources 
 on Labor University: Yves Chevrier, Director, Centre de Recherches 
 et de Documentation sur La Chine Contemporaine, Ecole des Hautes 
 Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; Guo Xuyin and Pu Gueilin, De- 
 partment of History, Shanghai Normal University; Christian Henriot, 
 Jean-Moulin-Lyon III University; Lu Zhe, Department of History, 
 Nanjing University; Ed Martinique, East Asian bibliographer, Davis 
 Library, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Ramon Myers and 
 the staff of the East Asian Library, the Hoover Institution, Stanford 
 University; Mr. Sun Junlin, Shanghai Municipal Library; C. Vidaud 
 and Jean-Louis Boully, Bibliotheque Municipale de Lyon; and Tsou 
 Mingteh, Shanghai Jiaotong University, presently at Michigan State 
 University. We are grateful to them. 
 
 Ming Chan’s assistants at the University of Hong Kong, Mark Kai- 
 yiu Chan, Wing-kai Choi, Chi-ming Fung, and Shiu-nung Yu, were of 
 tremendous help in the preparation of the text. Christine Fung of 
 the Department of History, University of Hong Kong, typed the text 
 through so many revisions that she may be more familiar with it than 
 the authors. We are in her debt. 
 
 Finally, Chow Tse-tsung was kind enough to grace the volume with 
 his calligraphy. 
 

 
1 Introduction 
 
 In September 1927 a new educational institution opened its doors to 
 public instruction in Shanghai. The Labor University, or more pre- 
 cisely the National Labor University (Guoli laodong daxue), was a 
 new kind of educational institution. Its goal was expressed in the 
 slogan “Turn schools into fields and factories, fields and factories 
 into schools” (xuexiao nongchang gongchanhua, nongchang gong- 
 chan xuexiaohua).! Its founders hoped that it would provide a model 
 for transforming the whole educational system in China and help 
 realize their dream of a genuinely popular education. When it was 
 forced to close down in mid-1932, the disillusionment its demise 
 evoked was as deep as the enthusiasm that had greeted its founding. 
 One graduate later described its closing as “a great defeat for Chinese 
 education and a great loss to the nation.”2 
 
 Were Labor University to be judged by its impact on Chinese educa- 
 tion or educational thinking, this assessment might indicate little 
 more than the nostalgia of a former student. Indeed, few traces of the 
 university remain in the historical record. The occasional reference in 
 histories of Chinese education suggests that it was little more than a 
 liberal or “mildly radical” educational experiment that quickly fell 
 victim to Guomindang conservatism.* The university was too short- 
 lived to make a significant impact on Chinese education, and it was 
 not very successful. Even before the Japanese attack on Shanghai 
 damaged its campus and compelled it to shut down, there was evi- 
 dence that as an educational experiment it had fallen short of the goals 
 its founders had envisaged. 
 
 This study argues that Labor University was much more significant 
 as an educational experiment than the historical record suggests. The 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 2 
 
 significance may rest less on what the university accomplished than 
 on what it represented; but what it represented is not to be ignored: 
 the ideal of an education that combined labor and learning and sought 
 thereby to create a new kind of individual—and a new society. Rather 
 than a liberal or mildly radical educational experiment, Labor Univer- 
 sity represented an attempt to break with liberal assumptions about 
 education, as contemporary liberals were quick to notice. Hu Shi, who 
 was opposed to it, described it as a “center for anarchism.”4 Though 
 its founders rejected that indictment, the origins of the University as 
 well as its structure and curriculum attest to the validity of the 
 charge. It was a radical vision of education, which in turn rested on a 
 radical anarchist social vision, that motivated the university’s found- 
 ing. This vision, moreover, carried far greater weight with contempo- 
 raries than it has with historians. The founders of the university 
 included some of the most prominent names in Chinese education— 
 chief among them Cai Yuanpei, a former minister of education and 
 chancellor of Beijing University—who viewed it as one of the key 
 institutions in the transformation of the Chinese educational system 
 that they envisaged. In historical hindsight the university may have 
 little to show in the way of accomplishment, as might be expected of 
 any educational institution that was in existence for only about five 
 years, but its underlying vision, and potential promise, as an alterna- 
 tive educational institution help put in perspective the socially re- 
 stricted vision that would guide Chinese education in subsequent 
 years. True, it was apparent from the beginning that the university 
 might fall victim to the same social forces it sought to overcome, but 
 in the end it did not merely fail; it was made to fail by the forces 
 arraigned against it in Chinese education and politics. These forces 
 have had little interest in keeping alive the memories of the institu- 
 tion. Those who might, namely the Communists, who shared some of 
 the same goals, have had little interest in doing so because they would 
 prefer to claim those goals for themselves. 
 
 Short-lived though the Labor University was, therefore, its career 
 brings into focus a number of issues of more than passing interest. 
 First is the relationship between revolution and education (which was 
 of particular concern throughout the twentieth century)—in this case 
 a particular notion of education that sought to abolish the separation 
 of learning from labor. As the most ambitious (peaceful) effort to 
 achieve this goal in twentieth-century Chinese history, Labor Univer- 
 
Introduction 3 
 
 sity is an important episode in the history of the idea of Labor in the 
 Chinese Revolution, if not of the labor movement itself. The concern 
 with integrating labor and learning in education was demonstrated 
 dramatically during the Cultural Revolution, when it took the form of 
 a mass social movement. It has come forward, although in different 
 forms and with different emphases, in recent years under Mao Ze- 
 dong’s successors. But it has not been restricted to Maoists or even to 
 Marxists. In 1934 Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) himself stated: 
 
 Everyone ought to understand that education and labor are in- 
 separable; if one just studies and does not labor, simply talks 
 without doing, it does not matter how great one’s learning and 
 ideals might be. This kind of learning is not real learning. The so- 
 called education, learning, and doing must be integrated. Labor, 
 production, and education are all linked together; most basic is to 
 enable students to cultivate habits of labor, and the spirit of 
 Senvilcess 
 
 While it is possible to argue, as we will below, that Chinese radicals 
 and leaders have assigned different functions to combining labor and 
 learning in education, and sought different means to do so, the need to 
 do so has been one of the most persistent themes in radical thinking, 
 which has perceived in the education of the laborer and, perhaps more 
 important, the cultivation of labor by intellectuals a fundamental 
 means to remake China and bring about a revolutionary society. In 
 this sense, the labor-learning ideal has been integral to a revolutionary 
 discourse that has cut across political and ideological divides. Labor 
 University, which antedated the Cultural Revolution by four decades, 
 provides prima facie evidence of the pervasiveness of this concern, Its 
 origins also reveal that it was through the agency of anarchism that 
 the ideal was introduced into revolutionary discourse, a fact that 
 neither the Guomindang nor the Communist Party has been anxious 
 to advertise. As with anarchism in general, Labor University was 
 “forgotten” in the thirties as memories of it dissipated before the more 
 urgent tasks of national survival and revolution. But the ideal of labor 
 learning survived in revolutionary discourse, if only in a form assimi- 
 lated into other political forms and aspirations—and, we might add, 
 contrary to original anarchist intentions.) 
 
 Second, Labor University provides a Chinese instance of socialist 
 experiments with alternative education that have sought a means to 
 the creation of socialism through the integration of labor and educa- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 4 
 
 tion, among which we may count the Labor University at Charleroi in 
 Belgium (which served as a direct inspiration for the Labor University 
 in Shanghai), Ruskin College at Oxford, and the Rand School of Social 
 Sciences in New York. While these experiments differed in goals and 
 institutional structure, they had in common a premise that the sepa- 
 ration of mental and manual labor is a fundamental source of prob- 
 lems in modern capitalist society. Bridging the gap between the two 
 kinds of labor is not merely a task of but a precondition to the creation 
 of socialism because the division points ultimately to the fundamen- 
 tal problem of the division of labor in society. Mao was not the only 
 one concerned with the problem. With the apparent failure of existing 
 socialist societies to overcome the division of labor, and therefore the 
 problem of social hierarchy, the concern with the gap between intel- 
 lectual and manual labor has once again moved to the forefront of 
 socialist thinking—in some cases with an explicit acknowledgment 
 of its debt to anarchism, in others through a return to those aspects of 
 Marx's texts that emphasize this problem (and which have much in 
 common with anarchism).¢° 
 
 The founding of Labor University may be viewed as part of an 
 intensified worldwide interest in labor education in the aftermath of 
 World War I (and the Russian Revolution), especially since its founders 
 consciously modeled the university after the highly successful labor 
 education institutions in Belgium. A comparison between the latter 
 and Labor University in China, however, also reveals a fatal flaw that 
 may have doomed the more radical aspirations of the Labor University 
 from the beginning: its total dependence on the Guomindang and the 
 Guomindang-controlled national government. The experiments with 
 labor education in Belgium (and elsewhere) seem to have been suc- 
 cessful only to the extent that they had the support of strong labor 
 unions. In China in 1927, the labor movement of the previous years 
 was in total disarray after the Guomindang’s suppression of the revo- 
 lutionary movement; indeed, rather than expressing the needs of an 
 autonomous labor movement (as the more radical among the anar- 
 chists hoped), Labor University was perceived by the Guomindang as 
 a means for creating a labor movement amenable to its power. The 
 university’s dependence on the Guomindang was important in shap- 
 ing the political aspects of education there; much to the dismay of the 
 anarchists, political education took the form of indoctrination of the 
 students in accordance with party and government goals. The same 
 dependence made the university vulnerable to power (and ideological) 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 shifts in the Guomindang, which brought it down when its founders 
 lost their ability to shape Guomindang educational policy. We note in 
 passing here that this also may offer clues to the fate of similar 
 experiments in China after 1949 which, for all their revolutionary 
 claims, conceived of labor education (for laborers or intellectuals) in 
 terms of party or national power that severely circumscribed and 
 undermined their professed radical aspirations—and, indeed, turned 
 the experiments into instruments of oppression rather than libera- 
 tion. Anarchists were probably right in their initial premise that any 
 such education must be free of the control of politics and political 
 parties. 
 
 Third, for these reasons, then, the career of Labor University has 
 much to tell us about a specific moment of the Chinese Revolution: 
 the attempted reconstruction of political order under the Guomin- 
 dang regime. At its broadest, this involved the construction of a new 
 political order out of a revolutionary movement. In 1927 it was not 
 yet clear that the revolution would still continue into the future, and 
 the Guomindang, in spite of a visible move to the right in response to 
 the social revolutionary challenge of the Communists, continued to 
 view itself as the foremost revolutionary force in the country. The 
 problem it faced was how to convert revolution into a stable political 
 order; that is, what to incorporate into the new order of the revolution 
 that had brought it to power and what to repudiate. It became evident 
 very quickly that building a strong, centralized state was the Guomin- 
 dang’s top priority, and that anything that interfered with this goal, 
 including its own social revolutionary legacy, would be repudiated as 
 counterrevolutionary. Labor University was both a product and a vic- 
 tim of this transformation of the revolution as the Guomindang came 
 to identify political order with a strong state. 
 
 In a narrower sense, the career of the university highlights problems 
 in the politics of education in Guomindang China, which was shaped 
 by a complex interaction of alternative political visions, conflicting 
 ideas of education (often based on the institutional commitments, as 
 well as the individual experiences, of educators), and petty factional- 
 ism (not to mention less noble motivations) in the leadership of the 
 political and educational establishments. The anarchists who were 
 instrumental in founding Labor University were not outsiders to the 
 politics of education; on the contrary, they held very important posi- 
 tions in both the political and the educational establishments. The 
 founding of Labor University was a testament to their ability to mobi- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 6 
 
 lize resources in both realms to realize their goals, and the fate of the 
 university depended very much on their continued ability to do so. 
 This ability declined rapidly as revolution gave way before state build- 
 ing. Political factionalism, including among themselves, contributed 
 to the process in no small way. 
 
 Finally, unique though it was as an educational institution, Labor 
 University is also important as an example of an institution of higher 
 education in Guomindang China. Apart from its unique ideals, Labor 
 University is unique in another sense: there is a rich body of docu- 
 mentation available concerning its structure, its curriculum, and the 
 nature of its faculty and students. This we may owe to the impressive 
 number of well-trained sociologists on its faculty, who seem to have 
 been as anxious to document the makeup of the university as they 
 were to conduct general surveys among the population. It may also 
 have been due indirectly to the university’s ideals, which gave priority 
 to openness to society and social accountability. 
 
 Some elaboration of the political and ideological circumstances of 
 Labor University is necessary here to provide a framework for the 
 discussion below. Labor University owed its inspiration to Chinese 
 anarchists, who played a central part in its founding. As early as 1924, 
 anarchists active in the labor movement had drawn up plans for a 
 labor university. The Guomindang’s termination in April 1927 of its 
 three-year-old united front with the Communist Party inspired in 
 anarchists the hope that by cooperating with the victorious Guomin- 
 dang, they could redirect its revolutionary energies along the lines of 
 anarchist social ideals, a hope that was encapsulated in the phrase 
 “use the Three People’s Principles as a means to achieve anarchism” 
 (yi sanmin zhuyi wei shouduan, yi wuzhengfu zhuyi wei mubiao; 
 literally, “take the Three People’s Principles as means, anarchism as 
 goal”).”? Labor University was to be the key to this anarchist project. 
 
 Unexpected as an alliance between anarchists and a political party 
 may seem, especially a political party which had just demonstrated its 
 counterrevolutionary potential and was already established as a gov- 
 ernment party, the anarchists’ cooperation with the Guomindang was 
 nothing new, and the idea seemed quite feasible in the complex en- 
 vironment of radical politics in 1927, when it was not always easy to 
 distinguish revolutionaries from counterrevolutionaries. The alliance 
 had its roots deep in the origins of the revolutionary movement in 
 China. Instrumental in the founding of Labor University were Li 
 
Introduction 7 
 
 Shizeng and Wu Zhihui, the two most prominent figures among the 
 group of Chinese intellectuals who in the early 1900s had introduced 
 anarchism into Chinese radicalism while they were students in Paris. 
 Even as they began to propagate anarchism in 1906, they had joined 
 the antimonarchic revolutionary organization initiated in Tokyo by 
 Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) the previous year. The Revolutionary 
 Alliance | Tongmeng hui) was reorganized as the Guomindang follow- 
 ing the establishment of the Republic in 1912. Li and Wu retained 
 close ties to Sun and the Guomindang in ensuing years, and were 
 widely regarded by the mid-1920s as party “elders’”—and, because of 
 their opposition to the Guomindang’s united front with the Commu- 
 nist Party and to Marxists within the Guomindang, as leaders of the 
 party’s right wing. Their activities in the Guomindang in 1927-28 
 were undertaken in their capacity as leaders in the party. Their anar- 
 chist commitments were not lost on their leftist opponents, however, 
 and as we shall seek to demonstrate below, the founding of Labor 
 University represented the fulfillment of a dream that went back to 
 the earliest days of Chinese anarchism. 
 
 While some anarchists were quick to note the contradiction of 
 anarchists, who opposed nations and governments, working under a 
 government (and in a university that bore the word “national” [guoli| 
 in its very name),8 such objections were easily overwhelmed in 1927— 
 28 by a deep anarchist hostility to communism and a sense among the 
 anarchists, who had been losing revolutionary ground to the Commu- 
 nists over the past few years, that here was an unprecedented oppor- 
 tunity to bring anarchism once again to the forefront of the Chinese 
 Revolution. Contradictory the alliance was, but possibly no more 
 contradictory than the Communists’ alliance with the Guomindang 
 of the previous three years. The alliance was ultimately imbedded in 
 the peculiarities of the history of the Chinese Revolution. 
 
 The alliance seems equally peculiar from the perspective of the 
 Guomindang, which had just turned against the Communists in the 
 name of national unity and welfare and was bent on establishing a 
 strong centralized state. The Guomindang, however, was anything 
 but a coherent political organization, especially in 1927, and con- 
 tained under its political umbrella the whole spectrum of politics 
 from anarchists to radical Marxists to hidebound conservatives and 
 militarists. As Shen Zhongjiu, one of the anarchists instrumental in 
 founding Labor University, wrote in 1927, ideologically the Guomin- 
 dang was quite flexible because the Three People’s Principles of Sun 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 8 
 
 Zhongshan (the party’s official ideology) were so broad that they were 
 as open to an anarchist interpretation as to any other; and, of course, 
 Sun had stated on one occasion before his death in 1925 that the 
 ultimate goals of his Three Principles were “communism, and anar- 
 chism.”? But the Guomindang had other reasons in 1927 for an alli- 
 ance with anarchists. The latter had engaged the Communists in 
 polemics for the previous five years and would prove quite effective in 
 1927—28 in ideological efforts to discredit not just the Communist 
 Party but also the Marxist Left in the Guomindang. More important, 
 anarchists had been the founders of the first modern labor unions in 
 China, and they had considerable experience with mass organization, 
 even though by the mid-twenties they had lost much of their hold on 
 mass movements. In 1927 the Guomindang wished to purge commu- 
 nist influence among laborers and establish unions under its own 
 sway. However different their intentions, anarchists and the Guomin- 
 dang leadership agreed on the necessity of a labor movement free of 
 communist influence. One of the basic goals of Labor University was 
 to train a new kind of labor leader capable of reorganizing both urban 
 and rural labor. 
 
 The complex politics that were implicit in the founding of Labor 
 University were compounded by the politics of education in Republi- 
 can China, not only over questions of the kind of education best 
 suited to the new Chinese society, but also over the conflicts of 
 interest among educators whose educational philosophies had been 
 shaped by their own personal experiences. Chinese educators pro- 
 moted alternative models of education that owed their inspiration to 
 the institutions where they themselves had been educated and which 
 had shaped their conceptions of proper modern education. Labor Uni- 
 versity, as a brainchild of the anarchists, was initially organized along 
 European, especially French, lines (French was taught as the first 
 foreign language). It was modeled, moreover, after socialist experi- 
 ments with education in Europe. This rendered it vulnerable to attack 
 by educators whose inclination lay with American and English mod- 
 els of education, and who had little patience for educational radical- 
 ism which contravened their own conceptions of modern education. 
 
 These conflicts would bring Labor University to a quick end by 
 1932. The university’s founding vision was compromised almost as 
 soon as it came into existence; as early as spring 1928, the more 
 radical among the anarchists complained that what they had con- 
 ceived as a popular educational institution had become another bu- 
 reaucratic institution, its revolutionary goals replaced by the Guo- 
 
Introduction 9 
 
 mindang’s goals of state building.!° Nevertheless, those initial goals 
 had been responsible for the very structure of the institution, which 
 conveyed a revolutionary message that perpetuated among its faculty 
 and students a socially radical self-image. 
 
 While it was the Japanese attack on Shanghai in January 1932 that 
 sealed the fate of Labor University (by literally destroying half of its 
 physical plant), political conflicts had already shut its gates before the 
 Japanese arrived. Already in 1930, by prohibiting the university from 
 matriculating a new class of freshmen, the recently established Min- 
 istry of Education of the Guomindang regime had made clear its 
 intention to deny the university a future. Labor University certainly 
 had its own problems, but these problems were not substantially 
 different from those of other higher educational institutions. What 
 was different about it was its self-proclaimed social mission and the 
 educational structure that mission had created, which proved to be 
 highly undesirable to important groups within the political and edu- 
 cational establishments. It may not have been coincidence that Labor 
 University was the only national university to be shut down by the 
 regime during the Nanking Decade. The evidence suggests that while 
 the Japanese attack on Shanghai was responsible for destroying the 
 campus, it was not responsible for shutting down the university; the 
 destruction of the campus merely saved a great deal of trouble by 
 providing an excuse for the termination, which had already begun two 
 years earlier. 
 
 As long as it was in operation, Labor University stood as the most 
 outstanding embodiment of an educational ideal that has been a 
 lasting feature of Chinese radical thinking: the ideal of overcoming 
 the distinction between manual and mental labor by creating a new 
 type of intellectual, a laboring intellectual. From the time of its intro- 
 duction to revolutionary thought by the anarchists in the early 1900s 
 to the Cultural Revolution, when the Cultural Revolutionaries (led by 
 Mao Zedong) embraced it as a means to create a genuinely socialist 
 society, the ideal exerted enormous influence on radicals of all stripes, 
 who found in it a means for breaking down barriers between social 
 classes to accomplish a “bloodless revolution.” What effect Labor 
 University had in reinforcing this ideal during its brief operation is 
 difficult to estimate, but its very existence attests to the enduring role 
 the ideal of the laboring intellectual has played in shaping the radical 
 imagination in China. 
 
 It was the Cultural Revolution that first dramatized for the world 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 10 
 
 the importance in Chinese radical thinking, especially Mao’s think- 
 ing, of the concern with the gap that separated intellectual from 
 manual labor. The Cultural Revolution was a product of complex 
 historical circumstances and political motivations; but one of its 
 most fundamental goals, which it took to be basic to resolving the 
 problems of the transition to socialism, was to bridge this gap between 
 intellectual and manual labor which socially separated intellectuals 
 from laborers and the rulers from the ruled. Now that the Cultural 
 Revolution stands condemned, the labor that it forced on intellectuals 
 to this end is commonly portrayed as testimony to Mao’s cruel anti- 
 intellectualism, as well as to the damage the Cultural Revolution 
 perpetrated on Chinese education. 
 
 There is evidence aplenty of anti-intellectualism during the Cul- 
 tural Revolution, but not because of its insistence on the need to inte- 
 grate intellectual and manual labor, which appears anti-intellectual 
 only from a perspective that takes abstract intellectual activity as the 
 mark of social distinction, and privileges such activity over labor or 
 mental activity involved with labor. The Cultural Revolution com- 
 promised (and betrayed) the ideals it espoused because it used manual 
 labor in the name of integrating intellectual and manual labor, as 
 punishment for those who appeared to be in disagreement with its 
 politics—which does not speak very highly of the Cultural Revolu- 
 tionaries’ own esteem of labor. 
 
 More to the point here, the ideal of integrating intellectual and 
 manual labor was not the invention of the Cultural Revolution; it had 
 a long history in the Chinese Revolution, to which Labor University 
 provides significant testimonial. To be sure, Mao’s idiosyncrasies as a 
 Marxist (as compared with others in the Communist Party, anyway) 
 played an important part in bringing forth the gap between intellectual 
 and manual labor as a central social problem of the revolution. Fur- 
 thermore, the legacy of the Yan’an period of Chinese communism 
 (1937—45], when the necessities of war and revolution had brought 
 intellectuals and laborers together in a common effort for survival, 
 provided an immediate model he could draw upon to resolve it. But 
 Mao’s idiosyncrasy as a Marxist itself begs explanation, and the Yan’an 
 model, itself a product of necessity, does not give sufficient clues to 
 how deep-seated the ideal of labor learning may have been in Mao’s 
 radicalism, as well as the radicalism of many of his associates who had 
 matriculated into the revolution when labor learning had been one of 
 its central themes. 
 
Introduction 1.1 
 
 In the early part of the century, the labor-learning ideal appeared as 
 part of an anarchist program of revolution. While there is considerable 
 overlap between Marxism (the Marxism of Marx, at any rate) and 
 anarchism over the question of the division of labor, and the problems 
 created by the division between intellectual and manual labor in 
 particular, it was the anarchists in China who first introduced the 
 need to close the gap between radical thinking and an actual program 
 for radical social transformation. That anarchism preceded Marxism 
 in the Chinese reception of socialism was quite important in this 
 regard, but it was not the only reason; even after Marxism entered 
 Chinese radicalism in the 1920s, anarchists remained the foremost 
 advocates of the priority of abolishing the division between mental 
 and intellectual labor in social revolution. Marxists, while they recog- 
 nized it as a problem, nevertheless viewed it as part (and not the most 
 important part) of the problem of social transformation, to which the 
 political transformation of class relations was central. On the other 
 hand, anarchists, in their repudiation of politics, endowed it with 
 supreme significance as a means to social transformation. This may 
 also explain, as we shall see, why during the Cultural Revolution, 
 when labor learning was rendered into an instrument of politics, the 
 attempt to minimize the gap between intellectual and manual labor 
 would lead to consequences quite contrary to what the anarchists had 
 envisioned. 
 
 ; When Labor University was established in 1927 it was the culmina- 
 / tion of two decades of anarchist ideological activity that had propagat- 
 ed the idea of education as the primary means to social transforma- 
 tion, and the integration of labor and learning in education as the key 
 to a cultural and moral revolution that was fundamental to a social 
 revolutionary project. Ironically, it was the revolutionary situation 
 created by nationalism, which anarchists formally repudiated, that 
 had created fecund grounds for the diffusion of this anarchist idea 
 within the revolutionary discourse. Especially important was the 
 problem of intellectuals and their relationship to society in this new 
 revolutionary situation. From the reformer Liang Qichao around the 
 turn of the century, to Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution, to 
 Deng Xiaoping in contemporary China, the transformation of con- 
 sciousness through education has been of primary concern to political 
 and intellectual leaders who wanted to reform or revolutionize China. 
 The political significance with which they have endowed education 
 has in turn politicized it, so that the twists and turns Chinese politics 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 12 
 
 has taken over the years have been manifest in transformations in the 
 conception of education and its place in society with a directness 
 rarely encountered in more stable political environments. Education 
 has been the foremost arena where conflicting political visions— 
 ultimately the visions of the men and women who constituted poli- 
 tics—have sought to capture the social discourses that would give 
 social substance to the political forms they envisaged. If education is a 
 fundamental component of the “ideological state apparatus” of which 
 Louis Althusser spoke, shifts in the form of the state and its ideology 
 have been responsible for the tentative, experimental nature of educa- 
 tion in twentieth-century China.!! 
 
 The intimate relationship between politics and education was not a 
 product of China’s modern transformation, or of the revolutionary 
 movement, though its motions under the force of revolution render 
 this relationship unavoidably visible. The Confucian ideology of the 
 imperial Chinese state, which made education into the criterion for 
 participation in government, also brought education into the purview 
 of the state, which had long assumed the prerogative to establish what 
 was acceptable as appropriate knowledge, and thus to shape education 
 after its own image of politics. It is not surprising, then, that educa- 
 tional change emerged from the beginning as a central concern of 
 those who sought to change Chinese politics to relocate China in the 
 new global context created by the worldwide expansion of European 
 economic, political, and cultural power in the modern world. While it 
 is questionable that the premise of an intimate relationship between 
 politics and education was an exclusive characteristic of Chinese 
 society—and thus sufficient to distinguish Chinese responses to the 
 challenge of the modern world from those of other premodern literate 
 societies with sophisticated political systems—it is nevertheless im- 
 portant to note that education as a means to political change, com- 
 bined with a sharp awareness of the cultural implications of politics, 
 has remained over the years as a central preoccupation of political 
 reform and revolution. 
 
 The legacy of the past should not be allowed to conceal the novel 
 (and revolutionary) historical context which in the twentieth century 
 has transformed both the form and the content of the discourse on 
 politics and education. As with other premodern societies facing the 
 challenge of Euro-American modernity, social and political transfor- 
 mation in China presupposed the assimilation of a new language— 
 new ways of thinking and speaking about politics—which not only 
 
Introduction 13 
 
 complicated the burden on education but often brought it into con- 
 flict with the political practices it was intended to serve. Confucian 
 education, while not free of ambiguities in its relationship to politics, 
 nevertheless could assume as its task the perpetuation of a discourse 
 on tradition which took certain social and political relationships to be 
 fundamental and immutable. In the “overdetermined” historical con- 
 text of twentieth-century Chinese society created by the relocation of 
 China in a global history, where the very notion of tradition became 
 questionable, education has had to assume the task of redefining 
 China’s relationship to the world, and, by implication, social and 
 political relationships within Chinese society itself. Nationalism, 
 which was a product of this new historical situation, by the turn of the 
 century called forth a reconstitution of political space; in other words, 
 the redefinition of the relationship between state and society, and by 
 extension, of social relations in general. The very notion of politics 
 was a product of the repudiation of the imperial state and its ideology, 
 which perceived society not in terms of conflicting realms but as a 
 totality that paralleled the natural order and saw as its primary task 
 the administration of this order to assure to each component of so- 
 ciety its stipulated place. Where the ideological tasks of education are 
 concerned, it matters little that this order may have been more imag- 
 ined than real, because it was the “social imaginary” that directed 
 ideological activity and, to a large extent, political practice. 
 
 The repudiation of this “social imaginary” in the name of a new, 
 national conception of society created a crisis in Chinese politics that 
 in some ways continues to this day. Central to the crisis was how to 
 reconstitute social relationships (in their most general sense) that 
 now appeared not just in their mutual complementarity but also in 
 mutual contradiction. The problem was not merely one of reconciling 
 conflicting interests in a new institutional setting; it also required the 
 “people” (now “citizens”) to think in new ways about politics, about 
 the relationship between state and society, and even about everyday 
 relationships between social groups and individuals. It is possible to 
 argue that this has been the central problem of Chinese politics over 
 the last century, and that the different currents in Chinese politics are 
 but alternative approaches to the solution of this problem. The fact 
 that Chinese politics has been unable to establish a lasting institu- 
 tional solution to the problem has enhanced the long-term burden on 
 consciousness and cultural change, to which education has been cen- 
 tral. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 14 
 
 The same problem has rendered intellectuals central to the resolu- 
 tion of political problems. Under the imperial state, Chinese intellec- 
 tuals were also the administrators of society; it is largely meaningless 
 to speak of intellectuals or intellectual activity in imperial China 
 apart from the state. The destruction of the imperial order had critical 
 consequences both for intellectuals as a social group and for intellec- 
 tual activity. Especially after the abolition of the imperial examina- 
 tion system in 1905, intellectuals were no longer guaranteed a place in 
 politics. By the time of the May Fourth Movement, around 1920, it is 
 possible to speak of a Chinese intelligentsia which conceived of intel- 
 lectual activity as being necessarily apart from, and even in opposi- 
 tion to, politics. Nevertheless, as the recent ferment among Chinese 
 intellectuals (including the calls for government by intellectuals) in- 
 dicates, Chinese intellectuals under conditions of revolution have 
 not been satisfied to settle for intellectual and professional activity. 
 Rather, underlying much intellectual activity during the twentieth 
 century is an effort on the part of intellectuals to redefine their rela- 
 tionship to politics. More revolutionary, however, has been a new 
 issue that is a product of the novel concern that appeared with the new 
 nationalist conception of politics around the turn of the century: a 
 concern with society as the realm of change, which expressed the 
 nationalist notion that political legitimacy must ultimately derive, if 
 not from the consent, at the least from the representation of the 
 interests of the nation and the citizens that constitute the nation. For 
 intellectuals this took the form of reevaluating the relationship be- 
 tween intellectuals and the people. Socialism would provide a politi- 
 cal resolution of the problem. In education it took the form of a 
 concer with the kind of education that would help close the gap 
 between intellectuals and the “common people.” This concern, a 
 product ultimately of the revolution wrought in Chinese politics by 
 nationalism, and present in the thinking of most Chinese national- 
 ists, at its most radical took the form of abolishing all distinction 
 between intellectuals and the common people by turning intellec- 
 tuals into laborers, and the laboring people into intellectuals. 
 
 Inspired by the anarchists, by the twenties the ideal of labor learn- 
 ing had become part of a revolutionary discourse that cut across orga- 
 nizational and ideological divisions within the revolutionary move- 
 ment. The Communists, many of whom initially had inclined to 
 anarchism and participated in anarchist-led or anarchist-inspired edu- 
 cational and communal experiments during the May Fourth Move- 
 
Introduction 15 
 
 ment, shared in it, as did important members of the Guomindang and 
 China’s educational establishment. Without ascribing “anarchism” to 
 the idiosyncrasies of Mao’s Marxism or of the Cultural Revolution, it 
 is arguable nevertheless that memories of these early revolutionary 
 experiences, imbedded in a common revolutionary discourse, played a 
 part in shaping the course of the communist movement in later years. 
 It was the Guomindang, however, with the direct participation of the 
 anarchists, that first sought to institutionalize the ideal as a funda- 
 mental component of Chinese education. Labor University was the 
 most impressive product of that effort. 
 
2 Anarchism 
 and the 
 Labor-Learning Ideal 
 in Chinese 
 Revolutionary 
 
 Discourse 
 
 Anarchist educational thinking and experiments were rooted in the 
 anarchist conception of social revolution as a process of education. A 
 genuine social revolution, anarchists believed, required the transfor- 
 mation of everyday culture, which could be achieved only through the 
 transformation of social consciousness. Education was the key to 
 such a transformation. 
 
 This basically social conception of education required that educa- 
 tion itself be conceived not as formal education but in terms of its 
 relationship to social change. Anarchists were among the first Chi- 
 nese radicals to advocate “universal education” (jiaoyu puji), and also 
 to insist that education should take as its object not just the intellect 
 (weixin) but the “whole person” (quanren).! What they meant by this 
 was not simply adding a moral component to the education of the 
 intellectual, which Chinese education has long taken for granted, but 
 rather defining the goal of education as the management and transfor- 
 mation of everyday life. Anticipating Mao by three decades, Bi Xiu- 
 shao, one of the key figures in the founding of Labor University, 
 criticized contemporary Chinese education for its continued empha- 
 sis on “reading dead books” (du sishu), and advocated instead a “living 
 education” (or an “education in life” [shenghuode jiaoyu]).2 Essential 
 to a “living education” was the practice of labor. 
 
 Chinese anarchists, keenly aware that the distinction between men- 
 tal and manual labor had for centuries served to distinguish the rulers 
 from the ruled, perceived in labor the means not only of creating a 
 “whole person” but of bridging the gap between rulers and ruled and 
 thus abolishing classes in society. While it would be simplistic to 
 reduce anarchists’ conceptions of class to the distinction they drew 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 17 
 
 between mental and manual labor, it is fair to say that until this gap 
 had been closed, they believed, social revolution could not achieve its 
 goal of creating a democratic and egalitarian society.* 
 
 Origins 
 
 The intimate relationship between revolution and education was for- 
 mulated in the earliest phase of anarchism in China, during the years 
 1906—11 when anarchism first emerged as a distinctive current in 
 revolutionary discourse. The anarchist movement in China began 
 with two groups established almost simultaneously in 1906—7, one in 
 Paris, the other in Tokyo. In 1906 Chinese intellectuals in Paris estab- 
 lished the New World Society (Xin shijie she), which for the next four 
 decades served as a conduit between European and Chinese anarchism 
 and as a source for anarchist ideas, as well as a recruiting ground for 
 the movement. In 1907 the society started publication of a journal 
 that lasted for a remarkable three years and over a hundred issues. 
 This journal, the New Era (Xin shiji), was subtitled La Tempoj Novaj 
 in Esperanto, probably after Les Temps Nouveaux published by the 
 French anarchist (and close associate of P. Kropotkin) Jean Grave. The 
 names of the society and its journal were indicative of the inclinations 
 of the Paris anarchists, a group of intellectuals who had been baptized 
 into revolutionary activity in the early 1900s. Li Shizeng, the moving 
 intellectual spirit of the group, had been living in Paris since 1902. He 
 had exhibited an internationalist orientation very early on, studied 
 biology, and had become a close friend of the family of French anar- 
 chist geographer Elisée Reclus, which probably launched him on the 
 path of anarchism. Wu Zhihui, who carried the major responsibility 
 for publishing the New Era, had been involved in the early t900s with 
 radical patriotic activities in Japan and China. An important part in 
 the society was played by Zhang Jingjiang, a friend of Li’s and the scion 
 of a family of wealthy silk merchants, who financed the activities of 
 the group. To support their activities the group established a bean- 
 curd factory in Paris that was run by thirty Chinese laborers recruited 
 from Li’s village in China. In 1906 all three men joined the Revolu- 
 tionary Alliance (Tongmeng hui) that Sun Zhongshan had established 
 in Tokyo the previous year, thus beginning their long association with 
 Sun’s party (renamed the Guomindang after 1912).4 
 
 At about the same time that New Era started publication in Paris, 
 Chinese intellectuals in Tokyo established the Society for the Study of 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 18 
 
 Socialism (Shehui zhuyi jiangxi hui), which published its own jour- 
 nals, Natural Justice (Tianyi bao) and Balance |Hengbao). Intellec- 
 tually, the moving spirit behind both the society and its journal were 
 the classical scholar Liu Shipei and his spouse, He Zhen, who may 
 have been responsible for the more radical aspects of the Tokyo anar- 
 chists’ ideology. Natural Justice was quite radical in tone, and in its 
 analyses of social conditions in China (especially the plight of women 
 and the working people) more concrete than anything to be found in 
 the more abstractly oriented New Era. Another important figure asso- 
 ciated with the society, one who played a particularly important part 
 in its Balance phase in 1908, was Zhang Ji, who, like Li, Wu, and 
 Zhang of the New Era, emerged in ensuing years as an influential 
 figure in the Guomindang.°® 
 
 The two groups of anarchists were largely independent of one an- 
 other, though there was some contact between them and materials 
 from the publications of one group often found their way into those of 
 the other. Basic to the anarchism of each group was opposition to the 
 state and other social institutions that perpetuated authoritarianism. 
 They were also at one in advocating a social revolution that would 
 clear away oppressive institutions and restore to humanity its natural 
 sociability, which they believed had been distorted historically by 
 domination and hierarchy. 
 
 This is where the resemblance between the two groups ended, 
 however. The Paris anarchists were uncompromising modernists who 
 saw in social revolution the motive force of progress. In the words of Li 
 Shizeng, ‘Progress is advance without stopping, transformation with- 
 out end. There is no affair or thing that does not progress. This is the 
 nature of evolution. That which does not progress or is tardy owes it to 
 sickness in human beings and injury in other things. That which does 
 away with sickness and injury is no other than revolution. Revolution 
 is nothing but cleansing away obstacles to progress.’”° 
 
 Key to progress was science. The Paris anarchists’ modernism was 
 not without ambivalence. On the one hand, they believed that the 
 advance of science had made possible not only unlimited social and 
 economic progress, but also access to universal ethical principles 
 (gongli) which for the first time in history made possible the creation 
 of a genuinely humane and egalitarian society. At the same time, 
 modernity had brought with it the capitalist system, which betrayed 
 the very promise of modern science by creating even greater inequali- 
 ties than had existed earlier. A member of the group, Chu Minyi, 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 19 
 
 observed that while machinery had made possible unlimited produc- 
 tion, so long as the capitalist system prevailed, the advance of the 
 “industrial arts” (gongyi) would serve only to create poor people by 
 decreasing the need for labor: “People do not realize that the more 
 advanced the industrial arts, the richer are the rich and the poorer the 
 poor.”” Under the circumstances, political revolutions “diminished 
 misery in politics only to increase economic misery” because they 
 replaced “the evils of political despotism with the poison of economic 
 monopoly.”8 
 
 In spite of this condemnation of capitalism and political revolutions 
 that aimed for democracy or a republic, however, the Paris anarchists 
 in the end believed that for China, even this kind of revolution would 
 be an advance. Their ambivalence toward the contemporary West was 
 overshadowed by a conviction that in spite of all its shortcomings, the 
 modern society they discovered in Europe was bound to have a civiliz- 
 ing influence on Chinese society. Hence, while they believed that only 
 a thoroughgoing social revolution could bring about the kind of so- 
 ciety they envisaged, in the short run anarchists must support the 
 struggle for a republic led by Sun Zhongshan and the Revolutionary 
 Alliance, which, while limited, nevertheless represented a forward 
 step for China—and progress toward anarchism. 
 
 The most important task for anarchists in the meantime was to 
 spread the message of science. Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui emerged in 
 ensuing years as fervent advocates of a scientific and technical educa- 
 tion in China, which they owed to a faith in science nourished by their 
 anarchist convictions in these early years in Paris. Through their asso- 
 ciation with French anarchists such as Elisée Reclus, they were con- 
 vinced early on that Peter Kropotkin’s anarchism, as articulated in his 
 Mutual Aid, represented the highest product of modern science. Mu- 
 tual Aid was Kropotkin’s answer to the Darwinian principles of natu- 
 ral evolution, and it argued through biological and social evidence that 
 the key to successful evolution lay not in competition and conflict, as 
 Darwin had held, but rather in a natural propensity to mutual aid 
 among different species, including human beings. The argument satis- 
 fied a utopian strain in Chinese thinking around the turn of the cen- 
 tury that was the counterpoint to another strain, born of nationalist 
 fears concerning China’s future, that took conflict to be the determi- 
 nant of the fate of nations and peoples.? For the groups of intellectuals 
 that had gathered in Paris, Kropotkin provided scientific evidence that 
 their hopes in a new world of unity might not be just a dream after all. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 20 
 
 It was the claims of Kropotkinite anarchism to scientific verity that 
 attracted them to anarchism and instilled in them a conviction that 
 anarchism provided the path to a new global unity. The faith, as Daniel 
 Kwok has observed of Wu Zhihui, was “scientistic.” !° 
 
 Although equally utopian, Liu Shipei, He Zhen, and others associ- 
 ated with them in Tokyo, contrary to their counterparts in Paris, 
 discovered in anarchism an antimodernist argument. On the surface, 
 the anarchism of the Tokyo anarchists appears mainly to be an excuse 
 for a Chinese conservatism. Liu Shipei believed that premodern Chi- 
 nese thought and political organization came closer to upholding 
 anarchist social ideals than its counterparts elsewhere. In a speech he 
 gave before the first meeting of the Society for the Study of Socialism, 
 Liu stated that though the Chinese political system had been despotic 
 in appearance, the power of the government had been remote from the 
 lives of the people, which had given them considerable freedom from 
 politics. Furthermore, he argued, the major ideologies of China— 
 Confucianism and Daoism—had both advocated laissez-faire govern- 
 ment, which had helped minimize government intervention in so- 
 ciety. As a result, he concluded, China had an edge over other societies 
 in the possibility of achieving anarchism. Indeed, he implied, if only 
 the Chinese could be purged of their habits of obedience, anarchism 
 could be achieved in China in the near future.!! Moreover, native 
 sources, which were viewed with contempt by the Paris anarchists, 
 occupied a prominent place in the pages of Natural Justice, and Liu 
 freely drew on them as the inspiration for his anarchism. The fifth 
 issue of the journal carried a picture of Laozi as the father of Chinese 
 anarchism. And in the utopian scheme that he drew up, Liu acknowl- 
 edged his debt to Xu Xing, an agrarian utopianist of the third century 
 B.C., noting that while he advocated cooperation whereas Xu Xing had 
 advocated self-sufficiency, there was no essential difference between 
 Xu’s ideas and his own. !2 
 
 Liu’s opposition to contemporary reform efforts confirms this im- 
 pression of conservatism. Unlike the New Era anarchists who per- 
 ceived republican government as a progressive (if imperfect) develop- 
 ment, Liu argued that if China could not achieve anarchism 
 immediately, it would be better off under the old regime than under 
 either the republic of the revolutionaries or the “new politics” (xin- 
 zheng) of the reformers (i.e., a constitutional monarchy). “Reform is 
 inferior to preserving the old, constitution is inferior to monarchy,” he 
 stated unequivocally on one occasion. !3 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 21 
 
 The impression of conservatism is nevertheless misleading because 
 Liu himself displayed considerable ambivalence toward the past, and 
 his seeming conservatism was motivated less by an urge to preserve 
 some traditional legacy than by a mistrust of modernity. Not only did 
 he and his associates advocate a radical social reorganization, but 
 their advocacy was informed by a utopianism that was counterposed 
 against the modern world as well as Chinese society as it then was. 
 The general objectives of Natural Justice were stated in its first few 
 issues. “To destroy existing society and institute human equality is 
 the general objective. Aside from women’s revolution, it advocates 
 racial, political, and economic revolution. Hence the name Natural 
 Justice.” With issue number 8 in October 1907, this statement was 
 revised to read: “To destroy national boundaries to institute inter- 
 nationalism; resist all authority; overthrow all existing forms of gov- 
 ernment; institute communism; institute absolute equality of men 
 and women.” 
 
 Natural Justice and its successor, Balance, were, moreover, more 
 concrete than the Paris New Era in their radicalism. In spite of its 
 vehemently radical rhetoric, New Era published little in its three 
 years of existence on the concrete problems of revolution in China or 
 Europe. In contrast, the Tokyo anarchists (possibly due to their prox- 
 imity to China and to Chinese revolutionary activity in Japan) dis- 
 played a sharp awareness of the plight of the people, which they 
 attributed not simply to the failures of the Chinese government but 
 also perceived as a product of the transformations brought about by 
 China’s initial modernization, especially in the urban centers. He 
 Zhen, justifiably describable as one of modern China’s first feminists, 
 was probably responsible for the attention the Tokyo anarchists paid 
 to the plight of women both under the old kinship system and under 
 the new forces of modernity which drew them into labor in the facto- 
 ries and prostitution on the streets of urban centers.!4 In 1908 Balance 
 became the first journal to advocate a peasant revolution to create a 
 new kind of society,!° 
 
 The Tokyo anarchists, moreover, in arguing that the existing sys- 
 tem in China might lend itself to anarchist transformation more 
 easily than modern European society, did not therefore condone the 
 class and gender hierarchy on which that system was based, but rather 
 perceived social transformation to achieve equality as an urgent task. 
 Liu Shipei’s opposition to reform followed from the logic of his anar- 
 chism: that the reforms (that is, the establishment of a constitutional 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 22 
 
 government) or the establishment of a republic would serve only to 
 further strengthen the government. He offered three reasons to ex- 
 plain his position: the old educational system was superior to the new, 
 which favored the rich; the proposed parliamentary system would 
 enhance the power of the elite, and therefore contribute to inequality; 
 and the increased power of capital would result in the concentration 
 of wealth and deprive the people of the self-sufficiency they had 
 hitherto enjoyed. He bolstered his argument with statistics on poverty 
 in different countries which, he believed, demonstrated that modern- 
 ization sharpened social inequality. !¢ 
 
 Ultimately, the anarchism Liu and his associates propagated was 
 founded on the conviction that, purged of its oppressive hierarchies, 
 the agrarian society of China offered the possibility of creating a better 
 future than the fetishism of industrial development that had already 
 begun to shape Chinese attitudes to change. In their advocacy they 
 could count on the evidence of no less a figure than Leo Tolstoy, who 
 had found support in the agricultural existence and spirituality of 
 Asia for his own antimodernism. For the next two decades, Tolstoy’s 
 ideas exerted an influence on Chinese anarchism second only to those 
 of Kropotkin. In its fifth issue, Natural Justice published a letter from 
 Tolstoy to a Japanese news association in which he warned China 
 against the “superstition” of modernizing reform (pointing to the 
 problems westernization had created for Japan), urging Chinese to 
 preserve their peaceful agrarian existence, which would in the end 
 conquer a modern society that was already in the process of destroying 
 humanity both materially and spiritually. An editorial note called 
 upon advocates of industrialization and commerce to pay close atten- 
 tion to the letter.!7 
 
 Nowhere is the difference between the Paris and Tokyo anarchists 
 more evident than in their utopian schemes. A utopian scheme that 
 Wu Zhihui drew up in later years presented a future technological 
 society where people would not even have to walk, because they 
 would have the convenience of conveyor belts to transport them; the 
 scheme’s most striking aspect was its preoccupation with technologi- 
 cal innovation.!§ By contrast, a scheme that Liu presented in 1907 
 described a basically agrarian society that drew upon the “peasant 
 utopia” of Xu Xing with a conception of government “in which the 
 emperor himself is no more than an exalted village headman”; it was 
 most striking for its insistence on the universal practice of labor as a 
 guarantee to an egalitarian existence.!° 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 23 
 
 These differences account for the different approaches of the two 
 groups of anarchists to education for the creation of an anarchist 
 society. 
 
 While there is considerable overlap between Marxist and anarchist 
 ideas of social revolution, it is arguable nevertheless that Marxism has 
 given priority in revolutionary change to the transformation of social 
 structures, while the anarchist idea of social revolution has generally 
 taken as its point of departure individual transformation and transfor- 
 mation of the ethical basis of social relationships. As a consequence, 
 education holds a much more important place in the anarchist project 
 of revolution than in Marxism, and a concern with the ethical dimen- 
 sion of education is a conspicuous concern of anarchist educational 
 thinking. 
 
 This was a major contribution to Chinese revolutionary thinking by 
 the Paris anarchists, who were among the earliest advocates in China 
 of the universalization of education (jiaoyu puji). Of all the methods 
 of revolution the Paris anarchists promoted, education was the most 
 fundamental. While they called for violence to destroy obstacles to 
 revolutionary transformation, they believed that the more fundamen- 
 tal task of revolution was the construction of a new society, which 
 could be achieved only through education. If the masses could be won 
 over to the cause of revolution, then social revolution might take a 
 peaceful course and anarchist goals could be achieved gradually. Edu- 
 cation was not simply an instrument of revolution; it was the equiva- 
 lent of revolution. As Wu Zhihui put it, “Revolution will be effective 
 only if, with the spread of education, people get rid of old customs, and 
 achieve a new life. From the perspective of effectiveness, this means 
 that if there is education for revolution before the revolution is under- 
 taken, there will be nothing impossible about revolution. Therefore 
 anarchist revolution . . . is nothing but education.’’2° 
 
 The anarchist idea of social revolution was fundamentally ethical; 
 that is, a successful social revolution presupposed the transformation 
 of the values that shaped social interactions on a quotidian basis. 
 Wu Zhihui explained that “there is no education aside from education 
 in morality that encompasses truth and public-mindedness (gong- 
 dao) such as reciprocal love, equality, freedom, etc.; all education is 
 anarchist that encompasses truth and public-mindedness, including 
 experimental science, etc.”2! Chu Minyi added that unlike govern- 
 ment-sponsored ( youzhengfude) education, which taught militarism, 
 legal-mindedness, religion, or, in one word, obedience to authority, 
 
 ry 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 24 
 
 anarchist (wuzhengfude) education taught truth and public-minded- 
 ness; that is, freedom, equality, and the ability for self-government.22 
 
 It may be argued that, stripped of its revolutionary rhetoric, this 
 conception of revolution would have been acceptable to the Confucian 
 predecessors of the anarchists. The revolutionary intention under- 
 lying the anarchist program is not to be dismissed cavalierly, however, 
 because it shaped the anarchists’ vision of the content of education. In 
 keeping with their modernism, the Paris anarchists advocated an edu- 
 cation that located morality and “public-mindedness” in the truths of 
 modern science. “There is no morality other than learning,” pro- 
 claimed the title of an article by Wu Zhihui.2% Li Zhizeng was even 
 more explicit. He dismissed as “particular” (si) all learning that could 
 not stand up under the test of modern science. Science, whose conclu- 
 sions were independent of national or cultural orientations, repre- 
 sented to him the only “universal” (gong), and therefore true, learning. 
 He excluded from the realm of scientific learning politics and law, 
 “false morality,” and religion, including within it only—in addition to 
 the natural sciences—sociology and anthropology.24 Whatever one 
 may think of the scientism of the Paris anarchists, it distinguished 
 their perceptions of the fundamentals of learning—and therefore of 
 morality—from those of their Confucian predecessors, for whom true 
 learning had been all that the anarchists sought to abolish. 
 
 Indeed, in their modernist commitments, the Paris anarchists were 
 the first among Chinese radicals to call for a cultural (or, as they put it, 
 “thought”) revolution in China. The test of a true social revolution to 
 them was whether or not it was “public” in its orientation, or, in a 
 more literal rendering, whether or not it pursued “the public way” 
 (gongdao). As Li Shizeng put it: “What we speak of as a revolution of 
 the many and a revolution of the few refers to whether or not it is 
 really public (gong) or private (si), not to the actual numbers of people 
 involved at any one time.”2° These ideas were crucial to Chinese 
 political thinking at the turn of the century. The terms gong and si 
 meant slightly different things in different contexts, but they were 
 always juxtaposed as opposites. Si could mean selfishness, partiality, 
 and particularity; gong was used to denote selflessness, impartiality, 
 and universality. Reformers and revolutionaries alike agreed around 
 the turn of the century that a fundamental task of the revolution in 
 China was to cultivate among the people a sense of “public morality” 
 (gongde), which they felt was underdeveloped among Chinese due to 
 an exaggerated emphasis on the private realm of life (especially the 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 25 
 
 family) as well as centuries of exclusion from effective participation in 
 politics. 
 
 Partly out of their identification of “universal” (therefore, public) 
 values with the truths of science, and partly because of their opposi- 
 tion to the family, the Paris anarchists went beyond most of their 
 contemporaries in calling for a cultural revolution that would liberate 
 the Chinese people from the hold of ethical values inherited from the 
 past. They viewed Confucianism and the ideology of familism as the 
 twin pillars of authority in Chinese society that must be abolished if 
 revolution was to have any hope of success. The very first issue of New 
 Era included a short piece on Confucius that debunked him as a 
 thinker of the age of barbarism whose only virtue had been that he was 
 a little more knowledgeable than his contemporaries. Paris anarchists 
 saw in Confucian teachings the source of the superstitions in Chinese 
 society that had oppressed women and youth and served as an instru- 
 ment of power, the Chinese counterpart to religion in other societies. 
 Superstition, they believed, was the basis for authority, but it was even 
 more difficult to overthrow than the institutions of authority, espe- 
 cially where religion and politics were not clearly distinguished. In 
 China, a “Confucius revolution” was the prerequisite to achieving all 
 the other goals of revolution.?© 
 
 The attack on Confucianism was accompanied by an attack on the 
 kinship and pseudokinship relations that had for centuries been cor- 
 nerstones of Chinese social thinking. “Family revolution, revolution 
 against the sages, revolution in the Three Bonds and Five Constants” 
 would help advance the cause of humanitarianism.?’ The Paris anar- 
 chists viewed the family as the major source of selfishness in society; 
 though people were born into society (that is, the public realm), the 
 family privatized their existence and converted what was public into 
 something private. The Three Bonds (that bound ruler and minister, 
 father and son, husband and wife) were the superstitions that per- 
 petuated the power of the family, which was based not on principle 
 but on authority. Their power was bolstered by the practice of ances- 
 tor worship, which was contrary to truth, guaranteed the despotism of 
 tradition, and bound the living to the dead. Anarchists advocated a 
 “thought revolution” to eliminate these superstitions, and an “eco- 
 nomic revolution” to eradicate the power of the family by making 
 individuals economically independent.2® 
 
 The Paris anarchists’ call for a cultural revolution that would trans- 
 form daily life did not lead to immediate practical results in educa- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 26 
 
 tion. In the years following the Republican revolution of r9r1, they 
 emerged as the architects of the “diligent-work frugal-study” (gingong 
 jianxue) program in France, which left a lasting impression on Chi- 
 nese educational thinking. True, Li first promoted this idea among the 
 workers in the doufu factory in Paris. In a workers’ school they estab- 
 lished near the factory, the anarchists taught the workers academic 
 subjects as well as educating them to give up “decadent habits” (such 
 as smoking, drinking, and gambling), but the emphasis was on civiliz- 
 ing Chinese workers to become hard-working citizens.2? This experi- 
 ence possibly served as the inspiration in later years for their advocacy 
 of an education that combined labor and learning, although it was not 
 articulated at this time as an educational ideal central to an anarchist 
 revolutionary project. 
 
 It was not the modernist anarchists in Paris but the antimodernist 
 Liu Shipei and his associates in Tokyo who first introduced the neces- 
 sity of labor as an integral component of anarchist revolution. This 
 point is worth emphasizing because it may be relevant to understand- 
 ing an ambivalence toward the question of labor in education in later 
 years, when modernists as well as antimodernists adopted labor edu- 
 cation as a means to change China. We are referring here to a diver- 
 gence over the function assigned to labor in education, that is, a 
 divergence between labor as the principle of an ideal social organiza- 
 tion and the idea of labor as a practical means of educating and 
 civilizing the Chinese. Labor as a social principle was first enunciated 
 by antimodernist anarchists in Tokyo and culminated in Mao’s Marx- 
 ism during the Cultural Revolution, which may have borne traces of 
 these antimodernist origins. The idea of labor as a practical means of 
 education, implicit in the attitudes of the Paris anarchists, found its 
 way into the thinking of liberals and conservatives alike and has been 
 revived in recent years by the post-Mao regime. There may be some 
 irony in the implication here that an ideal born of antimodernism 
 may have served as the impetus for one of the most radical efforts to 
 reorganize Chinese society. 
 
 It is not quite clear which sources inspired Liu Shipei to include 
 labor as a component of an anarchist revolution. While Chinese intel- 
 lectuals in Tokyo were familiar with fragments of Marx’s works, where 
 they may have encountered references to the need to abolish the 
 division of mental and manual labor as a condition of communist 
 society, it is more likely that Tolstoy’s “laborism,” on the one hand, 
 and native agrarian utopianism a la Xu Xing, on the other, provided Liu 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 27 
 
 with direct inspiration. (While Xu Xing’s utopianism would be for- 
 gotten in later years, by the time of the May Fourth Movement, Tol- 
 stoy’s “laborism,” or “pan-laborism” |fanlaodong zhuyi|, was quite a 
 popular idea on the Chinese intellectual scene.) By 1908, as we shall 
 see, these sources were combined with Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread 
 and Fields, Factories, and Workshops of Tomorrow to yield a plan for 
 social organization which prefigured in many of its essentials the 
 Maoist plan for China as it took shape in the late fifties. 
 
 Liu first presented the idea in his plan for a future society, “On 
 Equalizing Human Labor” (Renlei junli shuo), published in 1907 in 
 Natural Justice. The utopia described an agrarian society centered on 
 the equal practice of labor by everyone. The practice of labor was 
 intended to abolish inequality, as well as to guarantee everyone an 
 independent existence as the condition of equality. Children would 
 be raised in public residence halls, supervised by older people, who 
 would also teach them. At age six they would begin to learn the new 
 universal language. Starting at age ten, they would spend half of the 
 day in study, the other half in labor. The practical skills they acquired 
 in education would also help them produce for their own livelihood. 
 Between the ages of twenty and fifty, everyone would engage in pro- 
 ductive and social service activities of one kind or another, with jobs 
 allocated according to age level. At fifty, they would enter residence 
 halls to tend to raising children. For all his antimodernism, Liu did not 
 object to the use of labor-saving devices. Technological advance would 
 guarantee that no one would have to work for more than two hours a 
 day in order to guarantee a subsistence to himself or herself and the 
 society at large, which would be reorganized now around small dis- 
 tricts of one thousand people each. The rest of the time would be spent 
 in leisure and learning activities.2° 
 
 The agrarian-based ideal of social organization implicit in this uto- 
 pian sketch was confirmed in an article published in Balance in 1908, 
 which was inspired by Kropotkin.3! This later article argued, addi- 
 tionally, that industrialization should take place away from urban 
 centers because it otherwise led to a separation of agriculture and in- 
 dustry with negative consequences for both—and society as a whole. 
 The two pieces taken together point to the basic conceptualization of 
 society that underlay the Tokyo anarchists’ concept of anarchism: an 
 agrarian society that integrated industrial and agricultural produc- 
 tion, and was therefore directed at production for need, to which the 
 equal practice of labor by all was central. The Tokyo anarchists’ anti- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 28 
 
 modernism, we might underline here, did not mean opposition to the 
 products of modern science and technology but only to the social 
 organization modernization had created; within a social context orga- 
 nized according to the human scale and needs, the products of moder- 
 nity could be made to serve human needs rather than dehumanize life, 
 as they seemed to be doing in the contemporary West and Japan, as 
 well as the emerging modern urban centers in China. 
 
 The Tokyo anarchists dispersed in 1908 amidst charges that Liu 
 Shipei was a government agent-provocateur. Unlike the Paris anar- 
 chists, their contribution to the development of an anarchist move- 
 ment in China was marginal, but they introduced themes into Chi- 
 nese radicalism in 1907—8 that would have a lasting impact. Already 
 around the time of the Republican revolution in 1911, one individual 
 who had converted to anarchism in Tokyo made an attempt to put 
 these ideas into practice. This was Jing Meijiu, later the publisher of 
 the important National Customs Daily |Guofeng ribao), whose sup- 
 plement, Sea of Learning {| Xuehui), in the 1920s became an important 
 organ for the propagation of an agrarian-oriented anarchism. After his 
 return from Japan, Jing continued to promote anarchism, with special 
 emphasis on the equality between men and women. He further under- 
 took in Taiyuan, Shanxi, to establish a factory for women that was 
 intended to bring them economic independence. Jing also recruited 
 several women to teach the women workers in the factory. Equally 
 interesting was his plan for distribution of the factory’s income. The 
 largest portion was to go to labor, followed by “talent” (caili) and 
 capital, in that order. This, according to Jing, was an indication of the 
 respect socialists accorded to labor.32 
 
 Anarchists and the New Culture Movement 
 
 The cultural revolution that the Paris anarchists advocated before 
 1911 had by the late 1910s become a central theme of Chinese rad- 
 icalism during the so-called New Culture Movement. Anarchists, 
 who participated in the movement directly, were responsible for the 
 broad diffusion in radical consciousness of the idea of labor as an 
 essential component of education. The ideal of combining labor and 
 learning appeared as the key component of a new radical culture 
 which was expressed most dramatically in the communal movement 
 that gripped youth in the second half of 1919. It persisted thereafter in 
 a revolutionary discourse that cut across the ideological schisms that 
 appeared following the New Culture Movement. 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 29 
 
 The Paris anarchists propagated the idea of combining labor with 
 learning in education through the educational programs they spon- 
 sored in France. A declaration of the World Society they established in 
 1912 declaimed that “far-sighted men regard the fact that higher edu- 
 cation is not yet universal as the reason why classes are born.”33 
 Presumably to remedy this situation, that same year they established 
 the Association for Frugal Study in France (LiuFa jianxue hui) “to cut 
 down on expenditures in order to expand overseas study, and by hard 
 labour and a simple life to cultivate habits of diligence and hard 
 work.’’34 The association simultaneously established a preparatory 
 school in Beijing to teach prospective students French and other gen- 
 eral subjects in preparation for study in France. Between 1912 and 
 1913 about a hundred “frugal study” students went to France, most of 
 them to study at Montargis. 
 
 During World War I this initial program was expanded considerably 
 and assumed a somewhat different form, mainly due to the influx of 
 Chinese laborers in Europe. After 1914, Paris anarchists cooperated 
 with European governments to import Chinese laborers to Europe to 
 meet the labor shortage created by the war. As a consequence, by the 
 end of the war there were more than 100,000 Chinese laborers work- 
 ing in Europe. In 1915 the anarchists created the Diligent-Work and 
 Frugal-Study Association (Qingong jianxue hui) to tend to the needs 
 of these laborers—mainly to promote “diligence and perseverance in 
 work, and frugality (in order to save money) for study, thereby advanc- 
 ing the labourers’ knowledge.” To this end, a Chinese workers’ school 
 was established in Paris. Among the lecturers at the school was Cai 
 Yuanpei, who as education minister during the early Republic had 
 given support to the anarchists’ programs from the beginning. Cai’s 
 lectures “drew attention to the ‘bad habits’ of the Chinese people such 
 as extravagance, uncleanliness, cursing and adherence to supersti- 
 tious beliefs, and . . . stressed the need to adopt ‘Western customs’ 
 such as politeness, concern for the public interest and loving ani- 
 mals.”35 
 
 It was the experience with laborers’ education that once again 
 turned the attention of the Paris anarchists to the education of Chi- 
 nese students, an effort that had been defunct since 1913. The Sino- 
 French Education Association (HuaFa jiaoyu hui) they established in 
 1917 with French cooperation stressed combining education with 
 manual labor, so that students could not only pay for their own 
 education but also benefit from the virtues of manual labor. The 
 anarchists also believed that interaction between Chinese students 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 30 
 
 and laborers in France would help narrow the gap between mental and 
 manual labor and contribute to the achievement of social equality. 
 
 Paul Bailey has observed that it was after 1917 that the diligent- 
 work frugal-study program became associated with students rather 
 than laborers.° To recruit students and prepare them for their study 
 in France, the Beijing preparatory school (closed since 1913) was re- 
 opened, and new branches of the Sino-French Education Association 
 were established in various other cities in China. Regulations stipu- 
 lated that part of the students’ work in France was to be the education 
 of laborers in their spare time. In 1919—20 about 1,600 Chinese stu- 
 dents were recruited for study and labor in France. 
 
 For its sponsors no less than for the students who attended the 
 program, diligent-work frugal-study represented a blend of practical 
 concerns and idealistic aspirations, probably more of the former than 
 the latter. Anarchists stressed the social and moral functions of study 
 abroad, especially the benefits for intellectuals of manual labor and its 
 long-term contributions to Chinese society in eliminating class dis- 
 tinctions. They were also Francophiles, as noted above, who believed 
 that study in France would have a civilizing influence on Chinese 
 students. Wu Zhihui commented that even if only the rich attended 
 the program, it would have a beneficial effect in curing them of their 
 habits of idleness and extravagance. The more people who partici- 
 pated in the program the better, since “even if they do not study 
 anything, if at least they learn how to clean toilets it will be worth it,” 
 he quipped.37 
 
 The best among the students shared in the idealistic intentions 
 underlying the program. Zhou Enlai, perhaps the program’s most 
 famous product, wrote in 1920: 
 
 You are leaving our homeland 
 
 To cross the seas and oceans 
 
 Amidst the roaring billows 
 
 That will carry you to France, 
 
 The birthplace of freedom. 
 
 There you will handle the tools of industry 
 
 And pour forth the sweat of labour 
 
 Winning glorious achievements 
 
 Your abilities steeled and tempered 
 
 And your shining sincerity of purpose preserved. 
 
 One day you will return 
 And unfurl the banner of freedom 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 31 
 
 Singing the praises of independence. 
 Struggling for women’s rights 
 
 and seeking equality 
 
 You will put these to the test in society. 
 The overthrow of traditional ethics 
 Entirely depends on such an outlook.38 
 
 Not all shared in this outlook, however, and there were frequent 
 complaints among both the program’s founders and the students that 
 many of the students continued to look down on manual labor and 
 refused to work seriously in the factories (among the latter, appar- 
 ently, was Deng Xiaoping, also a participant).2? The program offered 
 the opportunity of study abroad for those who could not afford to do 
 so on their own (although not all the students were needy), which 
 loomed large in the intentions of its sponsors and was its chief attrac- 
 tion among students. 
 
 Nevertheless, the diligent-work frugal-study program was responsi- 
 ble for disseminating the message of combining mental and manual 
 labor as an essential component of social transformation in China. 
 Ironically, among its products were some of the most prominent 
 Chinese Communists, who not only played an important part in the 
 party’s early years but emerged later on as the leaders of the commu- 
 nist movement, among them, in addition to Zhou and Deng, Cai 
 Hesen, Li Lisan, Zhao Shiyan, Wu Yuzhang, Wang Ruofei, and Xu Teli, 
 to name some of the most famous.49 While their radicalization pre- 
 ceded their study abroad, the experience of labor and their contacts 
 with laborers in France played an important role in their conversion to 
 communism. 
 
 The Paris anarchists’ official involvement obscured the anarchist 
 inspiration underlying their educational activities. Not so with the ac- 
 tivities of another anarchist group that came into existence in Guang- 
 zhou in 1912 and was openly anarchist and uncompromisingly radical 
 in its attitude toward the question of a social revolution from below. 
 This was the group associated with the Guangzhou anarchist Liu Sifu 
 (better known under his adopted name of Shifu) which brought anar- 
 chism onto Chinese soil and was important in the anarchist move- 
 ment in China. Because of the seriousness with which he pursued 
 anarchism, at his death in 1915 Shifu left behind the image of a para- 
 digmatic anarchist and a following devoted to completing the task 
 that he had initiated. The Guangzhou anarchists’ activities made 
 south China into the heartland of Chinese anarchism, and were also 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 32 
 
 responsible during the May Fourth Movement for spreading Shifu’s 
 message across the face of the country. 
 
 While there may have been anarchists in Guangzhou before rgr1, 
 the origins of Guangzhou anarchism go back to the Conscience So- 
 ciety (Xinshe) that Shifu established soon after his conversion to 
 anarchism in 1912 (the name of the society was changed shortly 
 thereafter to Cock-crow Society |Huiming she]).4! In 1914 he and his 
 followers moved to Shanghai to escape government persecution; there 
 he established, shortly before his death, the Federation of Anarcho- 
 Communist Comrades (Wuzhengfu gongchan zhuyi tongzhi hui). 
 This federation served as a model for similar societies established 
 shortly thereafter in Guangzhou (led by Shifu’s brother, Liu Shixin) 
 and Nanjing; Liu Shixin’s group included in its membership Ou 
 Shengbai, Liang Bingxian, Huang Lingshuang, and others who 
 achieved prominence as leaders in the anarchist movement.42 The 
 federation’s journal, People’s Voice (Minsheng), published until 1922 
 (irregularly after Shifu’s death), provided much-needed continuity in 
 the anarchist movement in China. 
 
 After Shifu’s death in 1915 there was no single figure to match him 
 in stature in the anarchist movement. But the Guangzhou anarchists 
 continued to play leadership roles in the movement both in Guang- 
 zhou and in the other parts of China to which the intellectual ferment 
 of the late r910s took them. Members or associates of Shifu’s group 
 were responsible for initiating a syndicalist movement in China. In 
 1917 they were able to organize barbers and teahouse clerks in Guang- 
 zhou into China’s first modern labor unions, and in 1918 they led the 
 way in China’s first May Day celebration.*? They exerted consider- 
 able influence on the labor movement in the south into the early 
 twenties, and retained some influence thereafter. 
 
 Anarchists from Guangzhou, most prominent among them Ou 
 Shengbai, Huang Lingshuang, Zheng Peigang, Yuan Zhenying, and 
 Hua Lin, founded the first anarchist group in Beijing, where they 
 congregated as teachers or students after 1917. The society they estab- 
 lished, the Truth Society (Shishe), played an important part in infus- 
 ing anarchist ideas into the New Culture Movement led by Beijing 
 University professors and students. In early 1919 the Truth Society 
 merged with other anarchist societies in Guangzhou and Nanjing to 
 establish an umbrella organization, the Progress Society (Jinhua she). 
 In early 1920 there were also Guangzhou anarchists in Zhangzhou in 
 Fujian Province, which thereafter served as a center in its own right 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 33 
 
 for the dissemination of anarchism (mostly Shifu’s anarchism). Liang 
 Bingxian was the editor of Fujian Star |Minxing), published in Fu- 
 anes 
 
 Labor played a central part in Shifu’s anarchist program, which his 
 followers in the late 1910s disseminated as Chinese radicalism. High- 
 ly moralistic in his appreciation of anarchism, Shifu believed that 
 “anarchist morality was nothing but ‘mutual aid’ and ‘labor,’”” which 
 he took to be instinctive to humanity.4*° The program of the Federa- 
 tion of Anarcho-Communist Comrades required all mature adults 
 between their twenties and forties to engage in labor; obligatory labor 
 was to be restricted to two hours a day, and intellectual or aesthetic 
 pursuits were to occupy the rest of the time.4° While Kropotkin’s 
 influence was the most clearly visible in Shifu’s anarchism, his pro- 
 gram for an anarchist future was quite reminiscent of Liu Shipei’s. 
 
 The Guangzhou anarchists’ involvement with laborers beginning in 
 the mid-1910s converted the ideal of universal labor from an endow- 
 ment of future anarchist society to an immediate means of anarchist 
 revolutionary strategy. The syndicalist activities of the Guangzhou 
 anarchists spearheaded labor organization in China. Syndicates, in 
 the anarchist conception, were not merely organs for representing 
 labor interest but new social institutions in which to cultivate anar- 
 chist morality. When the time arrived for the final social revolution, 
 these institutions would serve as the building blocks for a new society. 
 The point of departure for syndicalist activity was to educate laborers 
 to enable them to take charge of their own affairs. The tactics em- 
 ployed by anarchists in the organization of the first labor unions in 
 Guangzhou—establishment of workers’ schools and clubs to educate 
 laborers in the process of organization—became the staples of anar- 
 chist labor activity (and of labor activity in general in the twenties). 
 The ideal of the “intellectual laborer” gained currency in the anar- 
 chists’ minds in the process of this activity.47 
 
 The anarchists’ advocacy of labor in education intensified as their 
 involvement with laborers grew. In 1916—17 they began to publish the 
 Journal of Chinese Students in Europe (LuOu zazhi) and Chinese 
 Laborers’ Journal ( Huagong zazhi), both of them in Paris, where they 
 promoted the idea of combining labor and learning in education. In 
 1918 the two groups cooperated in publishing a new journal in Shang- 
 hai, Labor (Laodong; the first journal to bear that title in China), 
 which was edited by Liang Bingxian and whose contributors included 
 the later communist leader in central China, Yun Daiying. The jour- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 34 
 
 nal adopted as its guidelines “reverence for labor and the promotion of 
 ‘laborism’ |Jaodong zhuyi|.” Labor carried a value far beyond its con- 
 tribution to production. Ethically, it was “the greatest obligation of 
 human life” and “the source of civilization.” Morally, it was “the 
 means to avoid moral degeneration and help moral growth, to forging 
 spiritual will-power.” Work, the guidelines stated, helped not only the 
 individual but society as a whole.48 One contributor wrote with confi- 
 dence that “with work and study combined, workers will become 
 scholars, scholars will become workers, to create a new society that 
 will realize the goal of ‘from each according to his ability, to each 
 according to his need.’ "49 
 
 By the late 1910s the utopianization of labor implicit in these lines 
 had become an integral component of an emerging radical culture. Tol- 
 stoy’s “pan-laborism” (fanlaodong zhuyi) had by 1918—19 acquired a 
 popularity comparable to Kropotkin’s “mutual aid.” Discussions of 
 Tolstoy, Kropotkin, and their ideas appeared regularly in some of 
 China’s most popular mainstream newspapers and periodicals. 
 
 In late 1918 no less a figure than Cai Yuanpei, then chancellor of 
 Beijing University and formerly the first minister of education of the 
 Republic, gave his blessing to the idea of combining labor and learning 
 in education. Cai’s case is all the more interesting in regard to the 
 spread of a utopian conception of labor learning because he is not 
 readily identifiable as an anarchist. He was one of the first intellec- 
 tuals in China to be attracted to an anarchist outlook on the world, 
 though anarchism was by no means the most dominant element in his 
 thinking, and there is little reason to describe him as an anarchist 
 except in the most abstract philosophical sense.5° Cai, however, had 
 long been associated with the Paris anarchists and had served as a 
 lecturer in the Chinese workers’ school in Paris.°! As the crucial part 
 he played in the establishment of Labor University in 1927 would 
 indicate, with or without clearly anarchist commitments he held a 
 profound conviction of the importance of combining labor with learn- 
 ing in China’s social and moral regeneration. His conception of labor 
 learning also suggests why he, and others like him who did not neces- 
 sarily subscribe to an anarchist program of revolution, could neverthe- 
 less invest so much in this anarchist ideal. In a speech he gave at a 
 mass meeting in Beijing in November 1918 to commemorate the end 
 of World War I, Cai stated: 
 
 The world of the future is the world of labor! The labor we speak 
 of is not the labor of metal workers, of carpenters, etc. The under- 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 35 
 
 takings of all those who use their own labor power to benefit 
 others is labor regardless of whether it is mental or manual. 
 Farmers do the labor of cultivating, merchants do the labor of 
 transporting, writers and inventors do educational labor. We are 
 all laborers. We must all recognize the value of labor. Labor is 
 sacred |/aogong shensheng|!52 
 
 “Labor is sacred!” provided a slogan in ensuing years for anarchists 
 pursuing their labor and educational activities, for incipient Marxists 
 who launched the organization of the Chinese Communist Party in 
 1920, and for the youth who in 1919-20 pursued the goals of per- 
 sonal cultivation and social reform in the communal experiments 
 that flooded the Chinese radical scene. As did Gandhi in India at about 
 the same time, May Fourth radicals viewed Labor as the “great equal- 
 izer.’’°3 As Cai explained in another speech in 1920: 
 
 In our ideal society, all people will live according to the principle, 
 “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” 
 “According to his ability” points to labor; whether it is manual or 
 mental, all is labor that contributes to the existence of human- 
 kind and the advance of culture. Needs are of two kinds: physical 
 needs such as clothing, food, and shelter, and spiritual needs such 
 as learning. Now there are some people who do not do any work, 
 or do work that is not real work. Those who do real work cannot 
 but work bitterly and work long hours. Aside from them, the rest 
 use special privileges to take and waste in huge quantities what 
 humankind needs. Consequently, the real workers do not get 
 enough of what they need. Perhaps they get some of what they 
 need physically, but they are totally deprived of what they need 
 spiritually. Is this not a great obstacle to the advance of culture? If 
 we want to eradicate this obstacle, we must first realize a life 
 where labor and learning proceed together.°4 
 
 This combination of labor and learning, anarchists believed, would 
 help achieve a revolution from below that would avoid the bloodshed 
 of a violent upheaval (and class conflict) that must follow if the 
 human condition were not improved. 
 
 In 1919 radical youth set out to achieve precisely that goal in the 
 anarchist-inspired New Life Movement (Xin shenghuo yundong), 
 which sought in communal experiments new forms of social organiza- 
 tion that would combine the principles of labor and learning. The ex- 
 periments took two major forms. “Labor-learning mutual aid groups” 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 36 
 
 (gongdu huzhu tuan) had members who worked individually or in 
 group enterprises to finance their education but within the context of 
 group existence and “mutual aid”; the guiding principle in most cases 
 was “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” 
 The other form was the “new village” (xincun), inspired by the New 
 Village Movement initiated by Mushakoji Saneatsu in Japan, in which 
 the group (whether it was rural or urban) added to its productive 
 activities a measure of agricultural work. These experiments, which 
 received the support of China’s most prestigious educational and cul- 
 tural leaders, were intended by some purely as a practical means to 
 financing group members’ education.®® The social significance at- 
 tached to them, however, was evident in the following statement by 
 Wang Guangqi, a prominent supporter of the groups and at the time 
 the head of the important Young China Association (Shaonian Zhong- 
 guo xuehui), whose members included many of the later leaders of the 
 Communist Party, including Li Dazhao, Mao Zedong, and Yun Dai- 
 ying: “Labor-learning mutual aid groups are the embryo of a new 
 society, the first step in the fulfillment of our ideals. . . . If the labor- 
 learning mutual aid groups succeed, the ideal of “from each according 
 to his ability, to each according to his need” will be gradually realized. 
 The present Labor-Learning Mutual Aid Movement may well be de- 
 scribed as a peaceful economic revolution.”°° 
 
 As it turned out, the groups did not succeed. They came to quick 
 ends as one after another, starting with the first group in Beijing in 
 March 1920, acknowledged the failure of the experiment. The disillu- 
 sionment at the failure of these attempts at a “peaceful economic 
 revolution” was an important factor in the receptivity of the young 
 radicals who had been involved in them to a message that Comintern 
 emissary Gregory Voitinsky brought to China at about the same time: 
 under circumstances of capitalist oppression, attempts at peaceful 
 reform were bound to be futile, and only organized class struggle could 
 ameliorate China’s situation. For some, at least, class struggle would 
 gradually take over the utopian promise of creating a new world that 
 had been held during the immediate May Fourth period by the ideal of 
 labor learning. 
 
 Social mobilization in the twenties—especially the emergence of a 
 labor movement—transformed the visage of radical politics by mak- 
 ing a class-based social revolution into a central issue of the Chinese 
 Revolution. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in July 1921 
 in the midst of this social mobilization and was able to quickly estab- 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 37 
 
 lish a strong presence in the revolutionary movement by taking up the 
 cause of labor. Already by the mid-twenties, the gradualist approach to 
 revolution through education had receded before the more radical 
 methods of class confrontation and conflict, and Marxist Communists 
 had taken over from the anarchists the leadership of the labor move- 
 ment. 
 
 The shift in radical politics did not mean the abandonment of a 
 conviction in the necessity of an education to intellectualize the la- 
 borer and proletarianize the intellectuals. With the diffusion in radical 
 culture of the labor-learning ideal during the May Fourth Movement, 
 this goal had ceased to be an exclusively anarchist goal and had be- 
 come part of a revolutionary discourse that cut across divisions in 
 radical organization. The founders of the Chinese Communist Party 
 had internalized this goal in the course of their political socialization. 
 Many of them had gone through an anarchist phase before turning to 
 Marxism, and, as noted above, the work-study program of the Chinese 
 anarchists in Paris ironically had served directly to produce cadres for 
 the Communist Party. The emergence of a labor movement, if any- 
 thing, gave an unprecedented urgency to the need for an education that 
 would help bring laborers and intellectuals together. The united front 
 that the Communists entered with the Guomindang in 1923 (offi- 
 cially in January 1924) spawned a number of institutions intended to 
 realize this goal. Best known among them was the Peasant Movement 
 Training Institute (Nongmin yundong jiangxisuo) in Guangzhou, es- 
 tablished in 1924. In 1926 the Guangzhou-Hong Kong Strike Commit- 
 tee of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions established the Labor 
 College (Laodong xueyuan) in Guangzhou.’’ Most pertinent to our 
 discussion was the People’s College of Shanghai (Shanghai daxue) 
 established sometime in 1922—23 as part of the united front. Domi- 
 nated by Communists, the People’s College of Shanghai served in the 
 mid-twenties as a recruiting ground for the united front, but also to 
 bring students together with laborers. Its students were recruited from 
 among “elementary schoolteachers, clerks, shop apprentices, news- 
 paper proofreaders, bookstore and publishing house employees, and 
 Party workers,” and “what were university classrooms by day were 
 turned into meeting places for factory workers and shop appren- 
 tices ... in the evening.” In 1927 Labor University was founded on the 
 site of this college, which had been shut down earlier in the year.58 
 
 It is important to note, nevertheless, that these institutions, and the 
 intentions that guided them, were different from what the anarchists 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 38 
 
 had in mind in their advocacy of labor learning. Their context was 
 political, and they were intended explicitly to recruit cadres for the 
 political movement, which in the 1920s brought anarchists into oppo- 
 sition to the labor movement led by the Communists and the Guo- 
 mindang. Their legacy—the use of labor education in the service of 
 party politics—had a direct impact on Labor University in shaping the 
 Guomindang’s conceptions of its goals, and compromised the anar- 
 chist vision that inspired its founders. 
 
 
 
 Prelude to Labor University: Anarchists, 
 Labor, and Education in the 1920s 
 
 When it was founded in 1927, Labor University was a direct out- 
 growth of anarchist educational experiments in the 1920s. Anarchists 
 were progressively driven on the defensive in the 1920s as the social 
 revolutionary movement was politicized and the Communist Party 
 replaced them in the leadership of labor movements. This made them 
 more, not less, adamant in their defense of revolution through educa- 
 tion. Anarchist opposition was not to politics alone. They argued 
 against the Communist Party’s advocacy of class struggle and a “dic- 
 tatorship of the proletariat,” that the goal of a genuine social revolu- 
 tion was not to replace the dictatorship of one class by another but to 
 abolish the very phenomenon of class oppression. Education, essen- 
 tial to enabling the working class to take charge of its own destiny, 
 remained the cornerstone of their revolutionary program. So did the 
 ideal of laboring intellectuals who, purged of their elitist class orienta- 
 tion through the practice of labor, could help laborers achieve this 
 goal. While anarchist voices were barely audible at the height of the 
 revolutionary mass mobilization of the mid-twenties, their opposi- 
 tion to a class-based social revolution fell on more receptive ears when 
 the Guomindang itself turned against the Communist Party and its 
 advocacy of class revolution in 1927.9? 
 
 Reports on anarchist activity in the twenties, sparse as they are, 
 indicate that in their organizational activities among urban laborers 
 and the rural population alike, anarchists continued to utilize la- 
 borers’ clubs and libraries, part-time schools in factories and villages, 
 and even public performances of revolutionary plays and operas as 
 their means of contact with laborers, which served as the prelude to 
 actual organization for action. Where they were able to organize la- 
 borers successfully, they continued to view their own role primarily in 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 39 
 
 educational terms, since, in their opposition to politics, they believed 
 that the role of the revolutionary was not to bring labor organizations 
 under political control or coordination (as the Communists sought to 
 do), but rather to enable laborers to take charge of their own opposi- 
 tional activities.©° 
 
 Such activities in Shanghai in the 1920s laid the grounds for the 
 founding of Labor University. Shanghai was by then the hub of anar- 
 chist syndicalist activity. While anarchism had been introduced to 
 Shanghai in the 1910s by Guangzhou anarchists, who continued to be 
 active there, by the 1920s the city had become a gathering place for 
 anarchists from all around China, as it had for radicals of all stripes. 
 Anarchists from nearby Zhejiang Province were active there, led by 
 Shen Zhongjiu, who played a key role in the founding of Labor Univer- 
 sity. So were anarchists from Hunan and Sichuan—two provinces 
 where anarchism (unlike in Guangzhou) was a May Fourth product 
 but which nevertheless provided some of the radical Chinese anar- 
 chists who assumed leadership roles in the anarchist movement in 
 the late 1920s. Hunan in the early 1920s had been one of the two major 
 centers of anarchist labor activity (the other being Guangzhou). The 
 murder by the local warlord of two anarchist labor leaders (Huang Ai 
 and Peng Renquan) for their organizing activities in 1922, and the 
 bloody suppression of the Beijing-Wuhan railroad workers’ strike in 
 February 1923 by another warlord, had resulted in the exodus to 
 Shanghai of Hunan labor leaders. They were joined in 1924-25 by 
 anarchists from Sichuan, among them China’s best-known anarchist 
 abroad, the novelist Bajin (Li Feigan). Particularly radical among the 
 Sichuan anarchists were Lu Jianbo, his spouse Deng Tianyu, and Mao 
 Yibo, who in their influential journal People’s Vanguard (Minfeng) 
 advocated an anarchist strategy of revolution that did not differ sig- 
 nificantly in its attention to class struggle from a communist strat- 
 egy of revolution, though their goals were defined in anarchist terms. 
 The People’s Vanguard Society was responsible for founding two so- 
 cieties in 1927: the Society for the Study of Syndicalism (Gongtuan 
 zhuyi yanjiu hui) and the Federation of Young Chinese Anarcho- 
 Communists (Zhongguo shaonian wuzhengfu gongchan zhuyizhe 
 lianmeng, or Shaolian, for short), which represented an anarchist Left. 
 Finally, anarchists involved in the diligent-work frugal-study program 
 in Paris were also active in Shanghai. Especially important for our 
 purposes was Bi Xiushao, like Shen Zhongjiu a Zhejiang native, who 
 had been involved in Paris in the publication of After Work (Gongyu) 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 40 
 
 and was briefly in 1927 the editor of another important anarchist 
 publication of the twenties, People’s Tocsin (Minzhong). In 1925, 
 when Bi returned to China, After Work, which had been the Paris 
 anarchist organ for the previous three years, was merged with Free 
 People (Ziyou ren), which his fellow provincial Shen Zhongjiu had 
 initiated the previous year.°! 
 
 Of the anarchist activities in Shanghai, two fed directly into the 
 founding of Labor University. First was anarchist syndicalist activity. 
 According to a report published in early 1924 in Guangzhou in the 
 organ of the Anarchist Federation, Spring Festival (Jingzhe), anar- 
 chists of the Free People Society led by Shen Zhongjiu had been active 
 in the establishment of the Federation of Shanghai Syndicates (Shang- 
 hai gongtuan lianhehui), as well as a complementary organization, 
 the Union of Young Laborers (Laogong qingnian hui). They published 
 their own periodical, Free People, as well as two labor journals associ- 
 ated with these organizations, Labor Ten-daily | Laodong xunkan) and 
 Young-Laborers Ten-daily (Laogong gingnian xunkan).°2 
 
 The Federation of Shanghai Syndicates held sway over forty to fifty 
 labor organizations and roughly fifty thousand workers.°? The federa- 
 tion (described by communist union leader and labor historian Deng 
 Zhongxia as a collection of “vagabond” unions) was not an anarchist 
 organization per se. Jean Chesneaux has pointed out that some of its 
 member unions were more employers’ than laborers’ unions, advocat- 
 ing “friendship” between labor and capital, and that Guomindang 
 labor leaders played an important part in setting its course.°4 This 
 ground-level cooperation may explain why Shen Zhongjiu, who was 
 opposed in his writings to anarchist-Guomindang collaboration all 
 the way into early 1927, was willing by April of that year to cooperate 
 with Guomindang anarchists in the founding of Labor University. Be 
 that as it may, while anarchists did not control the federation, they 
 exerted some influence in it, possibly a radicalizing one.©° Anarchists 
 published the periodicals representing the union, and they were ac- 
 tive in educational undertakings in factories with unions associated 
 with the federation. The fact that the federation adopted “syndicate” 
 (gongtuan, in contrast to “union,” gonghui) in its name may be a 
 measure of anarchist influence; so may the slogan of the federation, 
 “Let us ask for bread only, and leave politics alone,” which directly 
 reflected the message that anarchists sought to spread in their educa- 
 tional activities among the laborers: “resolve economic problems, 
 oppose all politics, engage in direct action, do not rely on any political 
 party.’”66 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 41 
 
 Anarchist goals in the federation expressed the intimate connection 
 between anarchist educational philosophy and syndicalist activity. In 
 1924 Free People published a “Declaration of the Shanghai Branch of 
 Anarcho-Communists,” which stated that 
 
 the society of the future not only will stamp out bureaucrats, 
 capitalists, and their appendages, but also put an end to distinc- 
 tions between intellectuals, workers, peasants, and merchants. 
 Everyone will labor for society and become laborers who will 
 work both with their minds and their hands. In order to meet 
 their needs of production for necessities or luxuries, to satisfy 
 general or particular needs, these laborers will organize them- 
 selves in a variety of groups |tuanti]|. These groups will federate 
 freely with other groups, and replace present-day political organi- 
 zation. In order for these freely federated groups to fulfill their 
 promise, it is absolutely necessary to overthrow the present sys- 
 tem. But these groups cannot be established overnight; if a basis 
 for them is not instituted presently, when the revolution comes 
 about and the old system is overthrown without a new one to 
 replace it, all will be chaos. It is best for workers of the whole 
 world or the whole country to unite | tuanjie gilai|, to declare war 
 on capitalists and the government through such methods as the 
 general strike [zongtongmeng bagong|, on the one hand, and, on 
 the other hand, to establish a foundation for future society. It is 
 because of this that many anarchists also advocate syndicalism.°” 
 
 The anarchists’ premise that the cause of labor could best be real- 
 ized through the activity of laborers themselves (what we might call, 
 after Alain Touraine, laborers’ “self-activity”) required that leaders be 
 recruited from among laborers themselves to take charge of the labor 
 movement. Out of this was born the idea of an educational institution 
 to train laborers to assume leadership of their own movement. The 
 Spring Thunder report in 1924 noted that in conjunction with their 
 educational activities, the anarchists in Shanghai were in the process 
 of drawing up plans for a “labor university” (Jaodong daxue). While 
 anarchists had been involved all along in establishing educational 
 institutions for laborers, this is the first reference that we are aware of 
 to a “labor university.” That the anarchists had proceeded beyond the 
 stage of mere speculation at the time is confirmed by a discussion of 
 these plans in an article in Revolution Weekly |Geming zhoubao) that 
 quotes from a 1924 “Statement on the Goals of Labor University” 
 (Laodong daxuede zhiqu shu): 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 42 
 
 What is laborer education? It is the kind of education to advance 
 the self-awareness |zijue| of laborers; it is the kind of education 
 that will help laborers advance from the status of slaves to that of 
 human being [ren]; it is the kind of education that will help 
 laborers resist all oppression; it is the kind of education that will 
 develop laborers’ abilities and show them how to pursue a labor 
 movement. Simply put, laborers’ education is the education of 
 laborers to become human beings; it is an education in revolution 
 because for laborers revolution and becoming human beings are 
 inseparable. If they want to become human beings, to be indepen- 
 dent and free, to sustain life, to satisfy their spiritual needs and 
 not be exploited, controlled, or oppressed, is there any way other 
 than revolution? °® 
 
 Ideologically, when Labor University was finally established in 
 1927, it would draw directly upon these sentiments of the anarchists 
 involved in the syndicalist movement, who would also become di- 
 rectly involved in the university’s day-to-day affairs. Institutionally, 
 too, the Shanghai anarchists’ activities provided a model that Labor 
 University could utilize in its organization. This was the Lida College 
 (Lida xueyuan) established and operated by the Hunanese anarchist 
 Kuang Husheng, which for nearly ten years from the early 1920s to 
 1932 (it was also a victim of the Japanese attack on Shanghai) stood as 
 an esteemed example for many of what an institution for alternative 
 education could accomplish.°? 
 
 Kuang enjoyed a reputation (some might say notoriety) as the anar- 
 chist who, as a student at Beijing Higher Normal, had been responsi- 
 ble on May 4, 1919, for escalating the student protest by breaking into 
 the home of a government minister who was a target of student 
 demonstrations. He was also known as a very earnest anarchist. He 
 had been involved in the labor-learning movement at Higher Normal 
 and, after a brief stint as a teacher in Hunan following his graduation, 
 had settled in Shanghai to operate Lida College. Teachers at Lida 
 included, in addition to fellow anarchists such as Shen Zhongjiu, 
 prominent young intellectuals of the time such as Chen Wangdao 
 (translator of the Communist Manifesto and one of the founders of the 
 Communist Party in 1920-21), the writer Ye Shengtao, Zhou Yutong, 
 Hu Yuezhi, and others. While the name of the school was derived from 
 a source that sounded more Confucian than anarchist (“establish self 
 to establish others, reach into self to reach others” [Jiji liren, daji 
 
Anarchism and Labor Learning 43 
 
 daren|), his school was quite different from other schools of the time, 
 and its operations were directly inspired by the communal experi- 
 ments of the immediate May Fourth period.’° One contemporary who 
 witnessed the operations of the school has described Kuang as a 
 “practitioner of an education in which ‘the hand and the brain are 
 used together to transform the personality’ ” (renge ganhua, shounao 
 bingyong). This observer’s description of the operating principles of 
 the school reveals possibly the best application of anarchist principles 
 to education in China: 
 
 The teachers and the students in the school were like a family. 
 Kuang set himself up as an example, provided a model, and used 
 persuasion as a method to help youth change their old ways of 
 thinking and to progress incessantly. He nurtured habits of using 
 both the hands and the mind, of placing others ahead of self, and 
 of pursuing truth, all in accordance with the school’s aim of 
 creating talents for an ideal society. Outside of the school grounds 
 at Jiangwan, he acquired land at nearby Nanxian, turned it into 
 agricultural land for planting grains and vegetables and raising 
 fish. At Jiangwan he established a chicken farm, using the most 
 modern hatching techniques, and raised several thousand white 
 Italian kelai chickens. Students and teachers together carried the 
 responsibility for these productive activities; under the general 
 guideline of “those who do not work do not eat,” if they missed a 
 day of work they also did not eat for a day. Both in learning and in 
 thinking, Lida graduates had a good foundation, and there was not 
 one among them who did not hold Kuang Husheng in high es- 
 teem. While he was lacking in a class standpoint, this was at the 
 time another progressive aspect of the thinking he instilled in the 
 students.7! 
 
 These anarchist experiments provided the immediate precedent for 
 Labor University when it was established in 1927, and the Shanghai 
 syndicalists as well as Kuang and those associated with him at Lida 
 College played a direct part in the founding. According to Bi Xiushao, 
 the decision to establish Labor University was taken at a meeting held 
 in Shanghai in early 1927 in which, in addition to himself, Li Shizeng, 
 Wu Zhihui, Kuang Husheng, and Lu Hanwen were participants.72 
 Zheng Peigang recalled that Kuang Husheng and others involved at 
 Lida College were instrumental in bringing about the meeting and 
 giving initial shape to the organization of the university.’ 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 44 
 
 It was the political events of 1927, however, that provided the 
 background for the founding of the university, especially the turn the 
 revolutionary movement took with the Guomindang’s suppression of 
 the Communists in early April. These events not only provided new 
 opportunities for anarchists in the Guomindang, they had important 
 implications for the relationship between anarchists within and with- 
 out the Guomindang as well. Labor University was a product of col- 
 laboration between the two latter groups. 
 
3 Anarchists 
 and the 
 Guomindang: 
 The Founding and Goals 
 of Labor 
 
 University 
 
 Labor University was the culmination of anarchist experiments in 
 education. Viewed from one historical perspective, there is little about 
 the founding of the university that is anomalous. The Paris anarchists 
 and their allies had held prestigious and influential positions within 
 the Guomindang since 1924. Political events in 1927 (in the engineer- 
 ing of which they played some part) occasioned a realignment of power 
 in the party with a consequent enhancement of their influence, and 
 gave them the hope that they could convert their long-standing faith in 
 social change through education into national policy under the new 
 Guomindang government. Judging by the evidence, superficially at 
 least, their plans fell on receptive ears at the highest levels of the 
 Guomindang, which had just suppressed a radical mass movement 
 and sought now to build a mass movement more conducive to the 
 party’s rule. By summer 1927 the anarchists and their allies were able 
 to recruit younger anarchists with experience in the labor movement 
 for the operation of the new institution they envisaged in Shanghai. 
 Labor University, or Laoda, opened its doors to public instruction 
 within a matter of months. 
 
 Both in scope and in the vision of social change that informed it, 
 however, Labor University was more ambitious than anything the 
 anarchists had undertaken earlier. The anarchists conceived it as the 
 first step in a reorganization of the national educational system that 
 would ultimately transform Chinese society. This brought the univer- 
 sity under immediate attack from those who held alternative visions 
 of education—and of the future of Chinese society. To make matters 
 worse, the anarchists were wholly dependent on the Guomindang for 
 the success of the undertaking. The university’s fortunes rose and fell 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 46 
 
 with the ability of the anarchists and their allies to exert influence on 
 Guomindang educational policy. 
 
 Anarchist influence in Labor University was most visible during its 
 first year of operation. It waned quickly once the Guomindang had 
 consolidated its hold on the national government and reasserted a 
 conservative version of Sun Zhongshan’s Three People’s Principles as 
 the guiding ideology of Chinese politics and education. The initial 
 purposes of the university were never abandoned; even after anarchist 
 influence had been curtailed, a European-educated university leader- 
 ship was able to sustain the commitment to a labor-oriented educa- 
 tion. But after 1929 the university was under constant attack, and it 
 no longer held the place in Chinese education that its founders had 
 envisaged. The destruction of its campus during the Japanese attack 
 on Shanghai in 1932 provided a convenient excuse for shutting it 
 down. 
 
 As one anarchist noted in 1928, from the beginning, Labor Univer- 
 sity suffered from the basic contradiction between its anarchist inspi- 
 ration and its dependence on a political party and a national govern- 
 ment.! The contradiction was also the contradiction of the anarchists 
 who founded the university, whose loyalties wavered between their 
 abstract anarchist commitments and their obligation to the Guomin- 
 dang to which they belonged. In spite of an appearance of opportunism 
 on the part of the Paris anarchists, there is little reason to think that 
 they were not serious in the undertaking—at least as long as they 
 were free from political pressure. So long as the Guomindang was in 
 disarray, anarchists could hope that they might be able to direct the 
 future course of the Chinese Revolution—and education. They were 
 also able to stamp the university’s goals and organization with anar- 
 chist ideals. It is these circumstances of the founding of the university, 
 and the reasoning that underlay it, that are the subject of this chapter. 
 
 The Guomindang and the “Politics” of Anarchism 
 
 The anarchists had a complex relationship with the Guomindang. If 
 opposition to the Communists helped unify China’s anarchists in the 
 1920s, the question of their relationship to the Guomindang had so far 
 divided them, and continued to do so in later years. The relationship 
 points to divisions among anarchists over issues of revolutionary 
 strategy. These divisions brought the cooperation to an end by 1928, 
 and led to a Guomindang suppression of anarchists from which they 
 would not recover. 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 47 
 
 Following the party “reorganization” of 1924 (when the Guomin- 
 dang entered the alliance with the Communist Party), Li Shizeng and 
 Wu Zhihui held posts in the Central Supervisory Committee, a watch- 
 dog committee for keeping an eye on party affairs. While these posts 
 were not official, they carried considerable power. Wu in particular 
 was also close to Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) through his relation- 
 ship with Zhang Jingjiang, who had been responsible for financing 
 anarchist activities in France in the days before 1911. As members of 
 the anticommunist Central Supervisory Committee, Li and Wu had 
 been a force against the alliance with the Communists, as well as 
 against the left wing of the party which supported the alliance. In 
 1927, with the Guomindang suppression of communism, Wu emerged 
 as a major ideological spokesman against the Communists and the 
 Guomindang Left alike. Anarchist arguments against class strug- 
 gle and the dictatorship of the proletariat lay at the basis of Wu’s 
 arguments against Marxists within and without the Guomindang. 
 The “revolution of all the people” (quanmin geming) that he advo- 
 cated also made him barely distinguishable from the counterrevolu- 
 tionary Right.2 
 
 Their long history of involvement with the Guomindang did not 
 make the roles that Li and Wu (and other “Paris anarchists”) played in 
 the Guomindang as members of that committee any less controver- 
 sial. In a letter he wrote to Zhang Puquan (Zhang Ji) shortly after they 
 had assumed their new positions, the prominent anarchist Hua Lin 
 stated unequivocally that “the moment Li and Wu entered their rela- 
 tionship with the Guomindang, they as good as stopped being anar- 
 chists.”3 The relationship was a divisive issue among the anarchists 
 for the next three years, and it splintered the anarchist movement 
 after 1927.4 
 
 The fundamental issue was politics. The Paris anarchists, like all 
 anarchists, viewed the overthrow of the state as a primary goal of the 
 anarchist revolution, and had from their earliest days forsworn politi- 
 cal involvement not only because politics could have but one goal— 
 access to state power—but also because they believed that politics, as 
 the expression of some interest in society, perpetuated social division 
 and was therefore inimical to the anarchist goal of abolishing all social 
 interest and division. The various informal societies they had estab- 
 lished in China in the early days of the Republic all had made the 
 renunciation of politics into a condition of membership.5 
 
 The political involvement of the Paris anarchists, in other words, 
 contradicted their own professed opposition to politics. The contra- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 48 
 
 diction had been easier to ignore before 1911; the Revolutionary Alli- 
 ance had been, as the name suggested, an alliance of revolutionaries 
 against the monarchy, and anarchist membership did not signify much 
 beyond participation in an antimonarchic movement. It was to be- 
 come increasingly more problematic thereafter. The Guomindang was 
 a political party bent on acquiring political power, and involvement 
 with it implied a tacit affirmation of politics. Indeed, when a member 
 of the group, Zhang Ji, assumed a political position in the aftermath of 
 the 1911 revolution, he drew the ire of the Guangzhou anarchist Shifu, 
 who engaged Wu Zhihui in a debate concerning the propriety of 
 anarchist involvement with politics.° In ensuing years, the Paris anar- 
 chists had also served as intermediaries between the Chinese and 
 French governments, first in the importation of Chinese laborers to 
 Europe during the war and, following that, in the establishment of the 
 work-study program. The roles they assumed in the Guomindang after 
 1924 merely confirmed for other anarchists their long-standing will- 
 ingness to compromise anarchist principles, which was a sign at best 
 of questionable commitment to anarchism, at worst of political oppor- 
 tunism. The frontispiece to a special commemorative issue on Shifu 
 (who had been known for his seriousness of purpose) of the important 
 anarchist journal People’s Tocsin (Minzhong) in early 1927 stated 
 pointedly that “in China at the present, there is no one worthy of our 
 respect other than Shifu.”” Whether or not so intended, it would have 
 been hard for the anarchist elders from whom Shifu had learned his 
 anarchism to ignore the uncomplimentary implications of the state- 
 ment (Wu Zhihui was a contributor to the issue). 
 
 Among the Paris anarchists, Wu Zhihui seemed to be the one most 
 prepared to defend anarchist involvement with the Guomindang and, 
 in the 1920s, to urge fellow anarchists to do the same.8 In his response 
 to anarchist critics of such involvement, Wu gave two reasons why 
 anarchists should support the Guomindang effort in the 1920s. First, 
 anarchists and the Guomindang (as well as other revolutionaries, 
 including the Communists) shared a common enemy, the warlords, 
 whose expulsion was in the best interests of all the revolutionaries. To 
 soothe the anxieties of anarchists who were suspicious of Guomin- 
 dang motives (prominent anarchists such as Mao Yibo believed that 
 the Guomindang shared some of the counterrevolutionary charac- 
 teristics of militarists and had more than its share of opportunis- 
 tic politicians whose sole goal was to “become rich through office” 
 |shengguan facai|),? Wu argued that the Guomindang in the 1920s 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 49 
 
 was a new Guomindang, one committed to revolution. Pointing to 
 Kropotkin’s support for the war effort during World War I, Wu argued 
 that anarchists had always supported progressive causes, even when 
 the cause was not their own. If the Guomindang at a later time lost its 
 progressive character, there would be time enough for anarchists to 
 oppose it. 
 
 This argument was similar to the one that had earlier justified the 
 Paris anarchists’ membership in the Revolutionary Alliance; then, 
 too, the anarchists had opposed the nationalist goals of the alliance 
 but supported its struggle on the grounds of a prior need to overthrow 
 the Manchu monarchy. Underlying this justification was a broader 
 conception of the progress of revolution in history, which Wu now 
 adduced as a second reason for the necessity of anarchist support for 
 the Guomindang. In their periodical New Era (Xin shiji), anarchists 
 had represented revolution as a long process that proceeded in a num- 
 ber of progressive stages; the transition from monarchy to a republic 
 was one such stage in the progress of revolution and must therefore be 
 supported by anarchists, without, however, losing sight of the anar- 
 chist goals of revolution toward which they must propel the revolu- 
 tion at all times.!° Wu Zhihui still believed that the anarchist revolu- 
 tion would take a very long time (at this time he estimated three 
 thousand years!)!! and urged his younger colleagues to forgo revo- 
 lutionary purity and support the Guomindang revolutionary effort, 
 which, as a progressive step in the march of revolution, would bring 
 anarchism one step closer to realization. 
 
 Wu’s argument did not prove to be sufficiently plausible to most of 
 his fellow anarchists—not in 1924, anyway. A lengthy rebuttal by 
 Zhejiang anarcho-syndicalist Shen Zhongjiu published in July 1924 in 
 the Shanghai anarchist journal Free People offered counterarguments 
 which typified anarchist opposition to participation in the Guomin- 
 dang in the mid-twenties. What makes Shen’s piece particularly inter- 
 esting is not only that he was an articulate spokesperson against 
 anarchist involvement in the Guomindang at that time, but also that 
 he would play an important part in anarchist activity in the party in 
 TO Dyes 
 
 Shen was impressed neither by the “common enemy” argument nor 
 by Wu’s assurances that the Guomindang was a “new” Guomindang 
 committed to the cause of revolution rather than to usurping power 
 for itself. The common-enemy argument was fallacious, he believed, 
 because it could be utilized to justify alliance with anyone, including 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 50 
 
 other warlords who shared the Guomindang’s enemies. Besides, he 
 pointed out, anarchists were not knights-errant of the type to be found 
 in Chinese literature, ready to help whomever required their services; 
 they had their own principles and were concerned not just with mak- 
 ing revolution but also with what followed the revolution. Anarchists 
 sought to overthrow not just warlords and imperialism but also the 
 state and capitalism. For them to help the Guomindang establish a 
 new state power would be to help erect a more powerful obstacle to 
 anarchism than presently existed. Besides, Wu overlooked that the 
 Guomindang had its own ideology in Sun’s Three People’s Principles 
 and required loyalty to it as the price of admission into the party. The 
 Three Principles were incompatible with anarchism, and anarchists 
 could not swear loyalty to them without ceasing to be anarchists. 
 Therefore, “for anarchists to enter the Guomindang would simply be 
 suicide because anarchists have even less reason for joining the Guo- 
 mindang than the Communists.” Contrary to Wu, Shen perceived in 
 the example of Kropotkin cooperating with other revolutionary par- 
 ties a lesson for anarchists: Kropotkin had in the end been betrayed by 
 the very revolutionaries he had supported.!3 
 
 Similarly, Shen rejected Wu’s argument that the revolution pro- 
 gressed in necessary stages from democracy to the dictatorship of 
 laborers to anarchism. This reasoning was a consequence, he believed, 
 of a fallacious analogy between nature and society which resulted in a 
 deterministic view of revolution. Revolution ultimately depended on 
 “humankind’s striving to reach upward and its capability to organize” 
 (renjiande xiangshang xin he zuzhi li). It might be slow or rapid 
 according to the power of the desire for progress or the ability to 
 organize, but it was not bound by natural law. Indeed, Wu ignored the 
 fact that what he presented as natural stages in the progress of revolu- 
 tion were also mutually contradictory. Shen presented the problem in 
 a terse formula: “Democracy, has government, has private property. 
 Dictatorship of laborers, has government, has private property. Anar- 
 chism, no government, no private property.” To go through these 
 stages to reach anarchism, he concluded, was no different than going 
 south in order to get north! !4 
 
 Shen’s rebuttal barely concealed his disdain for what he took to be 
 the opportunism of the anarchists who cooperated with the Guomin- 
 dang. Even if the Guomindang were to be taken seriously as a revolu- 
 tionary party, which he obviously doubted, its goals were contrary to 
 anarchist principles and did not allow for cooperation. Judging by the 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 51 
 
 anarchist press in the 1920s, most anarchists shared Shen’s views. 
 They were opposed to a limited revolution that took as its objectives 
 the elimination of warlord and imperialist control of China (which 
 were the stated goals of the united front between the Guomindang and 
 the Communist Party). While these were goals in which they could 
 share, they disapproved of the limitation of the revolution by the 
 nationalistic motivations that informed it. At the height of the na- 
 tionalistic upsurge that swept China in the mid-twenties, anarchists 
 continued to oppose nationalism not only because it could only result 
 in the establishment of a stronger state than before, but also because 
 nationalism only served to “build walls around people” and further 
 separate them from one another. Anti-imperialism they supported, 
 but they believed that the answer to abolishing it was not nationalism 
 but the abolition of capitalism.!° So adamant were the anarchists in 
 their opposition to a nationalist revolution that they even came under 
 criticism from Jean Grave, who gently rebuked them in a letter by 
 reminding them that during World War I, he and Kropotkin had sup- 
 ported nationalism when it was clearly in a good cause. !° 
 
 Such pressures did not go entirely unheeded. Some anarchists who 
 were earlier opposed to collaboration with the Guomindang were 
 by 1926-27 urging their colleagues to view the Guomindang as a 
 “friendly party” (youdang) and join in the revolutionary effort to over- 
 throw the power of the “old” parties.!”7 By April 1927, Shen Zhongjiu 
 himself and others associated with him were ready for collaboration. 
 
 Not all anarchists came round to viewing the Guomindang as a 
 “friendly party”; as far as is possible to tell, influential Guangzhou 
 anarchists such as Liang Bingxian and Ou Shengbai, and Sichuan 
 anarchists such as Li Feigan (Bajin) and Lu Jianbo, continued to oppose 
 collaboration. But a sufficient number collaborated to give Li Shizeng 
 and Wu Zhihui the following they needed to make anarchism into a 
 serious presence in the Guomindang, especially in Shanghai. These 
 included, in addition to Shen Zhongjiu, radical Hunanese anarchists 
 who had been based in Shanghai since 1923, and Bi Xiushao, another 
 Zhejiang anarchist who had gained visibility in anarchist activities in 
 France. It is interesting that most of those who collaborated with the 
 Guomindang in 1927 had been involved in the syndicalist movement 
 in Shanghai since 1924. Other anarchists involved in the labor move- 
 ment in Guangzhou, most prominent among them Liu Shixin (brother 
 to the famous anarchist leader Shifu, known for his ideological purity), 
 also collaborated with the Guomindang after 1927.18 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 52 
 
 It may not be coincidental that anarchists involved in the labor 
 movement were conspicuous in the collaboration with the Guomin- 
 dang. There are no ready-made explanations for the turnabout in 
 anarchist activists’ attitudes from opposition to collaboration with 
 the Guomindang. It is possible, however, to point to a conjuncture of 
 circumstances brought about by changes in the revolutionary situa- 
 tion in China that inclined anarchists to collaboration, if not neces- 
 sarily to the assumption of a Guomindang identity. 
 
 First, there was an intensifying sense of their irrelevance to the 
 gathering momentum of the revolutionary movement which was evi- 
 dent in the receding of anarchist influence not only among labor but 
 also among educated youth, who were increasingly drawn to the 
 national struggle led by the Guomindang and the Communist Party. 
 The mid-twenties (especially following the May Thirtieth Incident in 
 Shanghai) witnessed a virtual explosion in the influence of the Com- 
 munist Party that was most impressive for the gains the Communists 
 had made at the expense of the anarchists, in whose eyes they were 
 not just the foremost competitors on the social revolutionary Left but, 
 because of their Bolshevik orientation, the foremost enemies of anar- 
 chist revolution.!? The surge in mass mobilization, especially the 
 labor movement, provided the Communist Party with an opportunity 
 for expanding its constituency; the alliance with the Guomindang 
 formalized in 1924 facilitated the Communists’ ability to convert this 
 opportunity to actuality. Between 1925 and 1927, Communist Party 
 membership increased from around one thousand to somewhere in 
 the neighborhood of fifty thousand. Almost half the membership, 
 moreover, consisted of urban laborers, a higher percentage than the 
 Communist Party would ever again command. 
 
 The expansion of the Communists’ power meant the decline of the 
 anarchists’ hopes for achieving leadership of the social revolutionary 
 movement in China, which was particularly distressing to anarchists 
 involved in the labor movement. The popularity of anarchism had 
 peaked in 1922—23, when anarchists could still claim that there were 
 several thousand anarchists in China—not a particularly large num- 
 ber, but significantly higher than what the Communist Party could 
 claim at the time. Anarchists, moreover, had initiated the modern 
 labor movement in China and, as late as 1922, exerted significant 
 influence among laborers both in Guangzhou in the south, and in 
 Hunan in central China. Driven from Hunan by warlord repression in 
 1922—23, Hunanese anarchists (along with anarchists from Zhejiang 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 53 
 
 and Sichuan) had emerged as key figures in the Federation of Shanghai 
 Syndicates that was established in 1924 (in which they cooperated, at 
 least at the ground level, with Guomindang-related labor leaders). It 
 was also becoming increasingly evident, however, that everywhere, 
 including in the anarchist stronghold in Guangzhou, anarchist influ- 
 ence over labor was on the decline, partly because the united front 
 with the Guomindang gave the Communists much-needed prestige as 
 national revolutionaries as well as the authority the Guomindang 
 provided in places like Guangzhou, and partly because of the anar- 
 chists’ inherent inability to organize, which meant that however suc- 
 cessful they might be at the local level, they were unable to coordinate 
 labor activities nationally. In 1922, when the First National Labor 
 Congress convened in Guangzhou, anarchist influence had frustrated 
 communist organizers’ efforts to politicize the labor movement. By 
 1925, when the Second National Labor Congress convened in Shang- 
 hai, the Communists had clearly established their supremacy in the 
 leadership of labor.2° 
 
 Judging by anarchist “appeals” to youth in 1927, moreover, the loss 
 of anarchist influence was not restricted to labor but extended also to 
 the idealistic youth who in the early May Fourth period had been 
 attracted to the anarchist message in large numbers. The delusion of 
 the youth who fell into the trap of nationalism was a constant theme 
 in these appeals; so was the problem of how to recover anarchist 
 leadership of youth and other social movements.?! 
 
 Thus, at the height of the social revolutionary movement in China, 
 of which they had been the first and the foremost advocates, the 
 anarchists watched with a sense of despair their irrelevance to the 
 actualities of social revolution. By late 1926 they were openly self- 
 critical about their inability to organize, which, they believed, cur- 
 tailed their ability to influence the course of the revolutionary move- 
 ment. Ultimately, however, they traced their increasing irrelevance to 
 a “revolutionary purism,” which accounted for the anarchists’ refusal 
 to engage in concrete revolutionary activity so long as the revolution 
 did not correspond to their desires. 
 
 This was the thrust of a discussion that prominent Chinese anar- 
 chists undertook in late 1926—early 1927 concerning their move- 
 ment’s relationship to the revolutionary movement, the results of 
 which were published in 1927 under the heading “Anarchism and the 
 Question of Practice” (Wuzhengfu zhuyi yu shiji wenti). While the 
 discussion, when it was published, included only three essays by 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 54 
 
 Feigan (Bajin), Huilin (Wei Huilin), and Jun Yi (Wu Zhigang), according 
 to Lu Jianbo, other anarchists had also participated in it originally, 
 including himself.2? The basic issue in the discussion was whether 
 anarchists should continue to engage in an “academic” propagation of 
 anarchist ideals, divorced from the masses and the concrete condi- 
 tions of revolution, or participate in the revolution to guide it toward 
 anarchist goals. The latter inevitably raised the question of how to 
 participate and, by implication, the question of anarchists’ relation- 
 ship to the Guomindang, which, judging by the conclusions of the 
 various essays, were foremost in the minds of the participants in the 
 discussion. 
 
 There was agreement over the first issue, but not over the second. 
 The discussions all agreed that the concern for revolutionary purity 
 not only made anarchists irrelevant to the revolutionary movement 
 but in some ways led to the betrayal of anarchist ideals in the priority 
 it gave to revolutionary abstractions over a genuine concern for the 
 people. The error, they suggested, rested in a confusion of the revolu- 
 tionary movement with the parties that led it. The revolutionary 
 movement then in progress was not a revolution of the Guomindang 
 or of the Communist Party, but a genuine revolution of the people. It 
 was the obligation of anarchists to participate in the popular revolu- 
 tion, succor the people, and guide them toward anarchism. As Bajin 
 put it: 
 
 China has already entered a revolutionary period. The revolu- 
 tionary movement at the present is not a movement of the Guo- 
 mindang but a revolutionary movement of the masses. Tens of 
 thousands of workers are on strike, countless youth are on the 
 battleground ready to risk their lives at the hands of the white 
 terror or end up in jail. 1am completely opposed to those who say 
 that they are mere blind followers of a few leaders, that they just 
 desire to achieve wealth through office, that they are running 
 dogs of the new warlords, that they are disciples of the Three 
 People’s Principles, or that they merely wish to establish a bour- 
 geois government. The Northern Expedition of the national ar- 
 mies is one thing, the Chinese revolutionary movement is still 
 another thing. The struggle for liberation of a semicolonial nation 
 may not be the goal of anarchism, but anarchists cannot oppose 
 it, they can only strive to make it go further. Similarly, we may 
 not oppose the anti-imperialist movement just because capital- 
 ism has not yet been abolished. I hate the Soviet Union, but I hate 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 55 
 
 the imperialist powers even more; I hate the Guomindang, but I 
 hate the northern warlords even more—because the Soviet Union 
 is nowhere near as bad as the imperialist powers, nor is the 
 Guomindang “birds of a feather” with the northern warlords. If 
 we can offer the masses something better, so much the better; but 
 to stick one’s hands up one’s sleeves and engage in opposition 
 from the sidelines, while perfectly alright for bourgeois scholars, 
 is no less than a crime for revolutionaries. It is alright for an in- 
 dividualist to say, “If it is not complete, it is better not to have it,” 
 but a revolutionary cannot say any such thing because that is not 
 what the masses demand. . . . If we do not have much influence in 
 the present movement, it is our own fault. Right-wing national- 
 ists and the Research Clique must take great pleasure watching 
 us stand on the sidelines and abuse the revolutionary movement 
 as just a political struggle or a war between warlords, or make the 
 Guomindang into “birds of a feather” with Zhang Zuolin.2% 
 
 Bajin himself was opposed to collaboration, although some of his 
 remarks suggest at least a contingent approval of the Guomindang. 
 Other anarchists were more willing to participate in the Guomin- 
 dang’s struggle so long as they retained an anarchist identity and could 
 push the Guomindang toward the maximization of revolutionary 
 goals. Wu Zhigang, who in 1924 had opposed Wu Zhihui’s urgings for 
 anarchists to join the Guomindang, had in the meantime assumed a 
 more positive attitude toward collaboration. He concluded his contri- 
 bution to the discussion with the words: 
 
 In my opinion, however bad the Guomindang may be, there are 
 many in it whose goal is not to achieve wealth through office 
 but to carry out the revolution. Moreover, the struggle they are 
 involved in now to overthrow foreign aggression and the north- 
 ern warlords is something that anarchists themselves desire, and 
 should be doing. When it succeeds, the Guomindang will still be 
 far from anarchism, but it is the height of ignorance about revolu- 
 tion to suggest that the common people will be worse off than 
 they are now.24 
 
 Wu by then was one of the advocates of the need for anarchists to view 
 the Guomindang as a “friendly party.” 
 
 Judging by the collaboration that followed shortly after these lines 
 were published, it is possible to suggest that by early 1927 many, if not 
 all, anarchists shared some of these sentiments. It is also necessary to 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 56 
 
 note, on the basis of circumstantial evidence (since direct evidence is 
 lacking), that two other conditions needed to be fulfilled before col- 
 laboration became a reality. First, Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui had to 
 reassure anarchist activists that in collaborating with the Guomin- 
 dang they need not abandon their anarchist identities; on the con- 
 trary, there was a good possibility for anarchists to influence the 
 future of the party. According to Bi Xiushao, who played an instru- 
 mental role in bringing about the collaboration and was afterward 
 active in the Guomindang, the meeting in April 1927 that initiated 
 the collaboration was preceded by more than six months of meetings 
 with important Guomindang anarchists, including Zhang Ji, Wu Zhi- 
 hui, and, finally, Li Shizeng, who in 1927—28 became the “godfather” 
 of anarchist activity in the party.2° What went on in these meetings Bi 
 never said (except that Zhang Ji complained bitterly about his popular 
 image as a reactionary), but by fall 1926 the anarchists in the Central 
 Supervisory Committee were already engaged in efforts to terminate 
 the alliance with the Communists, and it would be very unlikely 
 indeed if they did not at the least hold out to anarchist activists the 
 promise of future leadership in the labor movement. Labor, we shall 
 see, was the first item on the agenda of the collaboration after April 
 1927. Furthermore, the collaboration was accompanied by a change in 
 the public stances of the Guomindang anarchists themselves. While 
 Li and Wu (and Zhang Ji) had made no secret of their anarchism over 
 the years, their advocacy of anarchism as an option for the Guomin- 
 dang was quite novel, especially their open advocacy that the sacro- 
 sanct Three People’s Principles could be interpreted from an anarchist 
 perspective. We have no way of knowing if they conveyed their inten- 
 tion to openly promote anarchism in the party to Bi and others in 
 order to draw them into the Guomindang, but by May 1927 they were 
 already doing so. Finally, there is little question that anarchists who 
 joined the Guomindang in 1927 behaved with a rather surprising 
 independence, making no effort to conceal that their goal was to bring 
 anarchism into the Guomindang. Even as they entered the collabora- 
 tion in April 1927, they continued to criticize the nationalist goals of 
 the Guomindang revolution, and they were uncompromising in their 
 advocacy of the cause of urban and rural laborers. Indeed, reading 
 through their protests in 1928 against Guomindang suppression of 
 mass movements (and subsequently of anarchist activity within the 
 party), it is hard not to detect a sense that they felt betrayed not just by 
 the Guomindang but by the anarchists who had brought them into the 
 collaboration as well (see below). 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 57 
 
 The second condition necessary for anarchists to support the Guo- 
 mindang was the Guomindang’s suppression of communism. It may 
 be no coincidence that the meeting in Shanghai at which the anar- 
 chists drew up their plans for activity within the Guomindang fol- 
 lowed shortly on the heels of Jiang Jieshi’s suppression of commu- 
 nism, which was followed by a massacre not only of Communists but 
 of Shanghai laborers as well. This, of course, tainted from the begin- 
 ning the willingness of the anarchists to collaborate with the Guomin- 
 dang, for in their hatred for the Communists they were also willing to 
 close their eyes to the victimization of the very laborers whose cause 
 they hoped to pursue in the Guomindang. It was, however, this prom- 
 ise above all that drew them into the Guomindang, and the suppres- 
 sion of communism provided them with their opportunity. 
 
 Why they should have felt that they themselves would be immune 
 to a similar suppression is difficult to say. Possibly Li and Wu reas- 
 sured them. Or perhaps it was their belief that since they intended to 
 help the laborers organize themselves rather than use labor to further 
 their own political ends, as they believed the Communists had done, 
 they could avoid a similar fate. Shen Zhongjiu’s prophecy that col- 
 laboration with the Guomindang would prove “suicidal” for anar- 
 chists would come true within the year. But in the excitement of the 
 possibility offered by the Guomindang of once again capturing leader- 
 ship of the mass movements, Shen himself was willing to overlook his 
 qualms of three years earlier. 
 
 The Decision to Establish Labor University 
 
 The plans for collaboration were drawn up at a meeting in Shanghai in 
 April in which the participants were Li Shizeng, Wu Zhihui, Bi Xiu- 
 shao, Kuang Husheng, and Lu Hanwen.2¢ The cornerstone of anar- 
 chist activity was to be a labor university to train a new kind of labor 
 leader and a new kind of intellectual, which would transform not only 
 the Guomindang but ultimately the whole nation. Along with Labor 
 University, the anarchists planned to publish a new periodical, Revo- 
 lution (or Revolution Weekly |Geming zhoubao)]; first Shen, and then 
 Bi, would serve as its editors), in which they would propagate anar- 
 chist ideas in a form appropriate to the cooperation with the Guomin- 
 dang. Li and Wu would attend to the official aspects of the coopera- 
 tion (Li also agreed to finance the whole undertaking initially); the 
 younger activists would tend to the operation of the new university, as 
 well as to the publication of the journal. The guiding principle of the 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 58 
 
 cooperation was to be, according to another anarchist active in Shang- 
 hai at the time, “to use the Three People’s Principles as a means to 
 achieve anarchism” (literally, “take the Three People’s Principles as 
 means, anarchism as goal” [yi sanmin zhuyi wei shouduan, yi wuz- 
 hengfu zhuyi wei mubiao)).27 
 
 Labor University was named and modeled after Charleroi Univer- 
 sity in Belgium. It was decided at the meeting that the university 
 would start its operation with a “labor-peasant college” (Laonong 
 xueyuan) to be headed by Shen Zhongjiu, who was in Japan at the time 
 of the meeting. A middle and an elementary school would be added to 
 the institution to secure a basis for recruitment of students. The 
 school would draw its students from laborers, who would be required 
 to pass an admissions test. Among its tasks were to be the training of 
 teachers and labor leaders. French was to be the first foreign language. 
 On Kuang’s suggestion, it was also decided that they should ask Yi 
 Peiji, a Hunanese educator and a close friend of Li and Wu, to become 
 president of the university. Li Shizeng undertook to finance both the 
 university and the publication of Revolution initially. Li and Wu also 
 offered to contact Cai Yuanpei to secure government support for the 
 project. 
 
 The anarchist founders’ conception of the educational goals of La- 
 bor University may be gleaned from the official university statement 
 of goals spelled out a few months later in the National Labor Univer- 
 sity Regulations: 
 
 1. Laborer’s Education. The college is convinced that mental 
 labor and manual labor must be emphasized equally without 
 any imbalance. It is hoped that its students will become genu- 
 inely full mental and manual laborers. Students must under- 
 take manual labor tasks while engaged in academic learning in 
 order to develop labor skills and habits as well as a respect for 
 the spirit of labor. 
 
 2. Revolutionary Education. The college is convinced that revo- 
 lution is evolution and hopes its students will become progres- 
 sive, genuine revolutionaries. Students must study the mean- 
 ing and method of revolution while at the same time they 
 emphasize training for revolution in order to cultivate the 
 virtues of hard work, endurance, struggle, sacrifice, and frater- 
 nity. 
 
 3. Whole Person’s Education. The college is convinced that only 
 with well-rounded development in knowledge, physique, emo- 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 59 
 
 tion, and thought can one become a full person. Therefore, it 
 encourages its students to develop their emotional and think- 
 ing capability besides knowledge and skills. On the one hand, 
 they shall practice organizational autonomy through group 
 living in order to develop the habits of mutual aid and coopera- 
 tion so as to enhance organizational ability. On the other hand, 
 they must pay attention to individual initiative and indepen- 
 dent research in order to promote creativity. 
 
 4. Living Education. The college is convinced that life and educa- 
 tion are inseparable. It hopes to see its students practice sensi- 
 ble living. Students shall not rely overly on book learning and 
 classroom instruction but must acquire more real-life experi- 
 encecs 
 
 Individual statements on the goals of Labor University suggest 
 nevertheless that some crucial differences remained among the anar- 
 chist founders of the university concerning its function as an instru- 
 ment of social change. The younger, nonparty, anarchists were on the 
 whole more radical in their expectations. One of them, Bi Xiushao, 
 wrote in mid-1927: 
 
 Labor University will be the heart of the peasant and labor move- 
 ments in the future. Its goal, and the responsibility it has as- 
 sumed, is to plan for the welfare of workers and peasants. It seeks 
 to overthrow all thinking that aids the bourgeoisie, and to help 
 peasants and workers appreciate the true value of labor. It seeks to 
 eliminate the evils of capitalist society, encourage workers and 
 peasants to overthrow it by means radical or moderate, and to 
 replace it with a social organization that is more rational and 
 consonant with human nature; it seeks to guide the course of the 
 labor movement, stir up the ideals of laborers, raise their level of 
 knowledge, train them in group life [tuanti shenghuo], and to 
 cultivate their ability for self-government.?9 
 
 This class-oriented approach to Labor University contrasts with the 
 more moderate expectations of the Guomindang anarchists and their 
 allies, who perceived the university not as an instrument in the strug- 
 gle of workers and peasants against the bourgeoisie but as a means of 
 raising the educational level of laborers as well as propagating a posi- 
 tive consciousness of labor that would eventually lead to a leveling of 
 differences among classes. While we have no direct evidence of the 
 thinking of Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui on this question, a speech that 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 60 
 
 Cai Yuanpei gave on May 19, 1930, on the campus of Labor University, 
 titled “The Meaning of Labor University and the Responsibility of Its 
 Students,” may be taken as an indication of the motivations that 
 guided the senior members of the collaboration: 
 
 Since China began to adopt the education systems of foreign 
 countries, there has been many a special school of agriculture or 
 industry, or industrial and agricultural departments in univer- 
 sities. Such schools were originally intended to combine learning 
 with practice; but once in China, their nature changed. Those 
 who attended them wanted just to read books without any prac- 
 tice, and quickly became learned gentlemen. The children of 
 peasants who went to school returned home to look down on 
 their parents; the same with workers. Hence a proposal was made 
 to establish a labor university. Although Labor University has 
 much in common with industrial schools, we can say that it is 
 revolutionary because its emphasis is on practice; what goes on in 
 the classroom is merely supplementary to this primary goal... 
 students are not restricted to workers and peasants because even 
 those who come from moneyed backgrounds are welcome if they 
 are willing to labor. ... The premise of Labor University is that 
 students must do practical work, that labor is the only work... . 
 In the future, when labor universities are founded all over the 
 country, they will need the students here to manage them; if 
 students here have not labored, how will they undertake such 
 responsibility? We must strive to labor now so that there is a 
 foundation for the future. ... There is another consideration. The 
 students at Labor University enjoy special privileges of which 
 many on the outside are envious. They say that the privileges of 
 Labor University students are comparable to those of the nobility 
 during the Qing dynasty. We can answer that we produce, that the 
 school wants us to labor so we labor, and having fulfilled our obli- 
 gations enjoy the privileges; that is the answer. If, on the other 
 hand, we just read books and do no practical labor, we will be 
 no different from old-style agricultural and industrial schools, 
 which is not right. The responsibility of Labor University stu- 
 dents is to work; this is true not just for students in the industrial 
 and agricultural labor colleges, but also for students in the social 
 sciences college, who must strive to resolve the social problems 
 of the world, that is, the problem of the distribution of produc- 
 tion. Our ideal is that the world in the future will consist only of 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 61 
 
 peasants and workers. The problem of the peasant and the work- 
 ers is the social problem. We have a social sciences college so that 
 we can train individuals who have a practical understanding of 
 the difficulties of workers and peasants, who can go among the 
 workers and peasant masses to be one with them, and solve their 
 problems. ... In conclusion, labor is the point of departure and the 
 foundation for Labor University; all must labor regardless of col- 
 lege or specialization.2° 
 
 The difference in expectations may be viewed as a function of the 
 differences in the relationship to the Guomindang of the two groups of 
 anarchists. It also points to differences in the appreciation of anar- 
 chism among the anarchists. The Paris anarchists, it will be recalled, 
 had from the beginning assigned to labor in education a practical 
 function of “civilizing” both Chinese workers and intellectuals. The 
 younger anarchists, on the other hand, were more fundamentalist in 
 their commitment to anarchism and took the anarchist message of an 
 immediate social revolution more seriously. The difference would 
 bring the two groups of anarchists into open conflict as early as 1928 
 when it became clear that the Guomindang no longer wished to 
 pursue a social revolution but was, on the contrary, more interested in 
 subjecting mass movements to its political goals than in promoting 
 their autonomous development. 
 
 This is not to say that the Guomindang anarchists who sponsored 
 Labor University had no social vision of their own. While they were 
 loyal to the Guomindang, their goal ultimately was to guide the party 
 toward a reorganization of Chinese society along anarchist lines. How 
 serious they were in their commitments is difficult to say. Certainly 
 their contemporaries took their activities seriously: some in the Guo- 
 mindang believed in the late twenties that anarchists were taking over 
 the party. That their intentions may have been illusory is no measure 
 of their seriousness. The function that they assigned to Labor Univer- 
 sity ultimately derives its significance from the overall vision of so- 
 cial change of which it was a strategic element. 
 
 The Anarchist Plan to Reorganize China 
 and Chinese Education 
 
 When in mid-1927 the Guomindang under Jiang Jieshi established 
 itself as the leader of the national government in Nanjing, Li Shizeng, 
 Wu Zhihui, and Cai Yuanpei found themselves in a position to influ- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 62 
 
 ence the immediate course of events in Chinese politics and educa- 
 tion. As long-standing members of the Guomindang (and close associ- 
 ates of Sun Zhongshan going back to Revolutionary Alliance days), 
 they had assumed the roles of elder statesmen in the party, and were 
 viewed as such by others. Along with Zhang Ji and Zhang Jingjiang 
 (who had also been associated with anarchism early on in Paris and 
 Tokyo), they also had a close relationship with Jiang, who emerged as 
 party leader in 1927. The breakdown of the united front with the 
 Communist Party in 1927, and the anticommunist upsurge in the 
 Guomindang that followed, also undermined the power of the leftists 
 in the party who had been supporters of the united front. The “elder 
 statesmen” who had voiced their opposition to collaboration with the 
 Communists since Sun’s death in early 1925 were in a position in 
 1927 to claim credit for their foresight in opposing the united front 
 and, on that basis, a voice in the reorganization of China under the 
 new regime. While they focused their activities on education, their 
 educational activities are best viewed within the context of an anar- 
 chist-inspired plan to restructure Chinese politics. 
 
 Li Shizeng was in many ways the guiding spirit behind anarchist 
 collaboration with the Guomindang in 1927—28 (even though it was 
 Wu Zhihui who by 1928 drew the fire of opponents as the symbol of an 
 anarchist “takeover” of the party). Li viewed himself at the time as a 
 defender of “the sacred term revolution.”3! An essay that he published 
 starting in the first issue of Geming and continuing for the next few 
 issues, “The Meaning of Present-day Revolution” (Xianjin gemingzhi 
 yiyi), which reads in retrospect as an agenda for anarchist activity in 
 the Guomindang, provides a point of departure for a close examination 
 of the contradictions in anarchist-Guomindang collaboration.32 
 
 Li’s essay was intended to provide a metahistorical justification for 
 an anarchist interpretation of the Three People’s Principles. Since his 
 earliest writings on revolution in New Era in Paris, Li had perceived in 
 revolution the key to progress, which he viewed in biological terms as 
 a universal and natural endowment of humankind in history. He now 
 explained that “present-day revolution” meant nothing other than 
 “present-day progress.” Revolution, as progress, signified the evolu- 
 tion of humankind from bad to good, and simple to complex. 
 
 Such progress was manifested in history in the evolution of human- 
 kind through a number of political stages, of which Li identified four: 
 “monarchical revolution” (junzhu geming, which he identified with 
 a “palace revolution,” gongting geming, and a “revolution of des- 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 63 
 
 potism,” zhuanzheng geming); “revolution for people’s sovereignty” 
 (minquan geming, which he identified with “national revolution,” 
 guojia geming, and “political revolution,” zhengzhi geming), “class 
 revolution” (jieji geming, which he identified with “property revolu- 
 tion,” caichan geming, and “economic revolution,” jingji geming); 
 and, finally, “revolution for people’s livelihood” (minsheng geming, 
 which he identified with “social revolution,” shehui geming, and “a 
 revolution for great unity,” datong geming). These revolutions took 
 several thousand years and followed a certain order. The establish- 
 ment of the Shang and Zhou dynasties in China (the origins of the 
 Chinese state three millennia earlier, in other words) belonged in the 
 first type (stage) of revolution; the American and the French revolu- 
 tions as well as the 1911 revolution in China belonged in the second 
 type; and Lenin’s Marxist revolution in Russia belonged in the third 
 type. In the fourth type of revolution, a revolution for world unity 
 (shijie datong), belonged the revolution for a new era (xin shiji ge- 
 ming) advocated by P.-J. Proudhon and the revolution for people’s 
 livelihood advocated by Sun Zhongshan.*4 
 
 Much of the discussion that followed consisted of a criticism of Bol- 
 shevism and Marxist influence in China. What is of interest here is 
 that, as Li perceived it, what rendered Marxism undesirable was that at 
 the present stage of revolution it was a regressive force, because revo- 
 lution had already moved past the third stage in which Marxism be- 
 longed (overlooking conveniently that China had not yet gone through 
 that stage!). As stages of historical development overlapped, however, 
 the present still required a struggle to eliminate the influence of 
 Marxism. Worldwide, the struggle was between Proudhonism and 
 Marxism, corresponding respectively to the left wing and the right 
 wing in prevailing ideologies of revolution. In China, the correspond- 
 ing struggle was between Sun’s Three People’s Principles and the 
 Communist Party.35 
 
 In earlier days, Li’s anarchism had been derivative of Kropotkin. By 
 1927, however, he had come to view Proudhon as the last word not 
 only in anarchism but in social theory in general. During the next two 
 years, Li emerged in the Guomindang as the foremost advocate of a 
 “federalist” reorganization of China that drew directly on Proudhon’s 
 Principle of Federation.%° It is possible that the switch was a conse- 
 quence of the greater “practicality” of Proudhon’s ideas, since Prou- 
 dhon had directly addressed the question of a new political organiza- 
 tion. An added attraction may have been that Proudhon’s scheme was 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 64 
 
 more moderate in its implications, and therefore more palatable to 
 the Guomindang. Whereas Kropotkin had rejected the state and called 
 for a total social transformation of life at the everyday level, Prou- 
 dhon’s scheme retained the state, albeit in a reorganized form that 
 allowed for greater local autonomy, and therefore liberty.37 
 
 What is of immediate relevance here, however, is that Li established 
 a direct correspondence between anarchism and Sun’s Three People’s 
 Principles. As he put it in one of his footnotes to the essay, “the 
 unification of the followers of the Three People’s Principles and anar- 
 chists to make war on Communists in the present stage of revolution 
 follows from the close correspondence between the Three People’s 
 Principles and anarchism in their fundamentals.”38 He propounded a 
 similar theme in other essays published in Geming. In his “Schools of 
 Political Philosophy” (Zhengzhi zhexuede dangpai guan), published 
 in late 1927, he not only further stressed the affinity between anar- 
 chism and the Three People’s Principles but also made an attempt to 
 bring both into correspondence with premodern schools of thought in 
 China. In this essay he divided political philosophy into three major 
 schools: advocates of “naked force” (giangquan, which anarchists 
 also equated with “authority”) who recognized no morality in poli- 
 tics; advocates of humane politics (renzheng) and peace who sought to 
 combine morality and politics; and advocates of humanitarianism 
 (rendao) and morality who repudiated politics. In China legalists, 
 Confucians, and Daoists (as well as Buddhists), respectively, embod- 
 ied these three schools. In the contemporary world, Fascists and com- 
 munist despotism partook of the spirit of the first; Sun Zhongshan in 
 China and Rousseau in the West partook of the spirit of the second; 
 and Chinese anarchists and Tolstoy and Reclus in the West partook of 
 the spirit of the third. Different groups displayed some overlap in their 
 beliefs but used the alternative arguments to their own ends (for 
 example, Communists used the second and third to create the first). 
 Sun’s Three People’s Principles partook of the spirit of all three but 
 sought to achieve the third, which provided a basis for anarchist 
 cooperation with the Guomindang!3? 
 
 Li’s elaborate reasoning resulted in the advocacy of federalism, 
 through which he (and other anarchists) hoped to shape the future of 
 China under the Guomindang. Judging by available discussions of the 
 problem, Li’s advocacy of “federation” was radical not because he 
 conceived it in particularly novel ways, or because he called for an 
 immediate anarchist reorganization of Chinese society, but because 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 65 
 
 he counterposed it to the preoccupation with centralization that dom- 
 inated the Guomindang (Right and Left) in the late twenties. Li spent 
 more time defending the legitimacy of federation against its critics 
 than in describing with any precision what he himself meant by it, but 
 the outlines of the idea may be gleaned from his references to it as well 
 as from discussions by his supporters. Li made no secret of the anar- 
 chist origins of his advocacy of federation in Proudhon’s Principle of 
 Federation. The particular term he used for “federation,” fenzhi hezuo 
 (literally, divided-governance cooperation), he traced to a combination 
 of (in the French original) “regionalisme” and “federalisme |sic].”4° 
 What this meant in practice was a combination of local and central 
 government; as with Proudhon’s original scheme, this meant a hier- 
 archy of units of government that would extend from villages or 
 districts (xian) to provinces, regional councils, and, finally, the central 
 government. The basic purpose was to decentralize power by dis- 
 tributing sovereignty to regional units, which would then associate 
 freely in a rising hierarchy of government. Some of the anarchists 
 acknowledged that this was a temporary compromise, a means to 
 limit central power until the conditions were realized for the abolition 
 of government altogether. When anarchism was achieved, federation 
 would be worldwide, and the nation-state would become just another 
 local unit in a worldwide hierarchy of governing units. Until that 
 condition arrived, however, they were willing to lodge considerable 
 powers in the hands of the state, including, in addition to military 
 power, the disposition of finances and the management of heavy 
 industries.*! Li himself suggested that his idea of federation was quite 
 flexible and that the exact location of governing units could vary in 
 accordance with the demands of the three-stage (military, tutelage, 
 and constitutional government) revolutionary program of the Guo- 
 mindang.42 
 
 While acknowledging the anarchist inspiration and intentions of 
 his advocacy of federation, Li spared no effort to represent it as an idea 
 that was consistent not only with much of the Chinese political 
 thinking since 1911 but, more important, with Sun Zhongshan’s em- 
 phasis on local government and confederation (lianbang); while the 
 terms were different, the spirit was essentially the same because Sun, 
 too, had believed in the distribution of sovereignty (junquan).43 What 
 had given the idea a bad name was the warlords’ manipulation of 
 federation to perpetuate their own regional power; Li’s idea of fenzhi 
 hezuo, however, was quite different from the warlords’ advocacy of 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 66 
 
 “provincial federation” (liansheng), and very close to Sun’s idea of 
 junquan, because its goal was to achieve local self-government (di- 
 fang zizhi). Li believed local government to be consistent not only 
 with the inclinations of the Chinese people and the best interests of 
 the masses but also with the most advanced thinking in politics. In a 
 statement that may have aroused the ire of his leftist critics in the 
 Guomindang, he observed that the Guomindang had supported local 
 government since its origins, and only in recent years had turned to 
 “centralism” (jiqguan zhuyi) because it had been poisoned by Bol- 
 shevik centralism, which was nothing but a modified czarist “des- 
 potism.”44 At the same time, “co-opting” Sun Zhongshan for his 
 position, he observed that Sun (“the father and the mother of the 
 Guomindang”) had been quite aware of the anarchist origin of his 
 ideas but had not found them to be objectionable in any way.*5 
 
 Li himself did not seem to notice any contradiction in an anarchist 
 adopting the leader of a political party as his “father and mother’! Not 
 all anarchists were happy with his confounding of the anarchist idea 
 of federation with Sun’s and other ideas of federal government that 
 had been current in Chinese politics, especially in the early twenties. 
 One contributor to Geming observed that fenzhi hezuo, or “feder- 
 alisme” (in the French original), was a revolutionary anarchist idea 
 because it was derived from Proudhon, who had been a champion of 
 the common people (pingmin).4¢ But on the whole there seemed to be 
 common agreement among the anarchists on this issue, and, on the 
 surface at least, the controversy the idea of federation aroused was not 
 among anarchists but between anarchists and others in the Guomin- 
 dang. 
 
 Whether or not the educational system the anarchists proposed was 
 a product of this federalist plan for political reorganization is not clear, 
 but it is possible to observe a correspondence between the two. While 
 it was Cai Yuanpei who took the leadership in the reorganization of 
 Chinese education, he collaborated closely with Li Shizeng in 1927— 
 28. The educational system he sought to institute, moreover, was 
 itself federalist in character. 
 
 Cai Yuanpei cannot be viewed as an anarchist in any strict sense of 
 the term, even though he was the author of one of the first anarchist- 
 inclined pamphlets in China. Unlike Li and Wu, who at least had 
 refrained hitherto from assuming political office, he had been the first 
 minister of education under the Republic established in 1912, and if 
 he had an anarchist orientation in later years, it was of a highly 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 67 
 
 abstract and philosophical nature. As noted above, when Hu Shi ac- 
 cused Labor University of being a center for anarchism, Cai vehe- 
 mently rejected the charge. He himself had long been involved in 
 anarchist educational activities in Paris, however, and as chancellor of 
 Beijing University during the May Fourth period had been one of the 
 foremost advocates of integrating labor with learning, of which anar- 
 chists at the time were the foremost proponents. We may observe at 
 any rate that whether Cai’s plans for Chinese education were of anar- 
 chist or more broadly French educational inspiration, there did not 
 seem to be significant conflict between the two. 
 
 In 1927 Cai, with the strong support of Li and Wu, favored a system 
 of education that would foster the cause of individualism and democ- 
 racy free from state and party control or religious and political domi- 
 nation. His experience with education under the warlord regimes had 
 reinforced his lifelong quest, as he put it in the title of an important 
 essay, for the “Independence of Education.”47 In this essay (published 
 in March 1922), Cai had already proposed a federalist notion of educa- 
 tion to achieve these goals. According to this plan, the nation was to 
 be divided into semiautonomous “university districts,” each one to be 
 headed by a university that would have administrative control over all 
 elementary and secondary education within its jurisdiction. Author- 
 ity within the university would be decentralized as well, with the 
 president chosen by a faculty senate. Relationships between univer- 
 sity districts would be managed by a committee consisting of univer- 
 sity presidents which would coordinate regional politics up to the 
 national level. If not of anarchist origin, the plan was nevertheless 
 quite consistent with anarchist ideals of decentralization and federal- 
 ism.48 
 
 It was such a plan that Cai and his anarchist collaborators adopted 
 in 1927 to reorganize Chinese education. Despite some opposition 
 from those in the Guomindang who favored a unified national system 
 of education (and who would prevail in the end), they were able to 
 persuade the party leadership in 1927 to agree to the plan. On July a, 
 1927, the new national government formally established a new educa- 
 tional system modeled after the French pattern of regional university 
 districts: the University Council (Daxue yuan).49 According to the 
 University Council system, China was to be divided into ten autono- 
 mous university districts (daxue qu), each integrated in the manage- 
 ment of education under the leadership of the president of the leading 
 university in the district. The coordination of the districts was to 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 68 
 
 be placed in the hands of a Republic of China University Council 
 (Zhonghua minguo daxue yuan). In mid-June, before its official estab- 
 lishment, Cai was appointed head of the University Council. Among 
 the members of the council were Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui.5° 
 
 The University Council provided the broader administrative con- 
 text for Labor University, which was endowed with key significance 
 in this educational reorganization. In the inaugural issue of the offi- 
 cial bulletin of the University Council in January 1928, Cai stated the 
 basic goals of the new educational system: to carry out scientific 
 research and universalize the scientific method, to promote cultiva- 
 tion of habits of labor, and to encourage interest in the arts—goals 
 with which he had been associated since his days at Beijing Univer- 
 sity. Labor University was to be crucial to achieving the second of 
 these goals. As he put it in April 1928, “The Academia Sinica has been 
 established to develop scientific research scholarship. Labor Univer- 
 sity has been established to promote labor education. The Academies 
 of Music and the Arts have been established to realize education in 
 esthetics. These three objectives are basic to our advocacy of the 
 University Council system.’’5! 
 
 The charter of Labor University stated that the university sought to 
 be “the educational organ of the laborers” in order to “raise the cul- 
 tural level of peasants and urban workers, conduct research and ex- 
 periment in social welfare undertakings that benefit these two groups 
 of people, train leaders of organized labor and the peasant movement, 
 facilitate the thorough liberation of laborers, and create conditions for 
 the realization of the Principle of People’s Livelihood.’”52 Yeh Wen- 
 hsin has observed, with justification, that “instead of actual engage- 
 ment in revolutionary undertakings at the head of working class and 
 peasant followers, the students were directed to join the laborers in 
 the factory and in the field, ‘in order to cultivate manual skills and 
 learn to respect hard work. . . .’ Instead of preparing its students for 
 action, the university sought to transform the making of a social revo- 
 lution into a process of cultivating personal revolutionary virtues.’”°3 
 Indeed, the charter of the university stated explicitly that “revolution- 
 ary goals” were to be achieved through “evolutionary means.” 
 
 This nonrevolutionary approach to the question of labor was not 
 merely a consequence of the anarchists’ wishes to adjust their goals to 
 the political situation, but was also consistent with the long-standing 
 belief of the anarchists (especially of the founders of Labor University) 
 that labor learning provided a means to achieve a revolution peace- 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 69 
 
 fully.54 Wu Zhihui had stated as early as 1918 that the goal of edu- 
 cating laborers was to harmonize relations between labor and capital; 
 at the time of the founding of the university, he was the most vocifer- 
 ous advocate of a “revolution of all the people” (quanmin geming), 
 which he used to refute communist and left-Guomindang advocacy 
 of class politics.5> There is little reason to think, on the evidence of 
 their statements of earlier years, that Cai or Li disagreed with him. 
 Labor University was intended not to foment class conflict by pursu- 
 ing working-class interests, but rather to harmonize class interests 
 through the socially leveling effects of the universal practice of labor. 
 
 This was obviously a naive hope in the absence of political and 
 cultural power to defend any gains in social leveling through the 
 practice of labor, and, more important, to universalize it to the point 
 where it could be socially significant. Whether or not it is therefore to 
 be dismissed as nonrevolutionary out of hand is another matter, for 
 the abolition of the distinction between manual and mental labor 
 addressed a basic question of the division of labor in society, which, as 
 Karl Marx himself believed, was key to the creation of a truly revolu- 
 tionary society. Labor University did not lead to radical consequences, 
 but the social vision that informed it was quite radical, especially 
 when viewed within the context of the federalist plan for reorganizing 
 China of which it was a key component. Its contemporary opponents, 
 at any rate, thought it sufficiently subversive to exert considerable 
 effort in undermining it—even after its original intentions had been 
 abandoned and it had been rendered into an instrument for perpetuat- 
 ing the social status quo. It also continued to the very end, as we shall 
 argue below, to have a radicalizing effect on its students. 
 
 By 1930 the University Council was already a thing of the past, and 
 so were the ambitious visions of revolutionary change that had ini- 
 tially motivated the founders of Labor University. While the commit- 
 ment to labor as a fundamental goal of education gradually assumed a 
 more academic guise, it remained a basic goal of the social mission of 
 the university. A speech given in early 1930 by Gong Xiangming, a 
 Belgian-educated sociologist and the newly appointed chair of the 
 sociology department, elaborated: 
 
 Our future enterprise is labor enterprise, and our present aca- 
 demic studies are the preparation for this labor enterprise. How 
 [are we] to prepare for this future enterprise? We should investi- 
 gate and study the various labor enterprises that exist in China 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 70 
 
 now. Outside the university, we should conduct an investigation 
 of all the relevant aspects (such as number and size of the labor 
 force, their living conditions, their wages and income, their skills 
 and productivity, labor-capital relations, and industrial develop- 
 ment). We must be very detailed and careful in our investigation 
 in order to ensure accuracy. Within the university, we should 
 study the data collected from these investigations to understand 
 their positive and negative aspects as well as their causes and 
 consequences so that we could come up with proposals for im- 
 provement of the labor situation. Because our research methodol- 
 ogies are systematic, and our data accurate, hence our studies 
 would be thorough and refined. 
 
 We all know that our Labor University is patterned after the 
 Charleroi Labor University in Belgium. This Charleroi Labor Uni- 
 versity was established by the labor elements themselves. Their 
 labor enterprises also include many organizations and syndicates 
 formed according to occupation and location. These organs are 
 affiliated among themselves with many people responsible for 
 their management. They form numerous cooperatives of various 
 kinds—for industry, for production, for consumers, and for pur- 
 chase. These cooperatives are so powerful that they dominate 
 certain sectors of enterprise in Belgium, and they employ a sizable 
 army of workers. Indeed, these kinds of mutual-aid organizations, 
 cooperatives, and labor education institutions need many kinds of 
 talents in large numbers. If we have these kinds of enterprise in 
 China, our graduates should have no problem in their career 
 prospects. Even if we establish another labor university, we proba- 
 bly cannot supply enough graduates to meet the demands. In this 
 sense, you are all pioneers and vanguards in this field.°° 
 
 The same commitment was confirmed in a second speech by Zhang 
 Yousan, chairman of the education department, that explained Laoda’s 
 functions in labor education: 
 
 The two terms “labor” and “education” cannot be separated. 
 Herbert Spencer advocated the education for moral, academic, 
 and physical development with equal emphasis on physical edu- 
 cation and on the character and knowledge of the students. Yet, 
 physical education could not be attained without manual labor. 
 Furthermore, the true essence of education rests with the initia- 
 tive of the learner; these would not be real education without 
 work. 
 
Founding and Goals of Labor University 71 
 
 As for labor education, that is education for the specific pur- 
 pose of improving the life of laborers. Strictly speaking, only 
 laborers (present and future laborers) are entitled to receive an 
 education. Only this kind of education achieved through labor 
 has the most value and most deserves to be promoted. The estab- 
 lishment of Labor University is an affirmation of such an ideal. 
 
 As for the title of Labor University | Laodong daxue], I do hope 
 that these four characters that make up the title can be elimi- 
 nated. Whenever a special term or adjective is prefixed to a com- 
 mon term, that means the compound term denotes a special, 
 particularistic object which is out of the ordinary. “University” 
 (daxue) is acommon term, but with the specific label of the two 
 characters “labor” [/aodong]|, this means that other ordinary uni- 
 versities do not care much about labor. Of the more than one 
 dozen national universities and scores of private universities in 
 China today, there is only a single Labor University. Thus, Labor 
 University is an exception to the norm. Ordinary people may 
 regard this as being normal but I take it as being abnormal. 
 Hopefully the day may come when all universities will take labor 
 as an objective, and a means. Then there will not be any nonlabor 
 university, and furthermore, any nonlabor education. By then, 
 this term “Labor University” will have no need to exist any 
 longer.°7 
 
4 The Structure 
 of Labor 
 University: 
 Physical Plant 
 and 
 
 Curriculum 
 
 The formal process leading to the establishment of Labor University 
 can be traced back to late April 1927, following the Guomindang’s 
 suppression of Chinese communist elements and leftist organs. The 
 closing down of two public factories in the Jiangwan suburb of Shang- 
 hai due to lack of funds presented the anarchists within the Guomin- 
 dang leadership with a golden opportunity to actualize their dreams 
 of labor education. These two factories, a “factory for the wander- 
 ers” (youmin) founded in 1919 for juvenile delinquents and home- 
 less youth, and a “model factory” (mofan) for the urban poor estab- 
 lished in 1922, had ceased operation after the Guomindang (Gmp) 
 forces took Shanghai, thus throwing over six hundred workers, ap- 
 prentices, and homeless youth into unemployment. In response to a 
 petition to the Gmp Political Council’s Shanghai branch for finan- 
 cial support to keep the two factories open, Li Shizeng in his capacity 
 as an Education Committee member of the Political Council pro- 
 posed to use these two factories as the foundation to start a labor 
 university. Li’s proposal was supported by other Guomindang leaders, 
 who decided at the ninetieth meeting of the Central Political Council 
 on May 9, 1927, to establish the National Labor University with 
 these two factories as a core campus. At the same time, the coun- 
 cil also appointed Cai Yuanpei, Li Shizeng, Zhang Jingjiang, Chu 
 Minyi, Kuang Husheng (founder of Lida College), Zhang Xingbai, and 
 five others to form the eleven-member Labor University Preparation 
 Committee. ! 
 
 In the early summer of 1927, financial and administrative prepara- 
 tions for the founding of Labor University began under the direc- 
 tion of the committee headed by Cai (who was also chairman of the 
 newly established Republic of China University Council, the highest 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 73 
 
 national education administrative organ). A charter, organizational 
 plans, and sets of regulations for Labor University were adopted, bud- 
 gets were drawn up ($10,000 per month for the two colleges, another 
 $1,000 for the preparation office, starting from June 1927), and teach- 
 ers and staff were appointed for the engineering faculty. They concen- 
 trated their efforts on designing the curriculum, reviving the factories, 
 and remodeling the plants into educational facilities.” 
 
 Basic to the founding concept of the university was the recruitment 
 of students from laborer and peasant backgrounds in order to put an 
 end to the monopolizing of higher education by the wealthier classes. 
 To this end, it was decided that all students would be “publicly sup- 
 ported” (gongfei), and the government was to pay for their education.? 
 The university initially would be comprised of two colleges: a College 
 of Industrial Labor (Laogong xueyuan) and a College of Agricultural 
 Labor (Laonong xueyuan). Later, in July 1929, a College of Social 
 Sciences (Shehui kexue xueyuan) was added to satisfy government 
 regulations which stipulated that an institution of higher education 
 must have a minimum of three academic faculties to qualify for 
 university status; the choice of the social sciences college also re- 
 flected the anarchist belief that social science and social revolution 
 were inseparable.4 The original plan also included cadre training (xun- 
 lian) and teacher training (“normal,” shifan) components in the uni- 
 versity with an eye to the training of labor leaders. Eventually, elemen- 
 tary and middle schools were to be added to create a comprehensive 
 educational institution. 
 
 Labor University was formally established in early September 1927. 
 On September 4, 1927, the Hunanese educator (and past president of 
 Hunan First Normal School in Changsha) Yi Peiji was appointed 
 president of the new university. On September 19, 1927, Labor Univer- 
 sity opened its doors to instruction for some 400 students (under- 
 graduates, intermediate level, and normal training enrollees) in the 
 first college, the industrial labor college, headed by the Zhejiang anar- 
 cho-syndicalist Shen Zhongjiu. Preparations for the agricultural labor 
 college were completed the following month with the purchase of 
 additional land, and by November that too was in operation with its 
 own campus. Still another campus was established in summer 1929 
 for the social sciences college. By mid-1929 the other components of 
 the university were in place, and it was in full operation. As of mid- 
 1928, the industrial and agricultural labor colleges together had a total 
 of 289 undergraduate students.® 
 
 The haste with which the university was established, and weak- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 74 
 
 nesses in the students it recruited—who fell short of initial anticipa- 
 tions in both numbers and quality—may be taken as an indication of 
 impatience on the part of its founders that in the long run would 
 undermine the new institution. The impression is confirmed by the 
 expansion of the physical plant, academic structural changes, and 
 curricular alterations over the next three years that kept the univer- 
 sity in a constant state of flux. At its peak, the total undergraduate 
 enrollment at the university remained very small (about 400 stu- 
 dents), which would provide its opponents with a powerful argument 
 that neither in the number nor in the quality of its students did Labor 
 University justify the enormous investment of educational funds that 
 it received—which in terms of per capita expenditures exceeded even 
 that of China’s premier educational institutions, Beijing and Qinghua 
 universities.° 
 
 On the other hand, the very same facts testify to the power initially 
 of the Guomindang anarchists and their allies, who were able to move 
 quickly in 1927 to secure government support for the university and 
 to oversee its expansion for the next three years. In the end, the demise 
 of the university had as much to do with their loss of power as with 
 any inherent weakness in its educational structure. It is also likely 
 that their realization of the transience of the power they commanded 
 endowed their undertaking with a particular urgency. 
 
 Whatever the case may be, it is arguable that for all its deficiencies 
 from an orthodox educational perspective, Labor University quickly 
 achieved prominence both in terms of the resources it commanded 
 and for its curricular innovations; and that this, rather than its lack of 
 potential as an educational institution, brought to it the political 
 attention which in the end would result in its downfall. 
 
 Physical Facilities 
 
 Initially, Labor University used as its campus the two model factories 
 located to the west of Jiangwan railway station in a suburb of Shanghai 
 (the location, presently, of Shanghai Finance University [Shanghai 
 caijing daxue}|). The factory premises were extensively renovated in 
 1927 to become the facilities of the industrial labor college. The 
 agricultural labor college undergraduate courses and the intermedi- 
 ate-level high-school classes were also held here prior to the establish- 
 ment of their own campuses. In early 1928 the university took over 
 the campus of the People’s College of Shanghai (which had been shut 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 75 
 
 down in spring 1927), which provided the facilities for the social 
 sciences college when it began instruction in the fall of 1929.7 
 
 In September 1928 a high school was formally established, with 
 plans for locating it on a new campus to be constructed on 70 acres of 
 newly purchased land in the Wusong district. Meanwhile, the agricul- 
 tural labor college had purchased 24 acres of farmland to be used as an 
 experimental farm. This farm, however, was too remote from the 
 main campus and of inadequate size, and the university petitioned the 
 national government to acquire a larger and more conveniently lo- 
 cated plot of land (this plot of over 315 acres had been confiscated from 
 the defeated Jiangsu warlord Sun Quanfang and set aside for the Na- 
 tionalist army to build an arsenal). The petition was granted in June 
 1929. Because this new farm was located near the university’s high 
 school, the high school and the agricultural labor college switched 
 sites. Hence the college was located near the experimental farm in 
 Wusong and separated from the main campus in Jiangwan. Thereafter, 
 the main campus of Labor University housed the College of Engineer- 
 ing (the former College of Industrial Labor) and the College of Social 
 Sciences; in mid-1931, when the high school closed down, its facili- 
 ties were turned over to the College of Social Sciences.® 
 
 Not only did the three faculties of Labor University locate on two 
 (later, three) separate sites in order to be adjacent to their respective 
 experimental farms and model factories, but construction of new and 
 renovation of existing facilities continued almost without interrup- 
 tion from the summer of 1927 to the summer of 1931. While possibly 
 confusing to outsiders, this musical chairs of physical facilities was 
 regarded by teachers, administrators, and students at the university as 
 a clear and positive sign of progress.” In addition to the existing 
 facilities that it acquired, the university built in these years new 
 teaching blocks, several dormitories, canteens, a clinic, an auditorium 
 (for 1,600), a swimming pool, and a gymnasium. The agricultural 
 labor college added an extensive range of facilities, including well- 
 equipped chemistry and biology laboratories and factories for farm 
 tools and products. The 350-acre farm in Wusong consisted of eleven 
 sections for planting rice, wheat, cotton, and beans, areas for sericul- 
 ture, forestry, animal husbandry, and bee-keeping, as well as units for 
 testing new species of crops. The two model factories attached to the 
 industrial labor college had previously run more than thirteen work- 
 shops, of which only two (printing and tin can manufacturing) were 
 still functional when the university acquired them. Under the man- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 76 
 
 agement of the university as Labor University Factory, workshops in 
 machinery, rubber production, carpet weaving, and the production of 
 sailing gear, as well as the foundry, were revived, and new production 
 lines were added. As integral parts of the university, the factories and 
 the experimental farms comprised a sizable operation, at one time 
 employing some two thousand full-time workers. 
 
 Furthermore, there was a Labor University Publication and Transla- 
 tion Bureau, and the university had a sizable library which by the end 
 of 1931 had accumulated some 42,500 titles in Chinese and Western 
 languages. In addition to facilities for the extracurricular activities of 
 its students (among which theatrical productions were quite promi- 
 nent), the university’s substantial outreach and adult education pro- 
 grams ran a school for the masses, a mass tea garden, and a mass 
 movie cinema.!° Considering that at its height Labor University en- 
 rolled only about 400 undergraduates, it is hardly surprising that 
 its multitude of subsidiary programs and substantial physical plant 
 should arouse envy among its competitors on the Chinese educa- 
 tional scene. Indeed, as described in The General Development of 
 Labor University, which was issued to commemorate its second anni- 
 versary, the university had grown spectacularly in two short years, by 
 1929 reaching a total campus area of over 700 acres and total en- 
 rollment of some 1,400 students in its undergraduate, normal, high 
 school, and primary school divisions.!! 
 
 Academic Structure 
 
 When the National Labor University formally opened in September 
 1927 there were two major academic components—an industrial la- 
 bor college and an agricultural labor college. Within the industrial 
 labor college, two types of courses were offered for the undergradu- 
 ate and intermediate-level programs. Each program consisted of two 
 classes with 50 students. In addition, the college offered two normal 
 education classes and two cadre training classes, each comprising 50 
 students. The initial total enrollment of the industrial labor college’s 
 first classes, which started in mid-September 1927, was 400. By the 
 summer of 1928, students in the normal and training classes had 
 already graduated after one year of course work. The 100 sophomores 
 in its undergraduate program were then divided into the Departments 
 of Labor Education, Industrial Sociology, and Mechanical Engineer- 
 ing; and in autumn 1928, anew Department of Civil Engineering was 
 added with a class of 50 freshmen. A year later, anew Department of 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 77 
 
 Electrical Engineering was established with another 45 freshmen. 
 Meanwhile, in October 1927 the agricultural labor college recruited a 
 class of 50 freshmen who began instruction a month later. An addi- 
 tional 150 new students were recruited for the undergraduate and 
 intermediate-level courses the following spring. In the summer of 
 1928 the college was further expanded and formally divided into the 
 agriculture, horticulture, and agrochemistry departments, with a to- 
 tal enrollment of 100 undergraduates. In January 1929 it added a 
 Department of Social Sciences. The combined total enrollment of the 
 two colleges reached 289 undergraduates in the second academic year 
 of 1928—29.!2 (While this figure is small, it was not strikingly small by 
 contemporary standards in Chinese universities.) 
 
 Further expansion and structural rationalization took place in sum- 
 mer 1929 when the Departments of Labor Education and Industrial 
 Sociology were detached from the industrial labor college and the 
 Department of Social Sciences was removed from the agricultural 
 labor college. These three departments were transferred to the new 
 College of Social Sciences, which absorbed 20 education majors and 
 28 sociology majors from the industrial labor college, and 51 social 
 science students (35 with emphasis on economics and 16 with em- 
 phasis on sociology) from the agricultural labor college. In addition to 
 the Departments of Sociology and Education, the social sciences col- 
 lege also started a new Department of Economics, which, after taking 
 in the 35 sophomores from agricultural labor, also recruited a class of 
 60 freshmen. The total enrollment in the College of Social Sciences 
 reached 159 for its inaugural academic year of 1929—30.!3 
 
 The addition of the College of Social Sciences in July 1929 com- 
 pleted the tripartite higher-education components of the university. 
 At the start of its third academic year, in 1929, Labor University’s 
 academic programs were organized along the lines of nine teaching 
 departments in three colleges. Under the College of Engineering (the 
 new name for the College of Industrial Labor since June 1929, as 
 ordered by the Ministry of Education to conform to official nomen- 
 clature) there were the Departments of Civil, Mechanical, and Electri- 
 cal Engineering. In the College of Agriculture (renamed from College 
 of Agricultural Labor) there were the Departments of Agrochemis- 
 try, Horticulture, and Agriculture. The College of Social Sciences 
 included the Departments of Sociology, Education, and Economics. 
 These departments all offered four-year courses leading to the bache- 
 lor’s degree with a minimum requirement of 168 credits, or 21 credits 
 per semester.!4 Due to the lack of resources and time for expansion, 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 78 
 
 the envisioned addition of new departments (history, political science, 
 chemical engineering, architecture, sericulture, biology) to the three 
 colleges never materialized.!° 
 
 In September 1928 the intermediate-level courses were reorganized 
 into a high school with a sizable campus (later exchanged with the 
 College of Agriculture). In addition, Labor University also set up three 
 primary schools: the first, started in September 1927, was located in 
 Jiangwan near the main campus; the second began in January 1928 
 and was attached to the agricultural labor college; and the third was 
 founded in July 1927 near the experimental farm. During 1929—30 the 
 Labor University High School had some four hundred students while 
 the primary schools had a combined total of four hundred students. !° 
 Thus, from the very beginning, the Labor University instructional 
 system performed the full three-tier functions of national education 
 by offering sixteen years of instruction from first grade to undergradu- 
 ate senior-year level. Furthermore, there were classes in adult educa- 
 tion for more than a thousand workers and peasants as outreach 
 programs formed a major component of the university’s social service 
 to the community at the grass-roots level. 
 
 Indeed, in terms of its structure and educational objectives, Labor 
 University was designed to be different from ordinary universities 
 which emphasized purely academic teaching and research scholar- 
 ship. This was clearly reflected in its factories and farms, which 
 afforded students opportunities for manual labor—a unique feature 
 that set it apart from other universities in China. 
 
 Curriculum and Learning 
 
 With its extraacademic purposes and special social service functions, 
 the overall curriculum design and study patterns at Labor University 
 differed from other Chinese universities in several major aspects. As a 
 contemporary statement noted, “Instead of theoretical immersion in 
 questions of social justice, the students of Labor University were 
 instructed to conduct social investigations and devise welfare pro- 
 grams that would bring tangible benefits to real groups of laborers in 
 the surrounding areas of the university. Instead of engagement in 
 revolutionary mobilization at the head of working-class and peasant 
 followers, Labor University students were directed to join the laborers 
 in the field in order to develop manual skills and learn to respect hard 
 work.’’17 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 79 
 
 A typical schoolday at Labor University was divided into classroom 
 lectures and studies in the morning and manual work in the factory or 
 on the farm under the guidance of fieldwork supervisors in the after- 
 noon. While students in engineering operated machinery in the fac- 
 tory and social sciences undergraduates worked as printers in the 
 printing press, those in agriculture plowed the land, dug irrigation 
 ditches, and planted crops. In addition, social sciences students con- 
 ducted surveys and undertook social services in the nearby villages 
 and industrial neighborhoods. On average, every student performed 
 two to three hours of labor service per day in addition to the academic 
 course workload. As a former student recalled, this type of study 
 program “enabled the students to use both their hands and brains, it 
 combined book learning with practical work into an integrated whole 
 experience” and, in the habits it nourished, “indeed served to benefit a 
 person for the rest of his life.” 18 
 
 The strong emphasis on manual labor and empirical work at Labor 
 University was reflected in its grading system. Scores from fieldwork 
 could count for up to 4o percent of the student’s total grade, and actual 
 work performance in the factory or on the farm could very well deter- 
 mine one’s academic standing and advancement prospects. Some stu- 
 dents were quite proud of the fruits of their physical labor. For in- 
 stance, students who labored on the farms of the agricultural college 
 produced exceptionally good crops of tomato and cauliflower from 
 species imported from France which were sold to Shanghai restau- 
 rants. The printing press not only produced numerous kinds of on- 
 campus publications and official forms for Laoda, but it became well 
 known for its color printing of paper goods for commercial use in 
 Shanghai.!9 
 
 According to a 1928 comparative survey of the actual teaching 
 patterns at eight national universities in China (Central University in 
 Nanjing, Beijing University, Qinghua [Tsinghua] University, Wuhan 
 University, Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, Tongji University, and 
 Communications University [both in Shanghai], besides Labor Uni- 
 versity), the 289 undergraduates enrolled in the seven academic de- 
 partments of the two colleges at Labor University were provided with 
 a total of seventy-six courses. (Of these, fifty-three were required core 
 subjects and twelve were electives.) These seventy-six courses were 
 only a fraction of the much wider range of three hundred to five 
 hundred courses offered at the other six national universities except 
 Tongji, which was mainly a medical school and engineering college 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 80 
 
 and enrolled only 182 students. The total period of classroom teach- 
 ing at Labor University amounted to 180 hours per week, with an 
 additional 25 hours for laboratory work, again considerably less than 
 in the other six national universities except Tongji.2° 
 
 Two years later, a contemporary observer reported that the initially 
 very marked difference in curriculum design between Labor Univer- 
 sity and other more typical universities gradually blurred as time 
 went by. He further pointed out that with the addition of a social 
 sciences college in 1929, the courses offered by Laoda’s three colleges 
 soon became quite similar to those in other universities, their only 
 real difference being the several hours per week of required manual 
 labor at Laoda. This critic, however, conceded that a very strong 
 academic atmosphere prevailed at Labor University.2! In fact, Laoda’s 
 academic structure and curriculum design did undergo a series of 
 changes during the first three years of instruction. 
 
 The Basic Curriculum, 1927—28 
 
 Despite substantial changes in administrative structure and faculty, 
 there was a remarkable continuity of academic emphasis and overall 
 similarity in the range and scope of courses during the 1927-30 pe- 
 riod. The following list and description of course offerings for the 
 Laoda’s inaugural classes in autumn 1927 can be a useful basis for 
 comparison and contrast with later developments:?” 
 
 I. Compulsory Courses 
 Course Credit* Description 
 
 1. Chinese 14/A4 emphasis on mean- 
 ing and value of 
 “people’s litera- 
 ture” 
 
 2. Esperanto 16/A2 + 4 to attain reading, 
 writing, and spo- 
 ken proficiency 
 within two years 
 
 *In the Credit column, I stands for industrial labor college; A stands for agricul- 
 tural labor college. The first number in this column refers to credits for the course 
 taken in the first year, and the second number, following the +, denotes the credits 
 for the course taken in the second year in the college. 
 
Io. 
 
 JEG. 
 
 19), 
 1.3} 
 14. 
 
 Physical Plant and Curriculum 
 
 Course 
 
 . French 
 
 . Sociology 
 
 . Economics 
 
 . Social Issues 
 
 . History of Socialism 
 
 . History of International 
 
 Labor Movement 
 
 . Three People’s Principles 
 
 History of the Republic 
 
 of China 
 
 Contemporary World 
 
 History 
 
 Social Psychology 
 Social Ethics 
 Mathematics 
 
 Credit* 
 
 Io/Ar2 + 7 
 
 I2/A2 
 
 13/A2 
 
 18/A2 + 2 
 
 Ir0/Aq4 + 3 
 
 OA Se 2) 
 
 I2/A2 
 
 13/A2 
 
 13/A2 
 
 lay Aen 
 In/A + 1 
 I2/A2 + 2 
 
 81 
 
 Description 
 
 intensive training 
 for reading knowl- 
 edge of social sci- 
 ence texts 
 included history of 
 sociology 
 
 included economic 
 history and history 
 of economic 
 thoughts 
 
 included labor 
 problems, rural 
 problems, and 
 women’s problems 
 included history of 
 social thought and 
 history of social 
 movements 
 
 theory and practice 
 of the principles, 
 history of the Guo- 
 mindang 
 
 with emphasis on 
 economic, politi- 
 cal, cultural, so- 
 cial, and diplomat- 
 ic problems 
 
 with emphasis on 
 socioeconomic, 
 cultural, political, 
 and diplomatic de- 
 velopments since 
 
 I9IS 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 82 
 
 Course Credit * Description 
 15. Physics I2/A + 2 
 16. Chemistry I2/A + 2 
 
 For College of Industrial Labor 
 17. Introduction to Engineering 2 
 18. Mechanical Drawing I 
 19. Principles of Mechanics 2 
 
 For College of Agricultural Labor 
 20. Introduction to Agriculture 2 + 
 21. Physiography + 
 29), Soil 
 23. Fertilizer 
 24. Plant Diseases & Pests 
 25. Farm Implements 
 30. Survey 
 31. Biology 2 
 32. Agricultural Economics a) 
 
 YvoRe YP NY NW WwW YN 
 
 t++4+Ht+4+ 4+ 
 
 Il. Elective Courses 
 
 33. Political Science 
 34. History of Political 
 Thought 
 35. Finance 
 36. Introduction to Juris- 
 prudence 
 37. Introduction to Philosophy 
 38. Introduction to Engineering (for agriculture students only) 
 39. Biology (for industrial labor students only) 
 40. English, German, or other 
 foreign languages 
 
 According to the National Labor University Regulations and Cata- 
 logue for 1927, these courses formed the first phase (two years) of 
 general education in a three-year undergraduate program. The final 
 one-year phase was a specialized curriculum in which third-year stu- 
 dents could choose their specialization in one of the three proposed 
 academic areas—education, technology, or social enterprise. This 
 final-year curriculum was yet to be developed when Laoda’s inaugural 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 83 
 
 industrial labor college class began instruction in September 1927. 
 Two months later, when the agricultural labor college started its first 
 class, a similar curriculum was adopted. The only real differences 
 between the two colleges were in the professional and specialized 
 subjects. 
 
 The 1927 Regulations and Catalogue described the pedagogical 
 objectives of the university’s curriculum as stressing the “relevance 
 between academic scholarship and social application.” In particular, 
 the first-phase program aimed at “enabling the students to under- 
 stand: (1) the world situation and the present conditions in Chinese 
 society, as well as their own responsibilities in the relationship be- 
 tween labor and the present society; and (2) the direction and approach 
 of social activities so as to develop their own future course of action.” 
 The final-phase curriculum then “prepared the students with the 
 skills and capabilities necessary for their course of action.”23 Besides 
 formal academic studies, extracurricular undertakings such as de- 
 bates, public speaking, social surveys and research, reading, and re- 
 porting were encouraged to develop students’ abilities and initiative in 
 real-life situations of social service. Frequent invited lectures on ma- 
 jor issues and special problems by outside experts were another fea- 
 ture of the curriculum.?4 
 
 The basic curriculum for the academic year 1927—28 listed above 
 makes it clear that Laoda in its initial days was indeed different, even 
 unique, among Chinese universities in terms of academic approach 
 and emphasis. For instance, several courses featured in the Laoda 
 program were certainly not common or regular offerings in other 
 tertiary educational institutions in China at that time/ The inclusion 
 of Esperanto as a regular and mandatory subject (six credits for two 
 academic years) was an unmistakably clear sign of the strong anar- 
 chist influence shaping the Laoda curriculum. Of course, the fact that 
 the founding deans of both the Colleges of Industrial Labor and Agri- 
 cultural Labor (Shen Zhongjiu and Guo Xujing) as well as the first 
 provost of the university (Huang Lingshuang) were all well-known 
 anarchists was definitely a major factor. Together, they occupied the 
 three most important academic-administrative positions at Laoda and 
 were responsible for curriculum design and instructional require- 
 ments. 
 
 The second obvious, and only slightly less unique, feature in 
 Laoda’s basic curriculum was the French language requirement (nine- 
 teen to twenty credits for two academic years). Other than the French 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 84 
 
 Jesuit missionary-run Aurora University in Shanghai (where French 
 was the medium of instruction) and the Université Franco-Chinois in 
 Beijing (which was founded by Li Shizeng and other French-educated 
 intellectuals with an overseas extension campus, the Institut Franco- 
 Chinois in Lyon), Laoda was the only university in China with French 
 as the second language (or the third, if one could properly consider 
 Esperanto a foreign language). This, just like the required course on 
 Esperanto, reflected the French education and anarchist experiences 
 of some of Laoda’s founders like Li Shizeng and Chu Minyi as well as 
 the lingering influence of the diligent-work frugal-study program. In 
 addition, the conscious and purposeful patterning after Charleroi La- 
 bor University in Belgium could be another major reason for this 
 mandatory French-language component in Laoda. 
 
 However, the characteristics that most distinguished Laoda’s cur- 
 riculum as socially relevant and progressive were the courses on So- 
 cial Issues, History of Socialism, History of International Labor Move- 
 ment, and Contemporary World History. Together, they accounted for 
 a sizable part of the curriculum (twenty-three credits for industrial 
 labor students and eighteen credits for agriculture undergraduates). 
 These were in scope and nature definitely much more than the usual 
 introductory-level courses found in the curriculum of an engineering 
 or agriculture school. In Laoda’s context, these courses were intended 
 to constitute collectively the ideological underlining of the academic 
 training in engineering or agriculture as preparation for leadership of 
 social revolution among Chinese labor and peasantry. 
 
 Engineering Curriculum, 1929-30 
 
 A closer examination of the actual course offerings and enrollment 
 figures in a “typical” semester at Labor University will be highly 
 illustrative of its overall curriculum design and pedagogical approach 
 in individual academic departments. In terms of academic structure, 
 faculty strength, and student enrollment, as well as the general atmo- 
 sphere at Laoda, the 1929—30 academic year offers a glimpse of the 
 functioning of the university at its peak. In this regard, the official 
 weekly bulletin, Labor University Weekly (Laoda zhoukan) during 
 this period is a useful guide and authoritative source. According to a 
 report printed in the March 8, 1930, issue (vol. 3, no. 2) of Labor 
 University Weekly, enrollment statistics for the six departments in 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 85 
 
 the two colleges on Laoda’s main campus during the 1930 spring 
 semester were:2° 
 
 Enrollment 
 
 College of Engineering 
 
 Civil Engineering 47 (sophomores) 
 
 Mechanical Engineering 24 (juniors) 
 
 Electrical Engineering 45 (freshmen) 
 College of Social Sciences 
 
 Economics 22 (juniors) 
 
 Economics 33 (freshmen) 
 
 Education 33 (juniors) 
 
 Sociology 33 (juniors) 
 
 The same report also listed the engineering courses offered in the 1930 
 spring semester. An earlier account published in the National Labor 
 University General Catalogue for 1929—30 also gave some details on 
 course offerings and enrollment figures for 1929—30.2© According to 
 these official sources, the engineering program at Laoda for the aca- 
 demic year 1929-30 included the following courses: 
 
 Course Credit Enrollment 
 
 Department of Civil Engineering 
 (sophomore year 1929-30) 
 
 Party Doctrines 2 47 
 English 2 19 
 French Di 28 
 Labor Literature 2) 16 
 Applied Dynamics 4 47 
 Surveying 2 47 
 Surveying Fieldwork aN AT 
 Factory Practice De 47 
 Projective Geometry I 47 
 Geometry Fieldwork in” 47 
 Building Construction 2 47 
 Thermodynamics 0) 47 
 Material Science 3 AT 
 Military Training 5) AT 
 
 “Courses marked by an asterisk refer to laboratory or fieldwork for which each 
 credit denoted two contact hours per week, as opposed to the usual one credit for 
 one hour of lecture per week for regular classroom instruction. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 86 
 
 Course Credit Enrollment 
 
 Department of Mechanical Engineering 
 (junior year, 1929—30) 
 
 Party Doctrines 2 24 
 Automobile 2 24 
 Automobile Fieldwork an 24 
 Surveying I 24 
 Surveying Fieldwork ie 24 
 Design ) 24 
 Engineering Materials 2 24 
 Mechanical Engineering Experiment ae 24 
 Mechanical Drawing 1 24 
 
 Factory Practice 2 24 
 Thermodynamics 2 24 
 Internal Combustion Engine 2 24 
 
 Department of Electrical Engineering 
 (freshman year, 1929—30) 
 
 Party Doctrines D 45 
 English 4 )) 
 French 4 ae 
 Labor Literature 2 29 
 Mathematics 5 45 
 Physics 4 45 
 Chemistry oD; 45 
 Physics Laboratory Work is 45 
 Chemistry Laboratory Work 1 45 
 Factory Practice 2) 45 
 Drawing 1B 45 
 Labor Organizations 2 45 
 Military Training 2 45 
 
 This itemized list highlights several areas in Labor University’s 
 engineering curriculum that did have a genuinely different emphasis 
 or an unusual approach from curricula at the more conventional 
 engineering schools. First, instead of token fieldwork requirements, 
 all three engineering departments at Laoda had instituted Factory 
 Practice, a mandatory course of two credits requiring four hours of 
 work per week, as an integral part of the regular curriculum. This was 
 in addition to the other fieldwork components of specific technical 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 87 
 
 training or laboratory work or testing in academic subjects such as 
 surveying, projective geometry, automechanics, mechanical experi- 
 ment, physics, and chemistry. 
 
 Second, instead of the basic course on Chinese language and litera- 
 ture as part of the humanities requirement common to most of the 
 universities in China (both private and national institutions), Laoda 
 engineering undergraduates were offered a rather unique but highly 
 suggestive humanities course entitled Labor Literature | Laodong wen- 
 yi). This was in essence a course on traditional as well as modern 
 Chinese culture with a marked difference. It was not literature of the 
 usual elitist literati “high-culture” genre; rather, it adopted a grass- 
 roots perspective and focused on social literature on, of, and by the 
 working people.2” According to the instructor of this Labor Literature 
 course, Sun Lianggong, labor literature was a kind of proletarian- 
 populist literature with a major aim of reflecting and revealing social 
 realities, especially the authors’ grievances and criticism of social ills. 
 In a sense, it was a literature of dissent and rebellion against society, 
 particularly from the perspective of the working masses. Sun further 
 pointed out that labor literature was neither an alien import nor a 
 temporary phenomenon but had existed in China since ancient times 
 as an expression of human evolution and upward movement. As such, 
 poetry, drama, the novel, song lyrics, essays, and other literary works 
 could all be proper manifestations of this labor literature genre of 
 human protest. Under Sun’s instruction, this course included literary 
 works from ancient, medieval, late traditional, and modern China 
 written on, for, and even by laborers and peasants.28 Indeed, this could 
 be regarded as a novel attempt at the “laborization” of higher educa- 
 tion through a conscious and deliberate design to study the nonelite 
 alternative cultural heritage and literary creation of the lower layers of 
 Chinese society. It also closely parallels the post—May Fourth socio- 
 cultural trend among progressive Chinese intellectuals to discard the 
 sterile “bird’s-eye view” approach to literary appreciation and aca- 
 demic formalism at the high-culture level. The course echoed May 
 Fourth calls to go down to the cultural world of the people to create a 
 socially relevant art and literature.2° 
 
 Third, as an addition to the normal types of social science elective 
 courses (on law, political science, business, and the like), Laoda engi- 
 neering freshmen were required to take Labor Organizations, which 
 introduced them to the theoretical basis and actual development of 
 labor unionism and collective labor activity. This was clearly in- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 88 
 
 tended to be a first step in arousing labor consciousness and a sense of 
 social mission among the students, and providing them with a basic 
 training in mass organization/movement leadership skills as poten- 
 tial labor cadres or future social activists. 
 
 Fourth, unlike most other national universities in China at that 
 time, English was not the second language at Laoda; enrollees in 
 French classes outnumbered those in the English classes. Among the 
 forty-seven civil engineering sophomores in the spring semester of 
 1930, twenty-eight took French for their required foreign language 
 while only nineteen took English. As for the forty-five electrical engi- 
 neering freshmen, twenty-three took French and twenty-two took 
 English. Furthermore, while both courses carried two credits for engi- 
 neering sophomores and four credits for engineering freshmen, the 
 French course had an extra classroom contact hour per week for both 
 years. This is a clear reflection of Laoda’s “French connection.” As an 
 alumnus fondly recalled, “French was the official second language in 
 Labor University, and due to the good effort of a French teacher, the 
 sound of ‘Bon jour’ echoed throughout the campus in the morning.’”3° 
 
 In structural and administrative terms, the 1927—28 curriculum 
 differed substantially from the more “developed” and “refined” 1929— 
 30 curriculum. The original three-year undergraduate program in two 
 phases was changed into a four-year bachelor’s degree program in 1929, 
 with the first two years consisting mainly of basic courses common to 
 all majors in that particular college. The academic credit system was 
 also revised. In 1927—28, one academic credit was awarded for twenty 
 hours of instruction within an academic year; in 1929-30, it was 
 changed to one credit for each hour of classroom instruction per week 
 or two hours of laboratory or fieldwork per week within each semes- 
 ter. Of course, the creation of the new College of Social Sciences in 
 mid-1929 meant the transfer and absorption of the Departments of 
 Education and Sociology from the engineering faculty and the Depart- 
 ment of Social Sciences from the agricultural faculty to the new 
 college. 
 
 Despite these changes, there were still many areas of continuity and 
 similarity between the 1927—28 and post-1928 curricula in both letter 
 and spirit. For instance, the great emphasis given to French-language 
 training and the stress on social thought, social problems, and labor 
 movements remained the same. The recognition of extracurricular 
 participation also remained the same. Yet the inclusion of Esperanto 
 as a mandatory course for two years in the original basic curriculum 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 89 
 
 and its absence from the new curriculum reflected the real decline of 
 anarchist and syndicalist influence at the formal pedagogical level in 
 Labor University. In a sense, this might well be one of the signals that 
 Laoda had, as some observers have argued, become much more like 
 any other typical university in China at that time. Nonetheless, a 
 closer examination of the new College of Social Sciences curriculum 
 may reveal clearly discernible threads of continuity with the social 
 science components of the initial program, and hence the lingering 
 influence of Laoda’s founding ideals. 
 
 Social Sciences Curriculum, 1929-30 
 
 The College of Social Sciences’s curriculum as set up in mid-1929 
 specified the following general requirements:?! 
 
 1. Social sciences students had to take a minimum of 21 credits but 
 no more than 24 credits of course work per semester. 
 
 2. A minimum total of 168 credits was required for graduation. 
 
 3. All social sciences students were subject to compulsory military 
 training as ordered by the Ministry of Education. 
 
 4. All social sciences students must perform four to six hours of 
 manual labor each week. 
 
 5. While no academic credits would be awarded to compulsory mili- 
 tary training and manual labor service, no students could graduate 
 with failure in these two components. 
 
 6. At the beginning of the sophomore year, social sciences students 
 must declare their major in either education, sociology, or eco- 
 nomics. 
 
 7. Social sciences majors must fulfill the specific departmental re- 
 quirements in compulsory and elective courses. 
 
 For the freshman and sophomore years in the four-year undergraduate 
 system, the college offered the following common program of manda- 
 tory courses for all social sciences students:32 
 
 Social Sciences Common Curriculum 
 
 Course/Subject Credits 
 First year 
 Party Doctrines 4 
 
 aN 
 
 Human Culture 
 Introduction to Social Sciences 8 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 90 
 
 Course/Subject Credits 
 Psychology 3 
 Ethics 3 
 Human Biology 3 
 Foreign Language (French or English) 10 
 Total a7 
 
 Second year 
 
 Party Doctrines 4 
 Human Culture 4 
 Introduction to Arts 3 
 Introduction to Philosophy 3 
 Statistics 3 
 Introduction to Jurisprudence 3 
 Labor Problems 3 
 Peasant Problems 3 
 Foreign Language 10 
 Total 36 
 Combined two-year total 73 credits 
 
 In addition to these compulsory courses, which had to be completed 
 within the first two years, social sciences freshmen and sophomores 
 still had some room (5-11 credits for first-year students and 6—12 
 credits for second-year students) to take other courses, either major 
 department core subjects or electives. 
 
 The experience of Laoda’s sixty freshmen in economics provides a 
 concrete illustration of a typical course-work pattern under this col- 
 legewide common program. According to the March 8, 1930, issue of 
 Labor University Weekly, these economics freshmen took the follow- 
 ing courses during the 1930 spring semester.33 
 
 Party Doctrines 2 credits 
 Human Culture 3 credits 
 Introduction to Social Sciences 3 credits 
 Ethics I credit 
 
 Biology 2 credits 
 Foreign Language 5 credits 
 Statistics 2 credits 
 Psychology (elective) 2 credits 
 
 Economics 3 credits 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 91 
 
 The junior and senior year upper-division curricula of the three social 
 sciences departments differed substantially from each other. The only 
 compulsory common component at this level was the course on Party 
 Doctrines of 8 credits (2 credits each for 4 semesters). Hence, the 
 compulsory common social sciences courses totaled 81 credits (73 + 
 8) and accounted for nearly half of the 168 credits required for a 
 bachelor’s degree. A more detailed breakdown of departmental course 
 patterns yields the following: 34 
 
 Credits 
 Department of Education 
 Departmental core courses 47 
 Departmental elective courses DD 
 Other electives 18 
 
 Compulsory core courses: 
 Introduction to Education 3 
 Chinese Social Problems 3 
 Labor Economics 3 
 Education Statistics 3 
 Secondary Education 3 
 Educational Testing [3 
 Ordinary Teaching Methods 3 
 
 Sociology of Education 3 
 Advanced Psychology [3] 
 History of Western Education [3] 
 Education Administration 3 
 Philosophy of Education 3 
 Teaching Practice 3 
 
 History of Chinese Education 
 Social Survey 
 School Survey 
 Departmental elective courses: 
 Primary Education 
 School Hygiene 
 Rural Education 
 Urban Education 
 Vocational Education 
 Mass Education 
 
 [3] 
 2 + 2 (two semesters) 
 
 2 + 2 (two semesters) 
 
 bN NY BWW 
 
 *Courses with credit numbers in brackets were offered in the spring semester of 
 
 1930 for the nineteen juniors majoring in education. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 92 
 
 Credits 
 Pedagogy 2 
 Youth Psychology [2] 
 
 Special Education 2 
 Comparative Education 3 
 Educational Counseling 2 
 Teaching Methodology b) 
 School Curriculum 3 
 
 Higher Education Administration [2] 
 
 Teaching Method for Primary School 2 
 
 Teaching Method for High School 2 
 
 European and American Labor 2 
 Education 
 
 County, City, and Village Educational 2 
 Administration 
 
 Local Educational Problems 2 
 
 Modern Education Thought [2 + 2] (two semesters) 
 
 Educational Issues 
 
 Selected Reading in Education [3] 
 Classics 
 
 Other electives: 
 
 Introduction to Philosophy D 
 
 History of Chinese Society [2] 
 
 History of Chinese Culture [2] 
 
 Human Biology [2] 
 
 Department of Sociology 
 
 Departmental core courses 48 
 Departmental electives 22 
 Other electives 17 
 
 Compulsory core courses: 
 Culture, Value, and Evolution Theory [3] 
 History of Social Evolution [2] 
 Sociological Methods D 
 Social Organization 
 Social Psychology 
 Social Morphology 
 Ethnology 
 Sociology of Family 
 Political Sociology 
 
 b NN NY BY WN 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 93 
 
 Credits 
 
 Legal Sociology 
 Economic Sociology 
 Sociology of Religion 
 Sociology of Education 
 Sociology of Ethics 
 Criminology 
 Introduction to Sociology 
 Social Policy D 
 Social Insurance [3] 
 Labor Legislation [3] 
 Rural Sociology [2] 
 Social Issues 5 
 
 WwW bv Yv NY VY YP WN 
 
 Social Survey 2 + 2 (two semesters) 
 
 History of World Civilization 2 + 2 (two semesters) 
 Departmental electives: 
 
 Social Statistics 
 
 History of Political Thought 
 
 History of Ethical Thought 
 
 History of Economic Thought 
 
 Labor History 
 
 Kentian Philosophy 
 
 Studies on Animal Society 
 
 Studies on Greco-Roman Society 
 
 Social Hygiene 
 
 Studies on Chinese Society 
 
 Aesthetics and Social Linguistics 
 
 Philosophy and Sociology 
 
 Migration Problems 
 
 History of International Social 
 
 Movements 
 
 Applied Sociology 
 
 Demographic Problems 
 
 Studies on Syndical Problems 
 
 Studies on European Society 
 
 Southeast Asian Problems 
 
 Labor Organizations 
 
 Eugenics 
 
 History of Chinese Culture [2] 
 
 Py 
 
 Ww NY Bw YN BY YN HB AB He YY WKY WN 
 
 b Yee YY YY VY WN 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 94 
 
 Labor Administration 
 Social Economics 
 History of Social Revolution 
 
 Department of Economics 
 Department core courses 
 Department electives 
 Other electives 
 Departmental core courses: 
 
 Finance 
 
 Chinese Economic Problems 
 
 Modern Western Economic Thought 
 
 History of Chinese Economic 
 Thought 
 
 Economic History 
 
 Advanced Economic Theory 
 
 Distribution Theory 
 
 Social Survey 
 
 History of Western Economic 
 Thought 
 
 Economics 
 
 Departmental electives: 
 
 Currency 
 
 International Trade 
 
 Banking 
 
 Finance 
 
 Customs and Taxation 
 
 Wage Analysis 
 
 Transportation Economics 
 
 Agricultural Economics 
 
 Economic Policy 
 
 Cooperative Economics 
 
 Investment 
 
 History of Labor Movement 
 
 Insurance 
 
 Land Economics 
 
 Unemployment Economics 
 
 Value Theory 
 
 Labor Legislation 
 
 Credits 
 
 2 
 2 
 
 [2] 
 
 34 
 30 
 23 
 
 [2] 
 3 
 3 
 
 [3] 
 
 [3] 
 3 
 [2] 
 4 
 3 + [3] (two semesters) 
 
 3 + 3 (two semesters) 
 
 We By & & ob pe 
 
 Wo Vy wwwn ww 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 95 
 
 Credits 
 
 History of Socialism 
 Consumer Economics 
 Industrial Management 
 Social Insurance 
 Management 
 
 Elementary Accounting 
 Advanced Accounting 
 Introduction to Constitution 
 Political Science 
 
 Sociology 
 
 History of Political Thought 
 
 (two semesters) 
 
 NP DBW WW WW YN W W 
 
 In addition, the social sciences college also listed the following 
 courses as electives for all students in the spring semester of 1930: 
 
 French 
 
 English 
 
 Japanese 
 
 International Laws 
 Journalism 
 
 Political Science 
 
 Modern Politics 
 
 Labor Literature 
 Introduction to Literature 
 History of Chinese Society 
 History of Chinese Culture 
 Municipal Administration 
 Human Biology 
 
 Besides sharing some of the “uncommon” features (for example, the 
 Labor Literature course and the popularity of French as a second 
 language) in the university-wide basic curriculum, the social sciences 
 curriculum had its own distinctive characteristics which expressed 
 the founders’ special sense of social mission—especially the signifi- 
 cance they invested in labor consciousness. The sociology depart- 
 ment’s compulsory courses on Social Insurance and Labor Legislation 
 had direct relevance to the theoretical understanding and administra- 
 tive planning of labor welfare. They also reflected the deliberate ef- 
 forts of the more progressive and enlightened elements within the 
 Guomindang to achieve social harmony through social legislation and 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 96 
 
 institutional improvement of labor conditions in the late 1920s and 
 early 1930s, following the 1927 suppression of the militant labor 
 movement. The compulsory courses on History of Social Evolution 
 and on Culture, Value, and Evolution Theory, taken together, sug- 
 gested the anarchist orientation toward evolution and mutual aid as 
 the foundation of social progress. The elective course on History of 
 Social Revolution was yet another sign of the clear inclination toward 
 the promotion of social reform underlining the basic curriculum de- 
 sign at Laoda. 
 
 Agriculture Curriculum, 1929-30 
 
 A more specialized approach can be seen in the new curriculum of the 
 College of Agriculture introduced in autumn 1928. Due to small 
 enrollment size (about 160 undergraduates), inadequate facilities, and 
 limited resources on the separate campus, the original goal of dividing 
 the college into twelve academic departments did not materialize. 
 Instead, only three departments—horticulture, agriculture, and agro- 
 chemistry—were established within the college. Their enrollment 
 figures for 1929-30 were:3° 
 
 Department of Agriculture, 1930 
 Juniors, 9 
 Sophomores, 28 
 Department of Horticulture 
 Juniors, 32 
 Sophomores, 21 
 Freshmen, 40 
 Department of Agrochemistry 
 Juniors, 16 
 Sophomores, 15 
 Total 126 
 
 Besides the compulsory basic components such as Party Doctrines 
 (2 credits per semester), Military Training (noncredit), and Manual 
 Labor Service (noncredit, 4 hours per week), Laoda agricultural under- 
 graduates took the following courses during the academic year 1929— 
 30:36 
 
 Course Credit Enrollment 
 
 Economics 2 40 
 Orchard I 40 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 97 
 
 Course Credit Enrollment 
 Botany 3 40 
 Chemistry 2 40 
 Drawing I 40 
 Introduction to Agriculture D) 30 
 Qualitative Analysis D) 57 
 Quantitative Analysis 3 30 
 Outdoor Plants I 
 
 Landscape Architecture 2 20 
 Landscape Drawing I Dr 
 Display Plants I 21 
 Plant Pathology 2 57 
 Plant Physiology I 29 
 Fruits I 21 
 Mathematics DS 16 
 Bacteriology I 29 
 Food Chemistry I 2} 
 Farm Product Manufacturing 3 29 
 Agrochemical Analysis I 29 
 Husbandry 2 36 
 Animals I 89 
 Poultry 3 68 
 Insects and Pests 2 75 
 Plant Nursery I 21 
 Vegetables 2 41 
 Planting D), 2 
 Fertilizer 2 S7 
 Cotton 4 36 
 Rural Society I 24 
 Agricultural Economics D 27 
 Physics I DD 
 French D 95 
 English 2 55 
 Japanese 2 25 
 
 Laoda’s College of Agriculture seems to have had the narrowest 
 range of course offerings among the three colleges. The fact that the 
 engineering and social sciences colleges were both located on the 
 main campus in Jiangwan while agriculture was more isolated on a 
 separate, remote branch campus in Baoshan County was a major 
 factor. However, because of the very nature of agriculture subjects and 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 98 
 
 the opportunities provided by the 350-acre experimental farm and 
 related facilities (chicken farm, greenhouse, apiary, farm tool work- 
 shop), College of Agriculture undergraduates had more extensive ex- 
 perience with manual labor than their peers in engineering or social 
 sciences. The rustic setting and greater distance from Shanghai also 
 enabled or induced a more frugal life-style among agriculture stu- 
 dents. In the actual patterns and atmosphere of living, studying, and 
 working, the College of Agriculture indeed may have come much 
 closer than the two other colleges to practicing the four fundamental 
 educational premises of Labor University that had been spelled out in 
 the National Labor University Regulations of 1927: laborers’ educa- 
 tion, revolutionary education, whole person’s education, and living 
 education.%7 
 
 Social Survey and the Hangzhou Field Trip 
 
 The social sciences college’s compulsory Social Survey course was a 
 particularly significant component in the curriculum, and basic to 
 Laoda’s raison d’étre. As Gong Xiangming, chairman of the sociology 
 department, had pointed out in his speech inaugurating the 1930 
 spring semester (see chapter 3), Labor University students must un- 
 dertake investigative research on labor conditions and labor enter- 
 prises in China as a vital part of their academic training for future 
 social service.38 Therefore, for the social science students at Laoda 
 (unlike their peers in the Colleges of Agriculture and Engineering, 
 whose academic studies and professional training naturally necessi- 
 tated practical work in the factories or on the farm), the direct social 
 relevance of their education must both be legitimatized by and find 
 meaningful, concrete expression through social science “fieldwork” 
 which could take them directly to China’s working masses. Only 
 through fieldwork could they avoid turning into armchair intellec- 
 tuals far removed from and ignorant of China’s social realities and 
 acquire the ability to make practical and much-needed contributions 
 to the solution of Chinese social problems. In other words, this com- 
 pulsory Social Survey course symbolized an article of Labor Univer- 
 sity’s faith in the necessity and utility of “laborized” education that 
 combined academic learning with social labor as the foundation for 
 social reform. 
 
 Based on the rather detailed accounts published in Labor Univer- 
 sity Weekly, it seems that Laoda administrators, teachers, and stu- 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 99 
 
 dents all took this social survey component in the social science 
 curriculum seriously. For the 1930 spring semester, thirty-nine Laoda 
 sociology students under the leadership of the sociology department 
 chairman went to Hangzhou in early April to conduct a twelve-day 
 survey of local labor conditions and social service institutions.°? Be- 
 cause this survey was a formal part of academic training require- 
 ments, the student surveyors were able to obtain lodging on the cam- 
 pus of National Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, thus cutting down 
 substantially on expenses, which could be considerable for a survey 
 project of this scope and duration. 
 
 According to the oral report presented to Laoda’s weekly assembly 
 by Lu Guoxiang, one of the student surveyors, the principal targets of 
 the survey were sixteen types of public institutions in the social 
 service field:4° (1) labor unions; (2) cooperatives; (3) relief agencies; 
 (4) hospitals; (5) evening schools, evening schools for workers, and 
 free schools; (6) popular educational organs, YMcA/ywca, and public 
 sports facilities; (7) charity organizations; (8) public toilets and gar- 
 bage dumps; (9) public libraries and reading rooms; (10) museums; 
 (11) labor employment referral agencies; (12) prisons; (13) homes for 
 young girls; (14) orphanages and craft-training workshops; (15) pub- 
 lic cemeteries; and (16) nurseries and convalescent homes. As back- 
 ground preparation, these student surveyors studied social legislation 
 such as the Labor Union Act, the Factory Law, the Industrial Disputes 
 Mediation Act, the Social Education Act, and sundry regulations on 
 industrial relations and social administration. During the actual sur- 
 vey in Hangzhou, they were divided into six teams, each focusing on 
 particular institutions and their social service activities. The whole 
 group spent the first two days of their survey trip in joint visits to 
 various state and party organs to seek general advice and collect 
 relevant data. Their hosts included the Zhejiang provincial govern- 
 ment’s Bureau of Reconstruction, Bureau of Civil Affairs, and Bureau 
 of Education, the Zhejiang Provincial Guomindang Party Headquar- 
 ters, the Zhejiang Provincial General Labor Union, the Hangzhou 
 municipal government, and the law courts. 
 
 At each of these public organs, besides an escorted tour of the 
 facilities and official briefings, the students raised questions they had 
 prepared ahead of time. For instance, on their visit to the Hangzhou 
 municipality, the students sought the following information:4! (1) the 
 income and livelihood of Hangzhou’s population; (2) the nomencla- 
 ture and location of the various social service institutions and facili- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 100 
 
 ties under the jurisdiction of the municipality; (3) the municipality’s 
 own social administration structure; (4) the terms of employment for 
 employees in enterprises owned and operated by the municipality; 
 (5) the terms of employment for municipal employees and staff; and 
 (6) the actual state of technical skills training, organizational research 
 provisions, and after-hours activities for municipal employees. 
 
 From the third day onward, for a whole week, the six survey teams 
 conducted separate field trips, visiting different organizations and 
 holding numerous interviews. At the end, a sizable corpus of printed 
 documentation and raw data had been accumulated. According to 
 Feng Hefa, the leader of the survey team on civil administration and 
 public relief and a prominent sociologist in the 1930s and 1940s, his 
 team managed to collect two big boxes of official documents and 
 institutional journals.42 In addition, these student visitors also took 
 home with them the full run of the Hangzhou municipal monthly 
 Gazette and various sets of local social service charters and regula- 
 tions. 
 
 Furthermore, by the end of their visit the survey teams had received 
 more than one hundred completed replies to their preprinted survey 
 questionnaires. Based on their firsthand observations, survey data, and 
 official publications collected on the trip, the students produced an 
 impressive anthology of ten lengthy reports on various aspects of 
 Hangzhou society. These survey reports were published in the 304- 
 page Hangzhou Social Enterprises Survey special issue of the National 
 Labor University Monthly Journal.*3 The devotion and hard work that 
 went into satisfying this two-credit course require little comment. As 
 mentioned in the oral report to the weekly assembly, the students not 
 only enjoyed their field trip to Hangzhou, where they were greeted 
 with warm welcome and helpful assistance by the local authorities 
 and organizations, they were rather proud of themselves for making 
 this visit a highly successful public relations showcase for their alma 
 mater. According to the published version of their oral report in the 
 Labor University Weekly, the student surveyors on their return home 
 felt that “at present, the community is filled with all sorts of rumors 
 and ugly innuendoes against Labor University, many people think of 
 Laoda as this or as that, but in fact it all is sheer and ridiculous 
 nonsense. However, we fellow students must maintain our solidarity 
 as we do represent Labor University to the outside world! ’”44 
 
 The social survey exercise was taken with great seriousness by 
 Laoda elements both for its intrinsic value in academic training and 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum tor 
 
 social observational research and for its public image and morale- 
 boosting effects on the beleaguered university. In this sense much 
 closer to social realities than their peers in agriculture and engineer- 
 ing, Laoda social science undergraduates came closer to the front line 
 of social reform in rehearsing and even actualizing their intended 
 roles as “social missionaries” and “social engineers” in the anarchist- 
 syndicalist mold. Laoda teachers’ and students’ enthusiasm for social 
 survey did not end with the Hangzhou survey. Less ambitious but no 
 less important in their activities were a series of social surveys they 
 conducted in their local Jiangwan community on labor conditions and 
 social education facilities as part of their outreach activities and mass 
 education programs (which are treated in greater detail in chapter 7). 
 Other components of Laoda’s regular curriculum also entailed field 
 trips and systematic visitations to educational or industrial institu- 
 tions outside Shanghai. For example, education majors led by educa- 
 tion professor Zheng Ruogu undertook a five-day field trip to visit 
 schools in Nanjing in early November 1929. An interesting report of 
 this Nanjing visit published in the Weekly drew sharp contrasts be- 
 tween Laoda’s own ideals and program in “laborized education versus 
 the synthesis of instruction, learning, and practice” approach of the 
 Xiaozhuang School in Nanjing. Founded by the noted progressive 
 educational reformer Tao Xingzhi, who advocated the philosophy of 
 “living education,” Xiaozhuang was established in 1927 (the same 
 year as Laoda) as an experimental teacher-training school with par- 
 ticular emphasis on village renewal and manual labor. Yet Laoda stu- 
 dents found the “learning-by-doing” teaching method and actual labor 
 participation alongside the peasantry at Xiaozhuang somewhat ques- 
 tionable at the daily implementation level. Laoda students in their 
 report criticized the Xiaozhuang practice as too utopian and unscien- 
 tific, lacking concrete results, with inadequate attention and time 
 alloted to academic learning, and even poor quality among trainees. 
 Ironically, many of these criticisms were not dissimilar to those lev- 
 eled at Laoda by outside observers.45 
 
 Party Doctrines and Political Education 
 
 Taken together, the social survey exercise and the academic courses 
 on labor organizations, labor legislation, social insurance, social revo- 
 lution, and evolution theories represented the progressive, anarchis- 
 tic inputs into the curriculum. But this was only one side of the 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 102 
 
 coin. The Guomindang also made claims on curriculum requirements 
 designed to influence the hearts and minds of Labor University stu- 
 dents. Two components in Laoda’s curriculum were especially contra- 
 dictory to the self-professed educational ideals and ideological con- 
 victions of Laoda’s anarchist founders: Military Training and Party 
 Doctrines, both compulsory course requirements. As in any other 
 state-supported tertiary educational institution in China under Guo- 
 mindang rule, Military Training (junxun) was mandatory for all male 
 undergraduates at Labor University during their freshman and sopho- 
 more years. Drill sessions took place twice a week from 6:30 to 7:30 
 A.M., and students were trained to meet the standards of a formal 
 military inspection. This was not a substitute for physical education 
 or manual labor but part of a deliberate attempt at strict disciplining 
 and regimentalization of Chinese society, particularly the educated 
 youth, under the Guomindang regime. The course entitled Party Doc- 
 trines (Dangyi), compulsory for all students each semester of their 
 entire four undergraduate campus years, traced the history of the 
 ruling Guomindang and taught its orthodoxy, mainly through the 
 works of Sun Zhongshan (such as The Three People’s Principles and 
 The International Development of China), as interpreted by the offi- 
 cial ideologues in Nanjing. The presence of Military Training and 
 Party Doctrines as compulsory requirements in Laoda’s curriculum 
 symbolized the inherent incompatibility and fundamental contradic- 
 tions between the anarchist presumptions for Labor University as a 
 novel educational experiment and training ground for future social 
 revolution and its official links with the Guomindang as a state- 
 supported “national” university. Furthermore, while the GmMp doc- 
 trine based on Sun Zhongshan’s Three People’s Principles might not 
 be objectionable as a political philosophy or modern ideology, many 
 intellectuals and educationists were disturbed by its inclusion as a 
 compulsory course for undergraduates. After all, there was a severe 
 shortage of academically qualified instructors of this Party Doctrines 
 course at the university level. In many cases during the Nanjing 
 Decade, party bureaucrats with little understanding of the doctrines 
 were appointed as instructors of this course at national universities 
 throughout China.*¢ In Laoda’s own case, the instructor of the course 
 was Yi Gengfu, a Hunanese and Beijing University philosophy depart- 
 ment graduate who had previously served in the Hunan provincial 
 party branch and the Gmp central headquarters’s training department. 
 Yi occasionally published short articles on political affairs in Laoda’s 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 103 
 
 own publications. Perhaps he was an exception to the stereotype of 
 “underqualified” ideological indoctrinator on university campuses in 
 China under Gmp rule. 
 
 Though not part of the curriculum, another important vehicle for 
 Guomindang party/state ideological persuasion on the Labor Univer- 
 sity campus was the weekly assembly, or, to call it by its officially 
 designated title, the Dr. Sun Zhongshan Weekly Memorial Service 
 (Zongli jinian zhou). The weekly assembly was instituted by the 
 Nanjing regime in 1927 in all government offices as well as in all the 
 schools, colleges, and universities under its effective jurisdiction. This 
 weekly assembly, scheduled for the first hour of class session every 
 Monday morning, was intended to provide an occasion for the stu- 
 dents to receive moral lessons, guidance on campus activities, analy- 
 ses of political events, reports on current affairs by school administra- 
 tors, public figures, and party leaders, as well as lectures on academic 
 subjects by prominent intellectuals. The ritual for the service was 
 prescribed by the Guomindang and punctiliously observed in all 
 schools. At the call of the master of ceremonies, the audience stood 
 and bowed to the portrait of Dr. Sun, which was hung at the center of 
 the stage, visible to all. Then followed a moment of silence in tribute 
 to the late founder of the Guomindang and the Republic, after which 
 the chairman read aloud the will of Dr. Sun, consisting of two short 
 paragraphs prominently displayed along with the portrait and exhort- 
 ing continued struggle to achieve the final success of the revolution. 
 After this ritual, the chairman, who was usually the school principal 
 or dean, used the remainder of the hour for a regular school assembly, 
 and the theme of the assembly might or might not bear any relation to 
 the ritual or party ideology.4” In some sense, this weekly assembly in 
 function and form resembled the mandatory weekly religious worship 
 or Sunday service of the Catholic and Protestant missionary schools 
 and colleges in China. 
 
 In the case of Laoda, this mandatory weekly assembly was held on 
 Monday morning between 8:00 and 9:00 A.M. (the first session of class) 
 for the undergraduates as well as for the attached high-school stu- 
 dents, who also had their own separate session with a different pro- 
 gram. In fact, due to the separate and distant locations of the univer- 
 sity’s three colleges, there were two weekly assembly sessions for the 
 undergraduates each week. The first one was a joint gathering of 
 students in the social sciences and engineering colleges held in the 
 auditorium on the main campus at Jiangwan. The other session, exclu- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 104 
 
 sively for agricultural students, was held at the same time on the Wu- 
 song campus near the experimental farm. Attendance at the weekly 
 assembly was compulsory for all students. 
 
 The proceedings of these weekly assembly sessions were often re- 
 corded in detail in Labor University Weekly, which is a useful source 
 on political indoctrination and student activities at Laoda. The usual 
 joint social sciences—engineering session of the weekly assembly 
 went as follows: the secretary general of Laoda, who chaired the 
 session, would make the official announcements on faculty and staff 
 appointments and give a progress report on ongoing construction of 
 physical facilities, curriculum changes, and instructions on discipline 
 matters, as well as on student activities. Then the piéce de résistance 
 would be served to the assembled students in the form of a “political 
 report” that was an analysis of current affairs, both domestic and 
 international, by one of the professors or university administrators. 
 Occasionally, it might be a speech on a specific topic by an invited 
 outside speaker, usually an eminent scholar or a senior government/ 
 Guomindang official. 
 
 The political reports reflected the official stance of the Nanjing 
 regime, since the person who made the report often criticized or even 
 condemned domestic strife and military campaigns by the regional 
 leaders against Jiang Jieshi. These reports, of course, were extremely 
 critical of Communists, whether of the domestic activities of the 
 Chinese Communist Party or the international communist move- 
 ment.*® As the instructor of the Party Doctrines course, Yi Gengfu 
 pointed out in the weekly assembly for social sciences and engineer- 
 ing students on March 24, 1930, that an informed analysis of political 
 developments during the past week was a fitting way to commemo- 
 rate the life and work of Dr. Sun Zhongshan! The weekly assembly 
 reflected “the educational spirit in the present process of the national 
 revolution.’”’49 
 
 In addition to these regularly featured political reports and lectures 
 at the weekly assembly sessions, the university also invited promi- 
 nent intellectual figures and political luminaries to deliver special 
 speeches on the Laoda campus. A well-known example is the lecture 
 entitled “On the Intelligentsia Class” given by China’s foremost con- 
 temporary author, Lu Xun, on October 25, 1927. In fact, this was the 
 first on-campus presentation by a specially invited guest speaker in 
 the history of Laoda. Two days later, the conservative GMD ideologue 
 Dai Jitao came to Laoda to lecture on “A Retrospective on the Revolu- 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 105 
 
 tion and the Guiding Principle for the Future.” On November 15, Shao 
 Yuanchong, another GmpD leader, came to lecture on “Peasant and 
 Labor Problems under the Three People’s Principles,” and he was 
 followed by yet another Gmp intellectual, Zhou Fohai, who talked 
 about “Fundamental Concepts for the Three People’s Principles.”5° 
 This concentration of right-wing political speakers was perhaps a 
 necessary realpolitik balance to the radical anarchist tint of Laoda in 
 its first academic year. Lu Xun’s lecture could be regarded as the token 
 but significant progressive symbolism. The Gmp Left was also repre- 
 sented by Peng Xuepei, who lectured on “Progress of the World” on 
 May 12, 1928. Peng was a key member of the Reorganization Clique 
 under Gmp leader Wang Jingwei.°! 
 
 The last major guest lecture of the first academic year was delivered 
 by Pan Gongzhan (Y. Y. Phen), Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Peasants 
 and Labor director, who came to discuss the “Labor Problem” on June 
 II, 1928 (when normal classes were suspended following the stu- 
 dents’ participation in the Shanghai Municipal Student Military Re- 
 view the day before). Two years later, on May 28, 1930, as director of 
 the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Social Affairs, Pan was again in- 
 vited and gave a lecture on “Industry in Shanghai” to the Laoda 
 engineering—social sciences weekly assembly. A leading member of 
 the ultraconservative cc Clique within the Gmp, Pan concluded his 
 talk on two points of emphasis: first, Chinese workers should join 
 forces with Chinese capitalists to counter the influence of foreign 
 capitalists; second, domestic labor-capital collaboration should be 
 promoted in order to develop Chinese industries.52 These were the 
 very core of the GMD regime’s dictum on industrial relations and the 
 labor movement during the post-1927 period. 
 
 The second academic year’s list of guest speakers began with the 
 lecture by well-known sociologist Sun Benwen on September 23, 
 1928. (Later, on June 24, 1929, Sun was offered the deanship of Laoda’s 
 newly established college of social sciences, but he declined.) On 
 October 19 the Laoda community was entertained by a lecture on “An 
 Observation in Chinese Social History” presented by Tao Xisheng. 
 Another center-left GmMp intellectual, who came to address “The Im- 
 portance of Labor” on October 31, 1928, was Chu Minyi, a member of 
 the Labor University Preparation Committee.®°? It was in the latter 
 capacity that Chu was invited to address the Labor University Second 
 Anniversary Commemoration on November 19, 1929. On that occa- 
 sion, Chu asserted that Laoda was founded according to Sun Zhong- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 106 
 
 shan’s policy on labor and peasants and was also in accordance with 
 new trends in world education exemplified by Charleroi Labor Uni- 
 versity in Belgium. Chu said that Laoda’s three colleges enjoyed a 
 relationship of linkage similar to the Three People’s Principles. Other 
 guest speakers at this commemoration included the president of Bei- 
 ping College of Agriculture, who compared Laoda’s mission with 
 Charleroi’s example; the rector (Hu Shuhua) of Tongji University, 
 Laoda’s older (by nineteen years) neighbor in Wusong; and a represen- 
 tative of the Postal Workers’ Union, who called Laoda the “standing 
 army of the Chinese revolution, and a university to eliminate class 
 differences and harmonize class conflicts.’’"°4 
 
 Laoda’s list of distinguished guest speakers included such inter- 
 national personages as Director General Albert Thomas of the Inter- 
 national Labor Office (1Lo) in Geneva, who lectured at Laoda on De- 
 cember 2, 1928;°° and the former deputy premier and foreign minister 
 of Belgium, Emile Vandervelde, who visited the Jiangwan campus on 
 October 17, 1930. The Laoda establishment really rolled out the red 
 carpet for his visit, and university secretary general Peng Xiang made a 
 special effort at publicity by publishing a four-page biographic sketch 
 of Vandervelde in the Labor University Weekly three weeks in ad- 
 vance.°© According to Peng, Vandervelde, while holding the foreign 
 affairs portfolio between April 1925 and November 1927, was respon- 
 sible for the negotiations that led to the 1928 Sino-Belgian Treaty of 
 Amity and Commerce. This was China’s first bilateral pact with a 
 Western power to abrogate extraterritoriality in China, and it also 
 resulted in the peaceful and unconditional retrocession of the Belgian 
 Concession in Tianjin the next year. This was regarded by many 
 contemporary observers as an important victory for the Gmp’s diplo- 
 macy of nationalism to abolish all the “unequal treaties” imposed by 
 imperialist powers. 
 
 As a recent study published in the PRC points out, the overseas 
 Chinese workers and students in Belgium and France played a crucial 
 role in mobilizing public support both in Europe and in China during 
 the June 1926—February 1927 period to pressure the socialist govern- 
 ment in Brussels and the Beijing regime to abrogate the “unequal” 
 Sino-Belgium Treaty of 1865. Laoda’s second president, Wang Jingqi, 
 then China’s minister to Belgium, was deeply moved by their patriotic 
 protests and international publicity efforts. On November 6, 1926, 
 under strong public pressure, the Beijing regime unilaterally abro- 
 gated the 1865 treaty, which was due for revision on October 27, 1926. 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 107 
 
 The Belgian government responded by filing charges against China 
 with the International Court at The Hague three weeks later. Sup- 
 ported by the Chinese in Europe and at home, Beijing rejected the 
 litigation at The Hague. When the cmp forces became victorious in 
 the Northern Expedition in late 1926 and recovered the British Con- 
 cession in Wuhan through popular mobilization in January 1927, the 
 Belgian government changed course and tried to accommodate the 
 rising tide of Chinese nationalism. On January 17, 1927, the Belgian 
 government began negotiations with Beijing for a new treaty and 
 announced the retrocession of its concession in Tianjin established 
 under the 1901 Boxer Protocol. A month later, Belgium also withdrew 
 its case against China from the International Court.°7 (According toa 
 1985 PRC account, the socialist government of Belgium, on returning 
 the Boxer indemnity funds to China in the second half of 1927, asked 
 the GMD regime to use the money to establish a labor university in 
 China which would be patterned after the Belgian Labor University,°8 
 but there is no factual evidence to substantiate this version.) 
 
 The 1929—30 academic year witnessed public lectures on the Laoda 
 campus by a host of professional experts and political figures. For 
 example, in October 1929 the doyen of Chinese journalists, Ge Gong- 
 zhan, addressed a Laoda audience of some five hundred on “The 
 Evolution of Chinese Journalism.” Well-known feminist leader, edu- 
 cator, and GMmp legislator Zhang Mojun (wife of Shao Yuanchong) was 
 invited to lecture at Laoda on December 28, 1929.5? The director of 
 the 110 China Branch Office, Chen Zongcheng, who held a Sorbonne 
 doctorate, came to address the Laoda audience about “The History 
 and Mission of the 110” on May 28, 1930.69 
 
 Outstanding scholars were also invited by various student organiza- 
 tions at Laoda to give presentations to their members. For instance, on 
 December 14, 1928, well-known anarchist and former Laoda provost 
 Huang Lingshuang was the guest speaker of the Social Sciences Re- 
 search Society of the agriculture college. On this occasion Huang 
 lectured on “Recent Trends in Sociology” to the society’s full mem- 
 bership.°! The contents of some of these lectures were recorded in the 
 Labor University Weekly or included in Labor University Anthology, 
 published in September 1929 to commemorate the second anniver- 
 sary of Laoda’s founding. 
 
 Several times each year, special sessions of the weekly assembly 
 were held to mark historical occasions and patriotic events as defined 
 by the Nanjing regime and Laoda authorities. For instance, on March 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 108 
 
 18, 1930, Commemorative meetings were held on the main campus 
 (one for the undergraduates and a separate one for high-school stu- 
 dents) and at the College of Agriculture and attended by all the teach- 
 ers and students to pay tribute to the Beijing students who had per- 
 ished in the March 18, 1926, incident. (This incident involved a mass 
 demonstration in Beijing to protest against the foreign powers’ de- 
 mand to evacuate Nationalist forces from the demilitarized zone 
 between Tianjin and Daku ports as stipulated by the 1901 Boxer 
 Protocol. Instead of resisting foreign imperialist pressure, the Beijing 
 regime under Duan Qirui suppressed the demonstrators by force, 
 killing more than fifty students and wounding over two hundred.) 
 
 At the commemorative session on the main campus, Yi Keyi, one of 
 Laoda’s Party Doctrines course instructors, praised the March 18, 
 1926, mass demonstrations in Beijing as a genuinely patriotic, nation- 
 alistic outburst under the inspiration of Sun Zhongshan’s thought. He 
 further emphasized the Guomindang’s version of the Chinese Revolu- 
 tion: “The real meaning of this March Eighteenth Incident lies with 
 the full abolition of all unequal treaties. Since 1920, some of the 
 Chinese masses had been deceived and led astray by the Chinese 
 Communist Party. We shall awaken them with the Three Principles of 
 the People and jointly participate in the national revolution to thor- 
 oughly abolish the unequal treaties.” ©? 
 
 Another Laoda faculty member, Zhou Changxian, a participant in 
 the 1926 Beijing demonstrations, gave a speech outlining the whole 
 incident in which he allocated the major share of the responsibility for 
 this massacre to the Chinese Communist Party (ccp), “which had as 
 its standard policy the exploitation of any situation to provoke a tragic 
 incident in order to arouse the masses and to discredit its enemies.” At 
 the end, Zhou exhorted the students to embrace the Guomindang 
 cause: “in our commemoration of March 18, 1926, we must clearly 
 recognize the true crimes of the imperialists, the warlords, and the 
 Chinese Communists.° 
 
 The partisan atmosphere and overt political message were toned 
 down considerably at the same March 18 commemorative assembly 
 held at Laoda’s agriculture college in Wusong. In his chairman’s report 
 Professor Li Xixian gave a brief historical account of the incident and 
 offered the moral of the story without any reference to or criticism of 
 the Chinese Communists. According to Li, the incident revealed the 
 lack of cooperation between the government and the people, who 
 were themselves usually disorganized. Yet, once the Chinese people 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum tog 
 
 were united, they were magnificent and powerful. “The retrocession 
 of the British Concession in Wuhan in January 1927 and the liberation 
 of Shanghai in March 1927 are splendid examples of the strength and 
 solidarity of the people.”©4 These warm words of praise for popular 
 mobilization under the Gmp-ccp united front were sharp contrasts to 
 the anticommunist public rhetoric at the Jiangwan campus. It was 
 probably a reflection of the political divisions within the Laoda fac- 
 ulty. 
 
 Nine days later, on March 27, 1930, another series of assemblies 
 was held at Laoda to mark the martyrdom of the seventy-two Revolu- 
 tionary Alliance members who fell in the abortive March 27, 1911, 
 uprising in Guangzhou. This uprising was hailed by the Guomindang 
 hierarchy as an important part of the party’s revolutionary heritage, 
 buttressing its claim to political legitimacy, and public observance 
 of this martyrs’ day as a major party event became a standard fea- 
 ture on the academic calendar of Guomindang China.°®° Incidentally, 
 some of these seventy-two revolutionaries had individual ties with 
 the Chinese anarchists, who were also involved in the antimonarchi- 
 cal activities in Guangzhou during the early years of the twentieth 
 century. 
 
 The May 1 International Labor Day was celebrated with some en- 
 thusiasm and official fanfare at Laoda, even if it was from the very 
 beginning given a Guomindang ideological twist. One anarchist (not 
 connected with the university) who was present at the 1928 May Day 
 celebration noted wryly that rather than celebrate workers, the cere- 
 monies instead played up the need for everyone to work harder to 
 achieve national goals.©° The May 1930 issue of Labor University 
 Weekly printed on its front cover a brief historical sketch of the 
 international origins of Labor Day. The first featured item in this issue 
 was the full text of Sun Zhongshan’s 1924 May Day address to labor 
 organizations in Guangzhou. In this speech Sun laid down the basic 
 dictum that would later become the Guomindang’s official platform 
 on labor-capital relations and the labor movement: the major problem 
 confronting Chinese workers at this stage of China’s social and eco- 
 nomic underdevelopment was not capitalistic exploitation by Chi- 
 nese capitalists but rather the socioeconomic, political, and military 
 oppression by foreign imperialists with their unequal treaties. Since 
 both Chinese labor and Chinese capital were victims of imperialist 
 domination, they should unite and participate in the national revolu- 
 tion under Guomindang leadership to overthrow the bondage of impe- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 110 
 
 rialism. As such, Chinese workers and capitalists should work in 
 harmony in national reconstruction to abolish unequal treaties and to 
 develop China according to the Three People’s Principles.°7 
 
 In other words, the promotion of labor-capital class harmony in the 
 Chinese domestic context was regarded by the Guomindang estab- 
 lishment as necessary and desirable in order to advance the cause of 
 China’s national revolution against foreign imperialism and capital- 
 ism. The publication of Sun’s speech in this issue of Labor University 
 Weekly no doubt implied the Laoda authorities’ inevitable acceptance 
 of and concurrence with the Guomindang official party line on labor- 
 capital class harmony in the post-1927 era. Ironically, as we have seen, 
 for all their revolutionary rhetoric, the anarchists’ conception of this 
 problem was not significantly different from Sun’s, which provided 
 them with a common basis with the Guomindang and against the 
 Communists. 
 
 The proceedings of the Labor Day assembly held at Labor Univer- 
 sity on May 1, 1930—at which workers were also present—were 
 layered with a mild, reformist overtone devoid of any implications for 
 class confrontation. The university secretary general in his opening 
 remarks only pointed to the Chinese people’s general lack of attention 
 to the International Labor Day until 1919.°8 The first of three speak- 
 ers, Professor Li Shiquan of the economics department, elaborated on 
 the eight-hour system as the core issue of the International Labor Day 
 movement. Praising Laoda students as “vanguards of the Three Peo- 
 ple’s Principles,” Li suggested that they would, of course, “support and 
 practice the eight-hour system with eight hours each for work, for 
 education, and for rest.”°? 
 
 The novel feature of this commemoration was the second speaker, 
 Fei Weizhong, a worker representing his peers at the university’s 
 ironworks. In his speech Fei heartily embraced the ideal of an eight- 
 hour day, as ironworkers ordinarily had to put in an eleven-hour day. 
 Yet Fei also realistically pointed out that unless there were improve- 
 ments in production methods and equipment, reduction in working 
 hours would not be possible,”° which suggests that devising the means 
 and developing the capacity to promote labor productivity and indus- 
 trial efficiency had become urgent tasks for Laoda students in their 
 commitment to improve labor conditions in China. 
 
 The last speaker, Professor Ye Fawu, former chairman of the sociol- 
 ogy department, adopted a rather critical and cynical view toward 
 Labor Day, the meaning of which he regarded as an indication of 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 111 
 
 societal sickness. Ye criticized the common view equating May Day 
 with the eight-hour day as shallow and narrow. Instead, May Day 
 represented the most basic starting point of the workers’ demand for 
 liberation. Ye argued, however, that the more developed industries 
 became, the more severe capitalist exploitation of labor would be- 
 come, and hence labor-capital conflicts would become more intense. 
 Nevertheless, because Chinese industries remained underdeveloped, 
 industrial workers in China were too few in number and too low in 
 their level of maturity; thus, the time was yet to come for Chinese 
 workers to demand their own liberation. Echoing the official Guo- 
 mindang platform, Ye concluded his speech with the rallying cry that 
 “today’s Labor Day commemoration should not stress the liberation 
 of workers from the passive side, but rather it should be on the active 
 promotion of industry.””! Based on the proceedings of the 1930 Labor 
 Day celebration on campus, there is little doubt that the kind of labor 
 activism and the social mission the Guomindang establishment and 
 its supporters envisioned for Labor University students in 1930 were 
 very different from the ideas and ideals of social revolution harbored 
 by Laoda’s anarchist founders in 1927-28. 
 
 Perhaps it should also be noted here that the political “redefining” 
 of labor activism in a non-class conflict mode, as preferred by the 
 Guomindang mainstream, found another effective channel in Laoda 
 besides the collegiate assemblies. The Student Guidance Office in 
 each of the colleges often printed and distributed copies of important 
 official party/state documents and scholarly essays, as well as current 
 affairs reports, to individual students for their reference and self- 
 study. For instance, in January 1930, right before the Lunar New Year 
 holidays, some two hundred copies of the Factory Act newly promul- 
 gated by the Nanjing regime were distributed to engineering under- 
 graduates.’2 While progressive in nature and enlightened in its provi- 
 sions, this Factory Act—the only major piece of prolabor industrial 
 and social legislation passed by the Guomindang authorities during 
 the entire Nanking Decade—remained unenforced and unenforceable 
 for a host of political reasons.’3 It was ironic that Laoda undergradu- 
 ates, with their supposedly empirical orientation and actual experi- 
 ence in labor participation, were fed such a white elephant of ideal- 
 istic but irrelevant official blueprints for social engineering. This 
 indeed reflected the lip service and paper-thin societal commitment of 
 the Guomindang party-state to the grass roots. 
 
 Laoda’s observance of the May Fourth Movement on May 5, 1930, is 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 112 
 
 another unmistakably clear sign of the ascending Guomindang hege- 
 mony in educational control. It took the form of a joint commemora- 
 tive assembly that also marked Sun Zhongshan’s inauguration as 
 extraordinary president of the Republic (i.e., the Guangzhou constitu- 
 tional government) on May 5s, 1917. The date chosen for this joint 
 gathering was May 5, not May 4, despite the undisputed fact that in 
 terms of its intellectual, literary, social, and political impact, the May 
 Fourth Movement was of far greater contemporary significance and 
 historical profundity than Sun’s 1917 inauguration as head of the 
 Guangzhou regime. The two speeches delivered at this joint assembly 
 were even more revealing about the kind of political atmosphere 
 Labor University operated under. 
 
 The first speaker, Yi Gengfu, began by boasting about the political 
 significance of Sun Zhongshan’s 1917 presidential inauguration, and 
 then moved on to a lengthy analysis of the May Fourth Movement. 
 According to Yi, the events of the May Fourth Movement were natural 
 manifestations of the Chinese people’s nationalist spirit to resist 
 imperialism. While acknowledging the students’ leadership role, Yi 
 emphasized the multiclass composition of the May Fourth partici- 
 pants, who included industrial and commercial elements and urban 
 residents. Considering this to be an unprecedented display of the 
 collective strength of the Chinese people, Yi Gengfu regarded the 
 greatest impact of the May Fourth movement to be on the New 
 Culture Movement and on the national revolution under Guomin- 
 dang leadership. He rejected other assessments of May Fourth’s actual 
 impact—especially the Communists’ view of the May Fourth Move- 
 ment as a labor movement. Finally, in spelling out guidelines for 
 future mobilization, Yi Gengfu asserted that “our future revolution- 
 ary movements must be tightly organized and struggle under the 
 guidance of the doctrines of the Guomindang. We must not act rashly 
 or recklessly as in the May Fourth Movement. A revolutionary party 
 will never perish; therefore, from now on, mass movements must not 
 be separated from the party.’”’”4 This speech left out entirely the May 
 Fourth Movement’s essential quest for personal liberation, social rev- 
 olution, and the pursuit of science and democracy in the wholesale 
 rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. 
 
 The second speaker, Tao Xisheng, the well-known historian of Chi- 
 nese society and instructor of Laoda’s History of Chinese Society 
 course, was more academic but even more critical of the Chinese 
 Communists. Tao told the students that in commemorating past 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 113 
 
 events, one must recognize the changes in social circumstances that 
 had occurred since the event had taken place. The May Fourth Move- 
 ment and the revolutionary movements of the mid-1920s belonged to 
 the high tide of popular mobilization in the cities. The present situa- 
 tion of doldrums in the cities accompanied by intense unrest in rural 
 areas was a natural development stemming from economic changes 
 that had taken place in the meantime. According to Tao, the immi- 
 nent bankruptcy of the Chinese agrarian sector would eventually 
 cause profound changes in Chinese society and polity. He bemoaned 
 the fact that those in a position of power wished only to preserve the 
 facade of peace and prosperity but paid no attention to the causes of 
 this agrarian crisis; while, on the other hand, the Chinese Commu- 
 nists, oblivious to all consequences but their party interests, were 
 promoting the peasant movement. Tao admonished the Laoda stu- 
 dents in their future revolutionary mobilization to learn from the 
 vision of Sun and to pay full attention to the relationship between 
 cause and consequence so that they could develop the labor and 
 peasant movements, overthrow the yoke of imperialism, improve 
 state finances, and handle rural unrest without undesirable effects.75 
 While he did not entirely renounce mass movements and popular 
 mobilization, Tao’s emphasis on conceptual and historical under- 
 standing of the causes underlining social unrest, and his warning 
 concerning the agrarian crisis, in some sense justified the social mis- 
 sion of Laoda in training informed and articulate social engineers. Yet 
 his deliberate distancing of the May Fourth legacy from the social and 
 political realities of China in the early 1930s could have done little to 
 boost the morale of Laoda students as future cadres in an unfolding 
 revolution. 
 
 Laoda and Other Institutions of Labor Education 
 
 Since around the turn of the century, the education of laborers had 
 been a major concern of Euro-American socialists and labor move- 
 ments. The establishment of institutions for the education of laborers 
 gathered momentum with World War I and proliferated worldwide in 
 the 1920s. Though they provoked considerable opposition, these in- 
 stitutions were in general reformist in orientation and intended to 
 train leaders for the labor movement in order to increase the power of 
 labor unions in politics or to enhance the possibility of a peaceful 
 realization of socialism. A brief comparison of Labor University to 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 114 
 
 institutions elsewhere yields insights into its achievements as well as 
 the reasons for its rapid failure. 
 
 We have already seen that Charleroi Labor University (L’Université 
 de travail de Charleroi) in Belgium was very much on the minds of the 
 founders of Labor University when they met in Shanghai in April 
 1927 to plan its initiation. The 1930 speech by Gong Xiangming, the 
 head of the sociology department, confirmed that Labor University 
 had been “patterned” after the Charleroi institution. Further evidence 
 of the links between Charleroi and Labor University was provided by 
 Wang Jingqi in a speech he gave to Laoda students on April 28, 1930. In 
 his address Wang delineated the development of Charleroi Labor Uni- 
 versity from a small institution founded by the Socialist Party in 1902 
 to a highly successful cradle of industrial talent in Belgium. He stated 
 that 
 
 although Charleroi has only a short history of twenty some years, 
 the enthusiasm of its leaders has produced good results and the 
 courses it has offered are conducive to practical application. Be- 
 cause of the different objectives and academic standards involved 
 [from other universities], Charleroi is divided in organization into 
 a Specialized Workers’ Day School, an Advanced Labor School, 
 Engineering School, and Specialized Workers’ Evening School. 
 
 Wang then called on Laoda students “to emulate the honest and 
 practical work spirit of the Belgians to build a better and more perfect 
 nation. 77° 
 
 According to another report (again from a speech delivered on the 
 Laoda campus}, the Labor University in Charleroi was founded in 
 1903 but became prominent after 1914, under an engineer president. 
 This report also noted that the socialist management of the school 
 had initially provoked the opposition of the capitalists, but the oppo- 
 sition had subsided and turned into support as evidence accumulated 
 of the engineering talent that the school produced. The report also 
 noted that approximately half the students were proletarian. One of 
 the most unique aspects of the school was that its professors also 
 worked as laborers in the school factory. Eighty Chinese students had 
 been enrolled in the university,”” including Cai Yuanpei’s own son 
 Berlin (Bailing), and Cai Yuanpei had delivered an invited lecture 
 entitled “China’s Renaissance” there on October 10, 1923, China’s 
 National Day.78 
 
 Curiously, Belgian reports on labor education are silent on the 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 115 
 
 Charleroi Labor University which so impressed Chinese educators.7? 
 If we may assume, however, that Charleroi Labor University enjoyed 
 the benefits of the extensive labor education system in the 1920s, it 
 may be reasonable to suggest that it owed its success ultimately to the 
 strength of the Socialist Party and the labor movement in Belgium. 
 There was more than one organization in Belgium that promoted 
 labor education; the most important in the 1920s was the National 
 Committee for Workers’ Education. Labor education was organized on 
 a local basis, and local committees for labor education had consider- 
 able autonomy. They took the initiative on devising methods of edu- 
 cation, and they were expected to finance their operations through 
 local contributions, primarily from labor organizations. The national 
 committee coordinated educational work and gave local committees 
 financial support where necessary. The operation, nevertheless, was 
 largely a labor affair.8° 
 
 This was the most significant difference between the Labor Univer- 
 sity in Shanghai and the Belgium labor education system to which it 
 owed its inspiration. In terms of educational structure, curriculum, 
 and faculty, the Shanghai Labor University was, if anything, better 
 equipped than its counterparts in Belgium, and it had more extensive 
 facilities. Its course offerings were more diverse, support for its stu- 
 dents was generous, and its faculty was quite distinguished (that 
 many of them taught on a visiting basis does not constitute a major 
 difference since in Belgium, too, labor education made extensive use 
 of visiting faculty). As an educational structure, in other words, it was 
 more comprehensive and much more an integral part of the educa- 
 tional structure, in contrast to Belgian institutions, many of which 
 engaged in part-time or short-term education. 
 
 An authoritative comparison between National Labor University in 
 Shanghai and Charleroi Labor University was provided by Emile Van- 
 dervelde, the former Belgian foreign minister and leader of the Second 
 International. In an address delivered in French during his visit to 
 Laoda on October 17, 1930, Vandervelde told the assembled students, 
 faculty, and staff: 
 
 Your secretary general is quite right in pointing out that China’s 
 Labor University was established on the model of the Belgian 
 Labor University and the Chinese Labor University adopted the 
 principles which were patterned after the Belgian Labor Univer- 
 sity. Besides the training of technical talents Charleroi Labor 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 116 
 
 University emphasizes the nurturing of talents for social enter- 
 prises. 
 
 Charleroi was founded by several comrades of my Belgian So- 
 cialist Party for a purpose quite different from other schools. 
 Charleroi Labor University was not established for the sons of the 
 bourgeoisie. It was founded for the sons of the laborers. As the 
 status and influence of Belgian workers are quite considerable, 
 education for the workers’ children is, of course, very important: 
 Charleroi has two aims: one is to produce technical talents to 
 meet the needs of the nation’s enterprise, the other is to produce 
 technical talents for social enterprise. The talents trained by 
 Charleroi will not go to work in factories established by the 
 capitalists and be exploited by them. Instead they go to work in 
 the factories operated by labor syndicates. Graduates of Charleroi 
 come to this kind of place to collaborate with the workers. 
 
 While the labor universities in China and Belgium have similar 
 histories and organization, they are different in nature. When 
 compared with Belgium, China is a very large agrarian country, 
 and Belgium, though very small, has well-developed industries. 
 Since China has no big capitalists but only different degrees of 
 poverty, thus all the classes must collaborate in order to save 
 China. In other words, the classes in China have yet to be sharply 
 formed. But Belgium has capital and labor organizations with 
 very serious conflicts between workers and capitalists, and class 
 differences are great. This is where the situation in China is 
 different from Belgium. 
 
 When traveling in China, we see only villages in the hinterland, 
 yet in the big cities we can see that China also has factories 
 and enterprises which are not all owned by foreigners. Precisely 
 because China has factories and enterprises, the emergence of 
 classes also cannot be avoided. 
 
 The conditions of Belgian workers are similar to those in China. 
 That is why Karl Marx once said, “Belgium is paradise to the big 
 capitalists and also hell for the laboring class.” The treatment of 
 workers was extremely bad indeed. But our workers have already 
 been awakened and they are united together. As a result of forty 
 years of struggle, the situation of ordinary Belgian workers has 
 been much improved. Now they all have the right to vote and 
 working hours are regulated. At this moment China cannot yet 
 achieve these. China is an agrarian country where the life of 
 
Physical Plant and Curriculum 117 
 
 peasants is most painful and the circumstances of Chinese work- 
 ers are very bad. In such a situation, if Chinese workers could be 
 awakened and become organized on their own, then through 
 union organization or with political strategies they can improve 
 their own lot. Only then could all social enterprises flourish. It is 
 my hope for the Chinese Labor University that besides the train- 
 ing of technical talents it must also train technical talents for 
 social enterprise.®! 
 
 The success of labor education in Belgium and elsewhere, as in the 
 case of Ruskin College at Oxford, owed much to the presence of a 
 strong labor movement and the support it extended to the education 
 of laborers.82 The Labor University in Shanghai, by contrast, was 
 totally dependent on the government and vulnerable to shifts in poli- 
 tics. In the absence of a significant or vigorous labor movement (espe- 
 cially in the late 1920s, when the burgeoning labor movement of 
 earlier years was depleted by government suppression), neither its 
 faculty nor its students had a social frame of reference that could give 
 coherence to its self-professed mission. While it differed little from 
 these other institutions in intention (which, in the abstract, was more 
 radical in its anarchist vision), in the end its aspirations were circum- 
 scribed by the official vision of modernization: to train a technical 
 personnel that would be more effective technically for its social con- 
 sciousness but whose social consciousness was to be fashioned by 
 official ideology. Rather than promote the cause of an autonomous 
 labor movement, the graduates of Labor University were to fulfill 
 official conceptions of the place of the laborer in society. The govern- 
 ment responded with alacrity to any signs that Labor University 
 students deviated from the norms it expected of them, which ren- 
 dered the university vulnerable to suppression. The contrast between 
 the Shanghai Labor University and the Belgian labor education sys- 
 tem it sought to emulate reveals the dependence of educational in- 
 stitutions on their social and political environment—especially edu- 
 cational institutions designed to promote an education with socially 
 radical connotations. 
 
 There was, however, a second significant difference between the 
 Shanghai Labor University and successful labor education institu- 
 tions elsewhere: the quality of its students, which also was related to 
 the social environment. Successful labor education institutions in 
 Belgium and England (or, for that matter, the United States) drew their 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 118 
 
 students from the working classes, and they went through a careful 
 screening process by their unions before they were nominated for 
 higher education.8? While the exact composition of Labor University 
 students is unclear, there is some question as to whether or not they 
 were of genuinely proletarian or peasant origin; even if they were, 
 there was no careful screening process comparable to those of other 
 labor institutions, and the students’ commitment to labor and the 
 laboring population was open to question.84 Labor University re- 
 cruited its students with haste, and in spite of its strong academic 
 atmosphere, the question of the quality of its students remained a sore 
 point. In the attacks from politicians and educators alike that finally 
 brought the university down, the quality of its students was a highly 
 visible and constant issue.®° It is to Labor University’s teachers, stu- 
 dents, and their activities that we turn in the next three chapters. 
 
5 Labor 
 University 
 Faculty 
 and 
 
 Scholarship 
 
 Parallel to and stemming from the rather extensive restructuring of 
 academic units in Labor University was the constant change in its 
 administrative personnel and teaching faculty during the 1927-31 
 period. Almost every academic year in Laoda’s short history witnessed 
 considerable change in personnel. 
 
 At the start of the second academic year in mid-1928, the creation of 
 academic departments and the closure of some programs (normal and 
 cadre training classes) were accompanied by massive turnover and 
 new appointments involving most of the teachers and staff.! The 
 establishment of the College of Social Sciences in summer 1929 neces- 
 sitated the transfer of anumber of faculty members from the engineer- 
 ing and agriculture colleges to the new college. The 1929—30 academic 
 year saw Laoda at its peak in terms of academic programs, curriculum 
 development, and facilities. However, June 1930 became Laoda’s turn- 
 ing point toward decline and demise when the Ministry of Education 
 (which replaced the Republic of China University Council as the 
 highest national education administrative organ in October 1928) 
 prohibited the recruitment of new students into Labor University. In 
 September 1930, right before instruction was to start for the fourth 
 academic year, Laoda’s founding president, Yi Peiji, was forced to 
 resign under new government regulations; the second president, Wang 
 Jingqi, was not appointed until December 1930. The summer and fall 
 of 1930 was a crisis period on the Laoda campus that took a heavy toll 
 on faculty and staff. Under Wang Jingqi, Laoda’s central administration 
 attempted various measures to rationalize and consolidate academic 
 structure and to streamline regulations in the spring of 1931. This 
 resulted in another wave of personnel changes before Laoda’s fifth and 
 last academic year beginning in September 1931. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 120 
 
 These complex and frequent changes render any detailed descrip- 
 tion or analysis of the faculty and staff at Laoda a highly complicated 
 and nearly impossible task. Based on four available sets of officially 
 published Laoda data, the following sections offer a general delinea- 
 tion of faculty and staff size and distribution, their educational back- 
 ground and professional experience, their ideological and political 
 orientation, their scholarship and publications, and their relationship 
 with other Chinese universities.2 
 
 Numbers and Distribution of Teachers 
 and Administrators 
 
 The size of Laoda’s faculty grew very rapidly during the first three 
 academic years but declined sharply in autumn 1931, reflecting the 
 changing fortunes of the university. Since detailed and systematic 
 information on Laoda’s initial faculty composition in autumn 1927 is 
 not available, the description here starts with the second academic 
 year in autumn 1928 and goes through the end of the first semester of 
 Laoda’s last academic year in December 1931. 
 
 Administrative/ 
 Date Teaching Personnel Technical Personnel 
 Autumn Engineering, 17 + (3)* Central Administration, 
 1928 Agriculture, 10 + (1)* 15 + (xa 
 Translation and Press, ro 
 Library, 5 
 
 Clinic, 2 F(a} 
 
 College Ei 
 
 A, 2 
 Autumn Engineering, 15t + (J8) Central Administration, 22 
 1929 Agriculture, 22 + (J2) Translation and Press, 7* * 
 Social Sciences, 19t + Library, 7 
 (J12) Clinic, 6 
 JOU Tsar Factory, 9 
 
 * Figures in parentheses denote those holding concurrent administrative/teaching 
 posts in other units. 
 
 **There were another four external translators and editors. 
 
 +tOf these known cases of part-time professors who held other appointments 
 outside Laoda, four were from engineering, six were from agriculture, and twelve 
 were from social sciences. 
 
 +tJoint appointments refer to the same teacher carrying teaching responsibility in 
 two or three colleges as well as those holding concurrent appointments in other 
 units such as the clinic or the Translation and Publication Office. 
 
Date 
 
 Spring 
 
 1931 
 
 Autumn 
 1931 
 
 Faculty and Scholarship 
 
 Teaching Personnel 
 
 Dean/ Associate Professor/ 
 Lecturer/Instructor/ 
 Teaching Assistantt tt 
 
 E: 1/7/9(7*)(27*)/ 
 
 Si ane 
 A: 1/15(1*)/16(10*)/ 
 WW Mee) = Bes 
 SS: 1/5/30(19*)/(1**)/ 
 I = 36 
 
 Joint: 3/1/5(3*) = 9 
 
 Total = 80 
 
 Dean/ Associate Professor/ 
 Lecturer/Instructor 
 
 A: 1/4(1*)/6(5*)(1#*#)/1 = 
 1.2) 
 
 E: 1/8/5/2 = 16 
 
 SS: 1/10(4#) = 11 
 
 Joint: 5(1#*) = 5 
 
 I21 
 
 Administrative/ 
 Technical Personnel 
 
 Labor Education Commit- 
 teem 
 
 18, 6* x * 
 
 AN, @) ap leeiaan, 5 
 
 SS, 6* a * 
 
 College 
 
 Central Administration, 26 
 
 Tessas 
 Library, 1o 
 Clinic, 6 
 
 E, 4 
 College | A, 5 
 
 SS, 4 
 Factory, 8 
 Farm, 8 
 
 Student Affairs, 5 
 Physical Education, 1 
 
 Central Administration, 28 
 Press, 4 
 Library, 6 
 Clinic, 5 
 Factory, 7 
 Farm, 4 
 Physical Education, 1 
 Student Affairs, 3 
 
 8 3 
 College | A, 5 
 
 SSa8 
 
 ***The engineering and social sciences colleges shared the general affairs officers, 
 the student affairs officer, who held a professorship in both colleges, and a clerk in 
 the Student Affairs Office. 
 +tttThis was the first time formal academic ranks appeared in Labor University 
 official publications. 
 
 # Part-time teachers with outside appointments. 
 
 ## Part-time teachers with Laoda administrative or technical appointment. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 122 
 
 The data reveal the practice of joint appointments between the 
 colleges. Detailed examination of these four lists of Laoda faculty and 
 staff also shows that a sizable portion of the teaching personnel con- 
 currently carried substantial administrative and/or technical respon- 
 sibilities. This was a particularly common practice in the central 
 administration. 
 
 For instance, Cheng Ganyun held major administrative, academic, 
 and technical posts in Laoda during 1928—30. He was concurrently 
 director of general affairs in the central administration, dean of engi- 
 neering (and also director of academic affairs of the college, 1929—30), 
 and director of the university factory. Another scholar, Zheng Yougu, 
 was during 1928—30 a secretary in the central administration while he 
 taught courses on labor in the engineering college (both in 1928—30}, 
 sociology courses in the agriculture college (1928—29}, as well as the 
 course on education research in the social sciences college (1929— 
 30).4 Another secretary in the central administration, Xu Shifeng, 
 concurrently taught the courses on psychology and ethnicity in the 
 agriculture college during 1928—29.5 Yet another secretary in the 
 central administration, Liu Songgu, was concurrently general affairs 
 officer in the agriculture college in 1928—29.° During 1929-30 Zhu 
 Tongjiu was concurrently secretary and registrar in the central admin- 
 istration as well as professor of labor economics in the social sciences 
 college.” Even the director of the university clinic, Dr. Zhu Zhenjiang, 
 served concurrently as professor of Japanese language in the social 
 sciences college during 1929—30.8 There were many other cases of 
 technical experts in the university factory and university farm who 
 also held formal teaching posts in the engineering or agriculture col- 
 leges, while some translator-editors in the Publication and Transla- 
 tion Office also taught social sciences courses. 
 
 Budget constraints (which limited the recruitment of more faculty 
 and staff) and the very small undergraduate enrollment (which en- 
 abled teachers and administrators to shoulder other responsibilities at 
 the same time), especially during the early period, may explain the 
 multiplicity of roles Laoda faculty and staff had to assume. An even 
 more widespread and common practice—not just for Laoda but also 
 for other universities in Shanghai at that time—was the appointment 
 of part-time teachers. According to a chart tabulating Laoda’s teaching 
 faculty for the spring semester of 1930, part-time teachers outnum- 
 bered full-time teachers significantly:? engineering had 4 full-time 
 and to part-time teachers; agriculture had 8 full-time and 14 part- 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 123 
 
 time teachers; and social sciences had 3 full-time and 24 part-time 
 teachers. This information, from an official Labor University publica- 
 tion, did not list individual members of the faculty or staff. Thus it is 
 impossible to ascertain joint or concurrent post holders within Lao- 
 da’s three colleges in order to eliminate duplication and overlapping. 
 The term “part-time” was not defined at all. It could mean either 
 those who held concurrent posts within Laoda or, more likely, those 
 who held regular full-time appointments elsewhere and taught at 
 Laoda on a part-time or visiting basis. 
 
 The faculty data for autumn 1929 made a distinction between “pro- 
 fessor,” “full-time professor,” and “concurrent professor” when listing 
 individual teachers in the agriculture college. Besides the dean, the 
 three department chairmen, the director of the farm, the military 
 training instructor, and the Party Doctrines course instructor, the 
 sixteen professors of the college were identified as seven “professors,” 
 four “full-time professors,” and five “concurrent professors.” One of 
 the four full-time professors, Professor of English Lu Shaozeng, who 
 was based in the agriculture college, also taught English in the College 
 of Engineering. As such, his full-time status meant full time at Laoda, 
 but in fact he was carrying joint assignments in two colleges located 
 on separate campuses. 
 
 The data available for spring and autumn 1931 are more explicit in 
 this respect, and formal academic ranks and titles are indicated in the 
 faculty-staff listings. This ranking system was introduced as part of 
 the reorganization undertaken by Laoda’s second president to con- 
 form to Ministry of Education norms and regulations. Those who 
 carried a teaching load of ten hours or more per week were regarded as 
 full-time faculty.!° A large number of the teachers (associate pro- 
 fessors and lecturers) offering courses in the spring semester of 1931 
 concurrently either held teaching appointments at other universities 
 or outside positions in government, engineering, journalism, publish- 
 ing houses, or research organs. For example, among the nine lecturers 
 in the College of Engineering, four were also professors at the Na- 
 tional Communications University in Shanghai, and one was affili- 
 ated with the Merchant Marine School in Wusong. In addition, two 
 other lecturers held concurrent administrative posts in Laoda. In the 
 College of Agriculture, ten of sixteen lecturers were based elsewhere 
 (the lecturer on agrarian social problems came from as far away as 
 Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, while the lecturer on landscape 
 gardening worked for the Nanjing municipal government’s park 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 124 
 
 administration). The College of Social Sciences had the most extreme 
 faculty composition, with six professors (supposedly full-time Laoda 
 teachers) and thirty lecturers, of whom nineteen were part-time Laoda 
 appointees. These nineteen part-time lecturers included several well- 
 known figures with the leading publishing houses and journalistic 
 organs such as the Commercial Press, the Zhonghua (Chung Hwa) 
 Bookstore, and the Shen Bao daily.!! Many were prominent scholars 
 whose educational and teaching experience as professors at other 
 more established universities could easily have qualified them for full 
 professorial rank at Labor University. Their “lecturer” designation 
 referred to the part-time nature and visiting status of their Laoda 
 appointment rather than to academic standing. For those part-time 
 lecturers from government organs and outside professional practice, 
 the title of “lecturer” was an appropriate and flexible academic desig- 
 nation. Hence, the list of lecturers who formed the majority of Laoda’s 
 teaching faculty during the last two academic years (33 professors 
 versus 56 lecturers for 1930-31, and 15 professors versus 26 lecturers 
 for 1931—32) indicated that in addition to its regular full-time faculty, 
 part-time visiting teachers contributed very substantially to Labor 
 University’s curriculum and scholarship. 
 
 Its very location in metropolitan Shanghai, the economic center 
 and communications hub of China, enabled Labor University to draw 
 scholars from other Shanghai universities as well as experts from 
 government agencies, private enterprises, the professions, and the 
 press. Indeed, Labor University publications often gave the greatest 
 attention to visiting faculty, yielding the impression that the most 
 distinguished among its faculty taught on a visiting basis. While these 
 part-time teachers indirectly helped foster personal and even institu- 
 tional links between Laoda and the outside world, their inability to 
 devote full time to Laoda may have caused problems in instruction 
 and the cohesion of the Laoda community. In most cases a part-time 
 teacher (usually classified as “lecturer” under the 1931 nomenclature) 
 did not maintain a full-time presence on campus, which naturally 
 restricted the opportunity for intrafaculty as well as teacher-student 
 interactions. Furthermore, due to their other equally (if not more) 
 important commitments outside Laoda, there was an inevitable con- 
 flict of schedules (if not of interests) which limited their effec- 
 tive contribution to the academic program and campus life at Laoda. 
 Sometimes this conflict of schedules could seriously disrupt the nor- 
 mal progress of instruction. For instance, records of the social sci- 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 125 
 
 ences college’s Office of Academic Affairs for October 1929, indicate 
 that twelve faculty members failed to carry out their normal teaching 
 duties in at least sixteen courses or subjects due to their physical 
 absence on various grounds during the October 1-17, 1929, period. In 
 addition, the instructor for the course on ethics had to reschedule his 
 class because of other business. !2 
 
 The French Connection, Hunanese Ties, and 
 Personnel Turnover 
 
 The Francophile orientation of Laoda’s founders also shaped the com- 
 position of its faculty. According to official Laoda records, administra- 
 tors and teachers with French or Belgian university degrees or profes- 
 sional qualifications formed a sizable group on campus. For instance, 
 during the academic year 1930—31, there were thirty French-educated 
 and sixteen Belgian-educated faculty members at Laoda. Some of the 
 French-educated teachers also held leading positions of administra- 
 tive responsibility—the deans of agriculture and social sciences, four 
 department chairmen, director of general affairs, and chief librarian. 
 In addition, the headmaster of the primary school and four other 
 teachers in the high school were also French educated. The French- 
 educated faculty members at Laoda maintained a particularly strong 
 concentration in the agricultural college. According to the official 
 roster for the autumn semester of 1929, the dean, two of the three 
 department chairmen, and ten of the fifteen professors were educated 
 in France. Among them, the dean and six professors had received their 
 training at the Institut Franco-Chinois in Lyon, which Li Shizeng and 
 Wu Zhihui had established as a center for the diligent-work frugal- 
 study program. Their academic lineage enhanced the anarchist tint 
 pervading Laoda. 
 
 As for the Belgian-educated faculty members, they included both 
 the director of the university farm and the director of the university 
 factory, in which the secretary, the chief engineer, and the laboratory 
 instructor were also all Belgian educated. The latter two were gradu- 
 ates of Charleroi Labor University in Belgium, whose alumni at Laoda 
 also included the principal and three teachers at the high school.!3 
 Furthermore, the second university president, Wang Jingqi, was pre- 
 viously China’s minister to Belgium, where he had received an honor- 
 ary doctorate from Louvain University. 
 
 The second largest foreign-educated faculty group were the twenty- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 126 
 
 one American-educated teachers, mainly in engineering and social 
 sciences, including the chairmen of the electrical engineering and 
 education departments. (In contrast, only two professors—in English 
 and in beekeeping—of the agricultural college’s twenty faculty mem- 
 bers in 1929 were American trained.)!4 American educational influ- 
 ence was an established feature in Chinese higher education during 
 the Republican era, while Laoda’s obvious French-Belgian orientation 
 was an exception to the norm. Other than the French Catholic Aurora 
 University in Shanghai and the Université Franco-Chinoise in Beijing, 
 Laoda was perhaps the most French-oriented institution of higher 
 education in modern China.!° This fact also set Laoda apart from 
 most other national universities funded by the Nationalist regime, 
 which had many American-educated officials at the cabinet level. 
 
 One contemporary observer describing Laoda’s internal difficulties 
 attributed part of the problem to personnel mismanagement, and 
 noted that, since the founding president Yi Peiji was a Hunanese and 
 had served as president of Hunan First Normal School, this resulted in 
 an unhealthy concentration of Hunanese on Laoda’s faculty and 
 staff.1© According to the official faculty-staff list for 1928-29, there 
 was indeed a very strong Hunanese presence in Laoda’s central admin- 
 istration. Of the fifteen central-level administrative staff under Yi in 
 1928, twelve were Hunanese and three were non-Hunanese; the ratio 
 was slightly improved to sixteen versus seven in 1929. In the 1928 
 autumn semester, both the librarian and the director of the Publica- 
 tion and Translation Office were Hunanese. In addition, the principal 
 of Laoda’s high school and the headmaster of its primary school were 
 both Hunanese.!” The only apparent case of nepotism was the an- 
 nounced appointment of Li Zongtong (a historian who was both Yi’s 
 son-in-law and a nephew of Li Shizeng) as Laoda’s vice president on 
 May 15, 1930.18 But Li Zhongtong’s tenure at Laoda was brief because 
 the Education Ministry abolished the post of vice president in all na- 
 tional universities in October 1930. Yi Peiji was forced to resign from 
 Laoda’s presidency in September 1930, which resulted in some im- 
 provement of the university’s image as a “Hunanese colony” or 
 “Hunan Club.” By spring 1931 only the dean of agriculture, the chair- 
 man of the Department of Agriculture, the high-school principal, the 
 primary-school headmaster, and the dean of students were Hunan- 
 ese.!9 Nevertheless, factional struggles involving Hunanese broke out 
 after Yi’s departure and did serious damage to Laoda’s reputation and 
 morale. 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 127 
 
 A more critical management and personnel problem was the con- 
 stant turnover of the faculty, which affected instruction and curricu- 
 lum balance, as well as the frequent changes and brief tenure of central 
 administrators, deans, and department chairmen, which seriously un- 
 dermined academic morale and continuity in planning and develop- 
 ment. One such case was that of the anarchist Shen Zhongjiu (also an 
 old friend of Yi Peiji’s), who was appointed dean of the industrial labor 
 college on June 9, 1927 (almost three months ahead of Yi Peiji’s official 
 appointment as founding president of Laoda on September 2, 1927). 
 Shen soon resigned the deanship to go overseas. (From November 1, 
 1927, until February 6, 1928, while no longer dean, he actually served 
 as director of Laoda’s Publication and Translation Office before he left 
 for further studies in Japan; even then he retained his Laoda ties as 
 an appointed “external editor-translator.’”’)2° Shen’s successor to the 
 deanship was the Hunanese Xiong Mengfei, a historian trained at Bei- 
 jing Normal University who relinquished the deanship in January 
 1928 to resume his post as university secretary.2! After that, Cornell- 
 educated engineering professor Cheng Ganyun took over the deanship 
 and served until September 1930. Cheng was concurrently director of 
 general affairs for the university during the same period and stayed on 
 in this post for another year. Furthermore, Cheng also became director 
 of the university factory in May 1928 after Zhang Xingbai, the original 
 factory director (who was, incidentally, the first appointee of Laoda 
 and also a Labor University Preparation Committee member), re- 
 signed to go to France after exactly one year on the job.22 Following 
 Cheng’s departure Zheng Jiajun was appointed dean of engineering, 
 but before his arrival in late 1930 Hu Shuhua served as acting dean. 
 Finally, a graduate of Berlin Technical University, Tang Ying, served as 
 the last dean of engineering from spring 1931 until Laoda’s demise a 
 year later.23 
 
 A similar case of “revolving door” deans took place in the agricul- 
 tural college. In mid-October 1927, Han Shaoqi was appointed direc- 
 tor of academic courses in the newly founded College of Agricultural 
 Labor to take charge of recruitment and matriculation of new stu- 
 dents.24 French-educated anarchist Guo Xujing took office as the first 
 dean of agriculture at the start of the second semester on February 6, 
 1928; but he resigned on September 4, 1928, one day after classes 
 started for the 1928 fall semester.2° On September 10, 1928, He Shang- 
 ping, an agricultural scientist, was appointed as the second dean of the 
 agricultural labor college. He served until January 1929, when he 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 128 
 
 resigned to go to France.2° The third dean, Li Lianggong, a Lyon 
 University alumnus who served until winter 1930, was instrumental 
 in the expansion of the college’s many programs and facilities.27 Li 
 was succeeded by the director of the university farm, Zhang Nong.28 
 The final academic year at Laoda (September 1931—April 1932) saw 
 Han Yanmen, a graduate of Nancy University in France who had been 
 a professor and department chairman in the college since 1928, as the 
 last dean and concurrent director of the university farm.2% 
 
 The deanship turnover in the social sciences college, established in 
 mid-1929, was only slightly better. To start with, after the noted 
 American-educated sociologist Sun Benwen declined the deanship 
 offer in summer 1929, university president Yi Peiji himself served 
 concurrently as the first dean of social sciences. Yi’s fellow Hunanese 
 Peng Xiang took actual charge as the college’s director of studies when 
 the fall semester began in September 1929.29 He later became dean of 
 social sciences in 1930. In spring 1931 a Sorbonne-trained political 
 scientist, Zhang Yuanruo, took over as acting dean and served until 
 the end in spring 1932.3! 
 
 Changes in key personnel were no less frequent in Laoda’s central 
 administration, partly due to the reorganization of the administrative 
 structure in 1928, 1929, and 1931, but also stemming from the expan- 
 sion of academic programs and facilities. But such changes also re- 
 flected the changing ideological orientation at Laoda from its initial 
 stage toits later development under increasingly tight official scrutiny 
 from the GMp. The case of Huang Lingshuang, a well-known Guang- 
 dong anarchist, serves as an interesting illustration of both the person- 
 nel and structural changes and political trends at work in Laoda. 
 
 The well-known Hunanese educator Wang Fengjie was the founding 
 director of studies in the College of Industrial Labor for the second half 
 of 1927. When he left to assume the post of director of education in the 
 Hunan provincial government in late January 1928, Laoda appointed 
 Huang as Wang’s successor to the upgraded post of university provost. 
 In February 1928, when Shen Zhongjiu resigned, Huang also took over 
 the directorship of the Publication and Translation Office. Later, in 
 mid-1929, Huang was additionally appointed a professor in the social 
 sciences college, but by then he was no longer provost, and soon he left 
 Laoda altogether, like other anarchists on the faculty.32 
 
 A more prominent participant in Laoda’s high-level “musical 
 chairs” game was Xiong Mengfei. Xiong started his service at Laoda as 
 university secretary but took over the deanship of the industrial labor 
 college in October 1927, a post he held until January 1928, when he 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 129 
 
 returned to his post as university secretary. In April 1929 Xiong was 
 promoted to university secretary general, which made him the de 
 facto principal administrator of Laoda, because President Yi Peiji 
 spent most of his time in Nanjing as minister of agriculture and 
 mining. Along the way Xiong also took up a number of other concur- 
 rent posts. For example, when the original director of academic affairs 
 at the College of Industrial Labor was transferred to become secretary 
 in the president’s office in October 1927, Xiong, as dean, also took up 
 the academic directorship of the college. In September 1928 Xiong 
 was appointed director of the Publication and Translation Office but 
 relinquished the post to President Yi Peiji in September 1929. In mid- 
 July 1928 Xiong resigned from the post of secretary general, but in 
 early December 1928 he was reappointed to that position.3? This 
 pattern of job switching and concurrent posting back and forth did 
 more than just create confusion among faculty, staff, and students; it 
 also hampered administrative efficiency and continuity. In this re- 
 spect, the public image of instability and inconsistency within Laoda 
 was not unjustified. Besides these personnel changes in the central 
 administration, other nonteaching units on campus also experienced 
 highly disruptive management turnover. The library saw three chief 
 librarians come and go between September 19, 1927, and September 1, 
 1928.34 The General Affairs Office, Student Guidance Office, univer- 
 sity factory, and university farm all witnessed numerous personnel 
 changes within the first three years. 
 
 The chairmanship in the various academic departments also fol- 
 lowed this same pattern. Part of the reason for such lack of continuity 
 in departmental leadership was, of course, the structural realignment 
 and program expansion. Yet even with these factors in mind, changes 
 in Laoda’s departmental chairmanships did seem too frequent for its 
 academic health. The following list of the thirty-four scholars who at 
 one time or another served as chairmen of the nine academic depart- 
 ments in Laoda from fall 1928 through spring 1932 reveals that, on 
 average, Laoda’s department chairmanships changed hands almost 
 once every academic year. 
 
 I. College of Engineering (College of Industrial Labor until mid-1929) 
 
 A. Department of Industrial Sociology?> established mid-1928, 
 transferred to College of Social Sciences as Department of Sociol- 
 ogy in summer 1929 
 
 Wan Chongxin (University of Washington, M.A.), mid-1928— 
 November 1928 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 130 
 
 Zhu Shikang (Sheldon Tso, Indiana University, Ph.D.), acting 
 from November 1928 
 
 Sun Hanbing (University of Washington, M.A.), 1929 spring se- 
 mester 
 B. Department of Labor Education*¢ established mid-1928, trans- 
 ferred to College of Social Sciences as Department of Education in 
 summer 1929 
 
 Ma Yatang (University of Berlin), 1928 fall semester to 1929 
 spring semester 
 C. Department of Mechanical Engineering?’ established summer 
 1928 
 
 Cheng Youheng (Cornell), from summer 1928 
 
 Luo Baoyin (Liege University), fall 1928, concurrently chairman 
 of the Department of Civil Engineering 
 
 Fang Zhaogao (Tokyo Technical University), resigned December 
 10, 1928 
 
 Su Lezhen, from December 10, 1928 (concurrently chairman of 
 the Department of Civil Engineering), resigned spring 1929 
 
 Yao Jingzhou, acting, spring 1929 
 
 Chen Shiying, summer—October 1929 
 
 Yao Youfan, October 1929—summer 1930 
 
 Li Munan, summer—October 1930 
 
 Shen Mingpan (Paris educated), listed in April and December 
 1931 records 
 
 D. Department of Civil Engineering?® established in fall 1928 
 
 Luo Baoyin, fall 1928 (concurrently chairman of the Department 
 of Mechanical Engineering) 
 
 Fang Zhaogao, resigned December Io, 1928 
 
 Su Lezhen, from December to, 1928 (concurrently chairman of 
 the Department of Civil Engineering), resigned spring 1929 
 
 Yao Jingzhou, acting, spring 1929 
 
 Huang Shupei (French doctorate), fall semester 1929 (concur- 
 rently chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering) 
 
 Shen Chang, February 1930 
 
 Tang Renchu, from summer 1930 
 
 Yang Jian (Belgian educated), listed in spring 1931 
 
 Tang Ying (Berlin Technical University), listed in December 1931 
 (concurrently acting dean of engineering) 
 
 E. Department of Electrical Engineering?® established mid-1929 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 131 
 
 Huang Shupei, from fall 1929 (concurrently chairman of the De- 
 partment of Civil Engineering until January 1930) 
 
 Chen Ceqi (Harvard, B. Eng.), listed in academic year 1930-31 
 
 Bao Keyong (Berlin Technical University), listed December 1931 
 
 II. College of Agriculture (College of Agricultural Labor until mid- 
 1929, all three departments started in mid-1928) 
 
 F. Department of Agriculture? 
 
 Han Yanmen (Nancy University), fall 1928 
 
 Su Rugan, from September 1930 
 
 Yang Jinghui (Japanese educated), listed in spring 1931 
 
 Han Yanmen, listed in December 1931, concurrently dean of 
 agriculture 
 
 G. Department of Horticulture*! 
 
 Feng Yanan (Hokkaido University), fall semester 1928 
 
 Chen Guorong (French and Belgian educated), appointed Febru- 
 ary 1929 
 
 Li Ju (graduate of French National Horticulture Institute), listed 
 in April 1931 and December 1931 records 
 
 H. Department of Agrochemistry42 
 
 Bao Rong, from fall 1928 
 
 Wu Shuge, from September 1930 
 
 Wei Eshou (Japanese educated), listed in April 1931 
 
 Wang Zuju (Sorbonne and Toulouse University), listed in Decem- 
 ber 1931 
 
 I. Department of Social Sciences*? established in spring 1929, 
 transferred to College of Social Sciences in summer 1929 
 Sun Hanbing, 1929 spring semester 
 
 Ill. College of Social Sciences (founded in mid-1929)44 
 
 J. Department of Education 
 
 Ma Yatang, since mid-1929, continuation from chairmanship un- 
 der College of Engineering 
 
 Zhang Yousan (University of Washington, M.Ed.), from October 
 1929, still listed in April 1931; no department chairman was listed 
 in the December 1931 record 
 K. Department of Sociology4® 
 
 Ye Fawu (Sorbonne), founding chair, since fall 1929 
 
 Gong Xiangming (Louvain University doctorate), spring semester 
 1930 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 132 
 
 Zhang Yuanruo (Sorbonne doctorate), spring 1931, also acting 
 dean of social sciences; no department chair was listed in the De- 
 cember 1931 record 
 L. Department of Economics*® 
 
 Sun Hanbing, from mid-1929, previously chairman of the Depart- 
 ment of Industrial Sociology in the College of Engineering 
 
 Deng Hanzhong, listed in April 1931 record 
 
 Zhang Yuanruo, listed in December 1931 record, also acting dean 
 of social sciences 
 
 Anarchist Elements on Laoda Faculty 
 
 The Francophile orientation and European experience of Laoda’s 
 founders shaped Laoda’s faculty composition in terms of educational 
 background. Their ideological disposition also influenced personnel 
 appointment, especially in the initial stage. As a result, many Labor 
 University professors who were French or Belgian educated also har- 
 bored clear anarchist sympathies. 
 
 For want of materials it is impossible to estimate the actual number 
 of anarchists involved in teaching and other work at the university. At 
 least initially, they played a significant part in the College of Indus- 
 trial Labor under Shen Zhongjiu and Bi Xiushao. The founding deans 
 of both the College of Industrial Labor (Shen Zhongjiu) and the Col- 
 lege of Agricultural Labor (Guo Xujing) were well-known anarchists. 
 As deans, Shen and Guo were able to recruit a number of anarchists 
 into their colleges as teachers and staff. They also enrolled some 
 anarchists as students.*”7 Guo had been educated in France under the 
 diligent-work frugal-study program organized by Li Shizeng and Wu 
 Zhihui. Shen, it will be remembered, was previously the founder- 
 editor of the anarchist monthly Free People published in Shanghai 
 from March 1924. In 1927 he served as chief editor of the anarchist 
 organ in Shanghai, the Revolution Weekly, which had close ties to 
 Laoda anarchists, with its editorial and publication office located in 
 Jiangwan.48 
 
 Another senior anarchist scholar-administrator at Laoda was Huang 
 Lingshuang (Wenshan}, who served as university provost and director 
 of the Publication and Translation Office in 1927—28. Huang was a 
 prolific editor, author, and translator. While he was an undergraduate 
 at Beijing University in 1920, Huang was an editor of the Beijing 
 University Student Weekly (Beijing Daxue xuesheng zhoubao). Later, 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 133 
 
 Huang pursued graduate studies at Columbia University in New York 
 City, where he became active in Chinatown schools and also edited an 
 anarchist journal in Chinese entitled New Continent (Xin dalu). In 
 addition, he was the principal translator of The Completed Works of 
 Kropotkin, published in Chinese in three volumes. Huang taught 
 History of Social Thought at Laoda.49 
 
 Anarchists constituted an important group in the social sciences in 
 China in the late twenties, and it is possible that they played a sig- 
 nificant part in the Laoda social sciences department as well.5° Led 
 by the Hunanese anarchist Kuang Husheng, they were also active in 
 the elementary and middle schools in the university.°! Wu Zhigang, 
 a French-educated anarchist, taught French and social issues in the 
 Laoda middle school during 1928.52 Also prominent in the university 
 were foreign anarchists recruited to teach there. Conspicuous among 
 these was Jacques Reclus, grand-nephew of Elisée Reclus, from whom 
 Li Shizeng had learned his anarchism at the origins of the anarchist 
 movement in China. American journalist Harry Paxton Howard from 
 Camden, New Jersey, onetime editor of the China Courier, also held a 
 full-time teaching appointment at Laoda in 1928. Howard, an associ- 
 ate of Jacques Reclus, helped organize an anarchist Labor Research 
 Association in the Longhua district of Shanghai. Howard and Jacques 
 Reclus at one point coauthored a report on the Shanghai labor move- 
 ment which was sent to Albert Thomas, director of the ILo in Ge- 
 mevar > 
 
 In its early days Labor University was regarded as a haven for Chi- 
 nese anarchists, but this safe period did not last long. According to the 
 recollections of Bi Xiushao, anarchist teacher of French at Laoda, the 
 many Hunanese Guomindang members who were recruited to Laoda 
 by Yi Peiji soon came into conflict with the anarchists on campus. 
 The fundamental cause for such conflict, aside from personal reasons, 
 was their very different philosophies in education and the guiding 
 principles for running the university. The conflict ended in the defeat 
 of the anarchists. This, of course, also meant the total shattering of 
 the founding dreams and ideals of promoting anarchistic education. 
 By 1928 many anarchist scholars had left the Laoda faculty. Guo 
 resigned as the founding dean of agriculture in September 1928 after 
 only eight months. (But he later returned as a part-time lecturer in 
 horticulture in spring 1931.) Shen resigned his engineering college 
 deanship to go to Germany, and Bi, who had succeeded Shen as editor 
 of Revolution Weekly, was forced to resign his part-time teaching post 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 134 
 
 in French language. Later, after Revolution Weekly was shut down in 
 1929, Bi also left Shanghai for France.54 
 
 Indeed, the declining anarchist influence in Laoda became so ob- 
 vious by 1929 that the near-total absence of known anarchists from 
 the ranks of senior administrators and teaching faculty on campus 
 was, symbolically, accompanied by the disappearance of Esperanto (a 
 mandatory subject in 1927—29) from the new curriculum introduced 
 in fall 1929.55 As early as November 1927, hard-core Chinese anar- 
 chists already harbored considerable reservations about the purity of 
 National Labor University as a revolutionary educational institution 
 and its ability to actualize its ideals and mission—the liberation of 
 laborers.°° With such significant changes in Laoda’s ideological orien- 
 tation and political atmosphere, criticisms of Labor University from 
 these anarchists became much more fierce and vocal. 
 
 For example, in an essay discussing diligent-work frugal-study pro- 
 posals for China in the June 15, 1929, issue of Revolution Weekly, Lu 
 Han cited National Labor University as a vivid and alarming example 
 of the futile efforts at “laborized” education in China under the aus- 
 pices of the state/party establishment: 
 
 Is it not due to the cultural progress in China now that a 
 “National Labor University” is created? Its principal aim report- 
 edly is to turn schools into fields and factories, and fields and 
 factories into schools. 
 
 Labor University intends to nurture laboring talents, yet it is 
 characteristic of the Chinese that most of the children from well- 
 off families dislike manual labor, while those who enjoy manual 
 labor often lack the opportunity to become real talents on their 
 own. Therefore, Labor University offers special treatment for its 
 students. Naturally, they are totally exempted from tuition, room 
 and board charges, and miscellaneous fees. They are also provided 
 with uniforms, books, and lecture notes, all free. If some pocket 
 money could further be allotted to them, then their special treat- 
 ment would exactly equal that at the Guomindang’s one and only 
 Whampoa Military Academy. 
 
 However, on closer examination, the faculty and staff of the so- 
 called Labor University are, without exception, so well attired in 
 Western suits that they resemble new-style bureaucrats. Most of 
 its students also dress fashionably—furs in winter, hemp fabric in 
 summer. Those in the engineering college do not operate the 
 machines, while their peers in the agricultural college do not 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 135 
 
 farm. Yet the university, worrying that the students’ winter furs 
 and summer hemp may not be quite adequate, made the effort to 
 raise a large sum to outfit each student with a high-grade black 
 woolen tunic and another yellow khaki uniform. 
 
 If Labor University’s aim of “turning schools into fields and 
 factories” were realized, then our Chinese peasants and workers, 
 too, could be eating white rice, wearing black woolen tunics, and 
 living in Western-style housing and studying Western books. This 
 is something that would overjoy us. However, if “fields and facto- 
 ries became schools,” then peasants and workers throughout the 
 country would all abandon their agricultural and industrial jobs 
 to eat and study; on private occasions wear furs in winter and 
 hemp in summer; and on public occasions wear yellow khaki and 
 black woolens—without any knowledge of either machines or 
 wheat. If that were indeed the case, would the 400 million Chi- 
 nese people starve to death? This is something we would fear. If 
 even an institution like Labor University operates in such a man- 
 ner, then Chinese students’ dislike of manual labor and their 
 preference for leisure are only too obvious! 57 
 
 This ironic piece was indeed a sharp indictment of what hard-core 
 anarchists perceived to be an affluent life-style without real commit- 
 ment to manual labor in the “corrupt” atmosphere of Laoda. As such, 
 the departure of anarchist elements from Laoda’s faculty by 1929 was 
 both an inevitable outcome of and a contributing factor to Laoda’s 
 “deviation” from the cherished anarchist ideals of its founding two 
 years earlier. Perhaps symbolically reflecting the anarchists’ decline at 
 Laoda, Revolution Weekly announced in its January 27, 1929, issue 
 the relocation of its office from Jiangwan to a new address in the 
 French Concession of Shanghai.°® 
 
 Laoda Faculty Scholarship 
 
 Notwithstanding structural changes, limited resources, and person- 
 nel turnover, it is still safe to say that Labor University could claim 
 among its faculty some of the most distinguished scholars of the day; 
 and that in spite of rather diverse political allegiance, the faculty on 
 the whole consisted of scholars who had gained their reputations 
 through their attention to socially concerned intellectual activity. 
 Most of Laoda’s teachers had received their degrees and professional 
 qualifications from leading institutions in China (such as Beijing 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 136 
 
 University, Beijing Normal University, Qinghua |Tsinghua] Univer- 
 sity, and Fudan University) as well as prestigious universities (such as 
 the Sorbonne, Berlin, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Michigan, and 
 Washington). In addition, they either had previously taught at major 
 universities in China or they held concurrent appointments at other 
 more established campuses in Shanghai. Some of the Laoda faculty 
 also had senior administrative experience as provost, registrar, faculty 
 dean, department chairman, chief engineer, factory director, and so 
 on, elsewhere. In this regard, the strong academic atmosphere at 
 Laoda, as fondly recalled by one of its alumni, was in part a credit to 
 the distinguished list of well-known scholars on its faculty. The intel- 
 lectual appeal and political eminence of its illustrious founders were 
 powerful magnets that helped attract progressive scholars and many 
 idealistic students to the newly established Labor University.5? 
 
 The official publications of the university offer a glimpse of the well- 
 known intellectual figures on Laoda’s faculty, the courses they offered, 
 and their scholarly achievements. Attached to the sociology depart- 
 ment was Tao Xisheng, the prominent Guomindang Marxist histo- 
 rian, who taught the social sciences faculty elective course on the His- 
 tory of Chinese Society.°° The noted Guangdong anarchist Huang 
 Lingshuang taught the required course on the History of Social Evolu- 
 tion. Gong Xiangming, the chairman of sociology during 1930-31, 
 taught the two compulsory courses on Social Insurance and Labor Leg- 
 islation, subjects that related directly to his own published work, Sit- 
 uation Tragique des Travailleurs Chinois, which was his doctoral dis- 
 sertation at the University of Louvain. Ye Fawu, professor and former 
 chairman (1929-30) of sociology, offered the mandatory courses on 
 Culture, Value, and Evolution Theory and Introduction to Social Sci- 
 ences, as well as the elective Introduction to Philosophy. Labor Orga- 
 nizations, a compulsory course for engineering freshmen, was taught 
 by Zheng Ruogu who, besides serving as university secretary in the 
 central administration, also offered the elective on University Admin- 
 istration for education majors. Zheng, a graduate of the University of 
 Washington, was a prolific author who published three books while 
 teaching at Laoda: Introductory Sociology, Research Outline for Con- 
 temporary Social Problems, and Tomorrow’s University Education. 
 
 Another professor of labor problems was scholar Chen Zhenlu, the 
 author of Anthology of Contemporary Labor Problems, Labor Educa- 
 tion, and Overview of Labor Problems, which were mildly critical of 
 various aspects of the Guomindang’s labor legislation. Parts of these 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 137 
 
 three volumes were based on Chen’s lecture notes for his course Labor 
 Problems at Laoda. (Chen dedicated the latter volume to commemo- 
 rate National Labor University’s destruction by Japanese bombard- 
 ment in January 1932.) Chen also contributed an article on child labor 
 to the January 1932 (vol. 1, no. 2) issue of Labor Quarterly published 
 by Laoda.°! 
 
 The part-time lecturer on labor statistics and factory management 
 for 1931 was Cai Zhengya (T. Y. Tsha), who also taught at Jinan 
 University in Shanghai where he served as chief statistician of the 
 municipality’s Social Affairs Bureau. It was in this official capacity 
 that Cai supervised the tabulation and compilation of a series of 
 thirteen Chinese-English bilingual reports on detailed surveys of labor 
 wages, working hours, the standard of living for workers, strikes, 
 lockouts, and industrial disputes in Shanghai published by the bureau 
 between 1929 and 1935. These still remain the indispensable basic 
 data for systematic studies on working-class conditions, industrial 
 relations, and other labor issues in Republican Shanghai.°2 
 
 Well-known scholars teaching in the education department in- 
 cluded: Zheng Ruogu; Wang Fengjie (Ph.D., University of Chicago), a 
 provost of Labor University and also a recognized authority on the sub- 
 ject that he taught, History of Chinese Education, who later became 
 director of education in the Hunan provincial government; the chair- 
 man of the department, Zhang Yousan, a cotranslator of Kindergarten 
 Education According to Behaviorism, who taught the compulsory 
 course Advanced Psychology and the electives Selected Readings in 
 Education Classics and Modern Education Thought; and Zhang’s fel- 
 low University of Washington alumnus Xiong Zirong, who taught In- 
 troduction to Education and concurrently worked as editor-translator 
 in the Publication and Translation Office. One of Xiong’s translated 
 works was published under the title Theories of Education; another of 
 his works, Vocational Education, was published by the Dawn Book- 
 store. 
 
 Another prolific Laoda scholar was the economist Tang Qingzeng, 
 teacher of Chinese Economic Thought, Agricultural Economy, and 
 Modern Economic History. A Harvard M.A. graduate, Tang was the 
 author of five books on such diverse topics as Sino-American Diplo- 
 matic History, Collected Economic Essays of Tang Qingzeng, History 
 of International Commercial Policy, History of Ancient Chinese Eco- 
 nomic Thought (1936), and, as editor-annotator, The Discourse on Salt 
 and Iron, all published by the Commercial Press, China's most pres- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 138 
 
 tigious publishing house. The economics department also had among 
 its faculty several well-known academics, such as Li Shiquan, a Co- 
 lumbia Ph.D. and the author of Economic Theories, Problems of the 
 Division of Fiscal Administration between National and Local Gov- 
 ernments, Native Banks of Shanghai, and Li Shiquan’s Collected 
 Essays on Economics and Finance. Besides serving as dean of the 
 College of Commerce at Fudan University, Li also taught the compul- 
 sory courses on Statistics and Finance at Laoda. Another Laoda econo- 
 mist was Zhu Tongjiu, a University of Washington M.B.A. and the 
 author of Labor Economics and Wage Theory. As university secretary, 
 Zhu also served as editor of Labor University Weekly from March 4, 
 1929 (vol. 2, no. r).63 (Zhu and a fellow University of Washington 
 alumnus, Laoda sociology professor Wan Suxin, also served concur- 
 rently as instructors in Laoda’s high school during 1929—30.)®4 And 
 finally there was Sun Hanbing, another University of Washington 
 graduate who in many aspects represented the ideal Laoda professor. 
 
 Sun, who taught the introductory course on economics and the 
 elective Value Theory at Laoda, was also concurrently professor of 
 political science at Fudan University in Shanghai. A 1922 graduate of 
 Fudan, Sun received his M.A. from the University of Washington at 
 Seattle in 1924 and then studied at Harvard’s graduate school before 
 returning to China to assume a teaching post at Fudan in 1926, where 
 he became concurrently director of the attached high school in 1928 
 and then dean of social sciences in 1929. In 1934 Sun translated into 
 Chinese and published the popular textbook Political Science and 
 Government, by James Wilford Garner. He also became one of the 
 cofounders (with Zhang Yousan and four other scholars) and chief 
 editor of a publishing house, the Dawn Bookstore (Liming shuju), in 
 Shanghai in 1929. The first book published by this new press was 
 Sun’s own edited volume, An Introduction to Sociology. His coedited 
 volume, Selected Readings in Western Literature, went through three 
 printings by Dawn. Many of Sun’s Laoda colleagues also had their 
 original scholarship or works of translation published by the Dawn 
 Bookstore, among them Zhu Tongjiu, Li Shiquan, Xiong Zirong, and 
 Zhang Yousan. The works of two of Laoda’s outstanding graduates— 
 Feng Hefa (Introduction to Rural Sociology) and Lu Guoxiang (co- 
 translator with Feng of Raymond Garfied Gettell’s History of Political 
 Thought)—were also published by the Dawn Bookstore. 
 
 As a firm believer in cooperativism, Sun was sympathetic to anar- 
 cho-syndicalist ideas on cooperatives and mutual aid. In fact, Sun 
 wrote his first book, Cooperativism, while he was a nineteen-year-old 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 139 
 
 undergraduate at Fudan. He was also a founding editor of the weekly 
 magazine Common People (Pingmin zhoukan) and of the weekly 
 supplement to the newspaper Republic Daily (Minguo ribao). His 
 liberal, enlightened academic disposition enabled Sun to enjoy close 
 and warm rapport with Laoda students. As a firm believer in open, 
 pluralistic, scholarly discourse on ideologies and schools of thought, 
 including Marxism, Sun included selections of Marxist classics in 
 English translation (such as the Communist Manifesto) as teaching 
 materials. Sun’s progressive intellectual outlook was matched by his 
 social activism. Of low socioeconomic origin, Sun worked during his 
 youth as a telegraph delivery boy in Manchuria. While enrolled at 
 China Academy in Shanghai he played an active role in the local May 
 Fourth student strikes of June 1919, and even represented the acad- 
 emy in the Shanghai Federation of Students. In late September 1931, 
 following the Japanese seizure of the Manchurian provinces, Sun was 
 at the forefront of the Fudan student delegation (of eight hundred 
 undergraduates) who went to Nanjing to petition Jiang Jieshi to resist 
 Japanese aggression with military force. 
 
 After the Sino-Japanese War broke out in mid-1937, Sun at first 
 resided in Shanghai’s International Settlement in order to continue 
 the publication of the influential Literary Digest for the resistance 
 cause. In the August 1937 (vol. 2, no. 2) issue Sun published a Chinese 
 translation of Edgar Snow’s biography of Mao Zedong. Following the 
 settlement authorities’ banning of the Digest at the end of 1937, Sun 
 transferred its publication to Wuhan while he continued to run edi- 
 torial matters from Shanghai. After Wuhan fell into Japanese hands in 
 October 1938, publication of the Digest was relocated to Chongqing, 
 where Sun also went to rejoin the exiled Fudan University. He served 
 as university provost and dean of the social sciences college of Fudan 
 until he was killed in a Japanese air raid on May 27, 1940.°° 
 
 Prolific scholars who taught both in the social sciences college and 
 the other colleges at Laoda included Professor of French Zhao Shao- 
 hou, who published Chinese translations of the works of Guy de 
 Maupassant, Edmond Francois Valentin, and Alain Rene; and Sun 
 Lianggong, instructor of the course Labor Literature, who edited the 
 three-hundred-page special issue on Labor Literature for Labor Uni- 
 versity Monthly Journal (vol. 1, no. 8, November 1930) and also pub- 
 lished several volumes on Chinese literature: Notes on Narrative 
 Methods, Notes on New Poetry Methodology, Dictionary of Chinese 
 Literature, Labor Literature of the Tang Period, as well as translating 
 from Japanese into Chinese two scholarly volumes on Chinese litera- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 140 
 
 ture. Sun Lianggong also wrote the lyrics of the Labor University 
 anthem in October 1929.°° 
 
 According to the recollection of a Laoda graduate, the engineering 
 and agriculture colleges also had an impressive list of scholars and 
 scientists on their faculty.” For example, Chen Jinmin, a Dijon Uni- 
 versity graduate who taught (1929-31) mathematics at Laoda, pub- 
 lished two volumes—one on geometry and one on calculus—with the 
 Commercial Press during the 1930s. Even some Laoda administrators 
 published sizable volumes. For instance, university secretary general 
 Xiong Mengfei compiled and published a volume entitled Guide to 
 the Guomindang (Commercial Press, 1928). 
 
 Indeed, based on the scholarly articles on a wide range of topics and 
 issues written by Laoda teachers and students (see chapter 6) that were 
 published in the university’s weekly bulletin, the monthly academic 
 journal, and the second anniversary commemorative volume Labor 
 University Anthology |Laoda luncong), the general standard of schol- 
 arship at Laoda was quite high. Furthermore, the novelty of Laoda as 
 an unconventional institution with a special social mission, plus the 
 lively academic atmosphere on campus where active and serious in- 
 tellectual discourse could and did take place, were important factors 
 that appealed to many progressive intellectuals like Sun Hanbing. 
 The Labor University Anthology shows that Laoda professors ex- 
 ercised their academic prerogatives of free thinking and free ex- 
 pression by presenting informed critiques on their colleagues’ schol- 
 arly works.68 This volume of Anthology, an official publication of 
 the university in September 1929, even included a lengthy essay en- 
 titled “An Analysis of Domestic Counterrevolutionaries,” by Qin 
 Hanzhang. Qin, a member of the agriculture faculty, in his article 
 repeatedly categorized Chinese anarchists as counterrevolutionaries 
 whose ideology mitigated nationalism, social discipline, and organi- 
 zation, and thus demoralized the people against the true cause of the 
 national revolution. Perhaps this should be taken as more than an 
 example of freedom of expression and academic tolerance on campus; 
 it was also an ominous sign of the impending political storm that 
 would engulf Laoda in the early 1930s. 
 
 Faculty Ties with Other Universities 
 
 The ability to attract prominent intellectuals as part-time faculty or 
 administrators was crucial to Labor University’s success. The univer- 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 141 
 
 sity was well served by its location in Shanghai, where a large number 
 of higher education institutions were concentrated. Shanghai had 24 
 of the 110 tertiary education institutions in China, or 21 percent of 
 the total, in 1934.69 While the part-time nature or visiting status of 
 many of these faculty members may have limited their ability to offer 
 more, in terms of time and effort, to the academic programs and 
 campus life at Laoda, their strong commitment and direct as well as 
 indirect contributions to the Laoda community should not be ques- 
 tioned. In a very real sense, these visiting or part-time teachers served 
 as invaluable bridges linking Laoda with the world outside. For in- 
 stance, academic field trips and on-site investigations, which were 
 regular and important features in Laoda’s social sciences curriculum, 
 were sometimes conducted jointly with undergraduates from other 
 Shanghai universities under the leadership of faculty members who 
 held concurrent appointments. These faculty also facilitated collabo- 
 rative undertakings between Laoda and other Shanghai campuses that 
 ranged from intercollegiate sports events, multiversity debates, recre- 
 ational activities, and drama performances to research surveys and 
 community services. Not least in importance, these personal/insti- 
 tutional linkages enabled Laoda students to reach out to their peers on 
 other Shanghai campuses in off-campus popular mobilization and 
 large-scale collective actions for patriotic causes (see chapters 7 and 8 
 for details). 
 
 In terms of numbers, Labor University enjoyed the closest faculty 
 relationship with Fudan University, its next-door neighbor in Jiang- 
 wan. During the 1929 fall semester, thirteen Laoda professors also 
 taught at Fudan (or the other way around). They included economists 
 Sun Hanbing and Zhu Tongjiu; educationists Zhang Yousan, Zheng 
 Ruogu, and Xiong Zirong; political scientist Wan Chongxin; historian 
 Tao Xisheng; economists Li Shiquan and Li Banghuan; sociologist 
 Li Qianhua; international relations expert Fan Zhongyun; constitu- 
 tional scholar Wu Songnie; and journalist Zhou Xiaoan. Some of them 
 also held senior administrative positions at Laoda, Fudan, or both. 
 For instance, Sun was at one point chairman of Laoda’s sociology 
 department and concurrently director of Fudan’s college preparation 
 division, and later Fudan’s dean of social sciences; Zhang was chair- 
 man of Fudan’s education department, while Laoda’s former sociology 
 chair Wan also chaired Fudan’s municipal administration department. 
 Zheng and Zhu both served as university secretary in Laoda’s central 
 administration; Xiong served as secretary of Laoda’s Publication and 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 142 
 
 Translation Office; Wu was concurrently Fudan’s dean of law; while 
 Li Shiquan was Fudan’s dean of commerce. In addition, Laoda’s deputy 
 librarian was the former librarian at Fudan.’”° According to the April 
 1931 Laoda faculty list, sociologist Ye Fawu, accounting specialists 
 Qian Culing, and educationists Zheng Tonghe and He Shulun also 
 taught at Fudan; and the December 1931 Laoda faculty list identified 
 lecturer in German Wu Zijing and municipal administration lecturer 
 Yan Enzuo as having taught at Fudan.7! 
 
 One of Laoda’s most prominent graduates, Feng Hefa, after graduate 
 studies in Japan joined Fudan’s faculty as a professor of economics in 
 spring 1937.’2 Likewise, a number of Fudan graduates filled the ranks 
 of Laoda teachers and staff. Besides Sun Hanbing (B.Com., 1922) and 
 Zhang Yousan (B.A., 1922), the most prominent Fudan alumni teach- 
 ing at Laoda, Fudan graduates serving Labor University included edu- 
 cation lecturer He Shulun, frontier problems lecturer Yu Songhua, a 
 librarian, and a clerk in the social sciences college office.73 
 
 Among Shanghai’s private universities, Laoda also had close rela- 
 tions with Great China University (Daxia daxue). A 1934-35 faculty- 
 staff list at Great China showed that five of its professors had also 
 taught at Laoda: Lu Zhisang, at one time acting director of the Shang- 
 hai municipal Education Bureau and presently Great China’s provost, 
 who had also taught at Laoda as well as at Guanghua, Jinan, and 
 Communications universities; Ma Zhongrong, chief librarian and so- 
 cial education department chair at Great China, who had also taught 
 at Laoda and Jinan; mathematician Chen Jinmin, who started teach- 
 ing at Great China in September 1930 while still a professor at Laoda; 
 Zheng Tonghe, onetime section chief in the Shanghai municipal Edu- 
 cation Bureau, who had been teaching middle-school education at 
 Great China since 1926 but had also held teaching posts at Laoda, 
 Fudan, and China Academy; and Tong Qingzang, economics depart- 
 ment chair at Great China, who had also taught at Laoda and National 
 Zhejiang University. 
 
 In addition, several former Laoda faculty members were recruited to 
 teach at Great China after the destruction of the Laoda campus in 
 February 1932: economist Zhu Tongjiu, who joined Great China in 
 1935; labor studies expert Chen Zhenlu, who joined Great China in 
 1934; journalist Ma Zhongjian, who joined the same year; and Lin 
 Xigian, the former Laoda registrar who joined Great China in 1932 as 
 chair of the political science department and chief editor of Great 
 China University Journal.’ 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 143 
 
 Besides these private universities, Laoda enjoyed especially close 
 ties with its sister public institution, Jinan University, located in the 
 western suburbs of Shanghai. The fact that both Laoda and Jinan were 
 national universities, and thus subject to the vicissitudes of govern- 
 ment funding, in this case made overlapping faculty appointments 
 more a matter of economic necessity (for both the institutions and the 
 teachers concerned) than academic virtue. Not only were Laoda and 
 Jinan neighbors in greater Shanghai, but both their presidents were 
 senior officials and colleagues in the Nanjing regime. (Jinan president 
 Zheng Hongnian was deputy minister of industry in 1928-31 and 
 secretary general of the Executive Council from November 1928 to 
 February 1932.)7° 
 
 The Laoda-Jinan faculty personnel linkage involved scholars such 
 as Zhang Xinrong, who taught English and law part time at both Laoda 
 and Jinan during 1931; Li Guochang, who taught human biology at 
 Laoda during 1929-32 while serving as biology department chair at 
 both Jinan and Great China universities; Chen Qimin, who taught 
 education psychology and social policy at Laoda while a professor 
 at both Jinan and China Academy during 1929-30; Chen Jinmin, 
 who taught calculus at Laoda during 1929-31 while chairing Jinan’s 
 mathematics department; Ye Fawu, who taught at China Academy 
 and Guanghua in addition to Jinan and Laoda; Zhang Yunfu, who 
 offered Postwar Economic Problems at Laoda and also taught at China 
 Academy, Great China, and Jinan; Cao Shuyi, who taught Primary 
 School Teaching Materials at Laoda and also taught at Guanghua and 
 Great China besides Jinan; Ou Kexuan, lecturer in Jinan’s law faculty 
 since March 1928, who taught at Laoda and also chaired the political 
 science department at China Academy; and Yang Yunjiong, who lec- 
 tured in sociology at Laoda and taught at Jinan and the Shanghai 
 College of Law and Political Science. In addition, Sheng Xugong, 
 academic director of Laoda’s high school, also lectured at Jinan’s Col- 
 lege of Arts.7¢ 
 
 It may be worth emphasizing a number of Laoda faculty who held 
 concurrent positions at Fudan and Jinan. Sun Hanbing, in addition to 
 holding the social sciences deanship and offering courses in the politi- 
 cal science department at Fudan, not only taught at Laoda but also 
 served as a professor and the dean of the law faculty at Jinan Univer- 
 sity during 1931-32. According to a 1932 Jinan list, the following 
 Laoda-Fudan professors also taught concurrently at Jinan: Zhang You- 
 san (at Jinan from August 1931); Zhu Tongjiu (at Jinan from August 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 144 
 
 1930); Wan Chongxin (chair of the political science and economics 
 department at Jinan from September 1930); Wu Songnie (Fudan’s dean 
 of law, lectured at Jinan from September 1931); Fan Zhongyun (taught 
 diplomatic history at Laoda, lectured at Jinan from September 1931); 
 journalist Ma Zhongjian (served part time at Jinan from September 
 1929); and Qian Culing (chair of Fudan’s accounting department, at 
 Jinan from 1928). Other than Ma, whose full-time post was that of 
 Shen Bao editor, the other five scholars, like Sun Hanbing, had their 
 major academic base in Fudan but taught at Laoda and Jinan (and other 
 universities) On a part-time, supplementary basis.’” Taken together, 
 such bilateral and trilateral linkages among Laoda, Fudan, and Jinan 
 faculty personnel underscored the closely knit fraternity of the Chi- 
 nese intellectuals centered in Shanghai and the generally cooperative 
 sense of community among higher-education academics across these 
 campuses. 
 
 An important factor underlining the “overlapping” appointments of 
 these sixteen teachers between Laoda and Jinan (with or without the 
 Fudan link) was the fact that these two universities were of fairly 
 similar academic standing and were commonly regarded as the more 
 ‘junior” and less prestigious of the fourteen national universities then 
 in existence. Indeed, of the four national universities located in Shang- 
 hai—Laoda, Jinan (established in 1906), Tongji University (established 
 in 1907), and Communications University (Jiaotong daxue, estab- 
 lished in 1896)—Laoda was the youngest and perhaps the least reputa- 
 ble academically by establishment standards. 
 
 Jinan University catered mainly to students from overseas Chinese 
 communities (Qiao sheng) and was known for its education as well as 
 commerce curricula. First established in Nanjing in 1906 as an ad- 
 vanced school, Jinan was closed from 1911 until 1918 when it was 
 revived as a normal and commerce school. Two years later, science 
 and arts curricula were added. In 1921 the commerce faculty was 
 moved to Shanghai, where it joined with National Southeast Univer- 
 sity (later Central University) in setting up a university of commerce. 
 The collaboration with Southeast University was terminated the next 
 year, and Jinan ran its commerce college independently. In 1923 its 
 new campus at Zhenju, a western suburb of Shanghai, was completed, 
 where its male undergraduates attended classes while its female un- 
 dergraduates remained in Nanjing. In 1927 Jinan was reorganized 
 under the GMD regime as a national university comprising five col- 
 leges (arts, science, commerce, law, and education) with fifteen de- 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 145 
 
 partments in Shanghai. Despite the seemingly broad scope of its 
 curriculum, Jinan was not particularly known for its scholarship or 
 academic atmosphere. Rather, its students from overseas were re- 
 garded as socially active, sometimes pursuing a flamboyant and even 
 frivolous life-style on and off campus.7® 
 
 Because of its close connection with Gmp high officials (its board of 
 trustees in 1931 included Sun Ke; Lin Sen, chairman of the Republic; 
 Chen Lifu, head of the cc Clique that dominated the Gmp hierarchy; 
 Finance Minister T. V. Soong and Minister of Industry H. H. Kung, 
 both influential brothers-in-law of Jiang Jieshi; the mayor of Nanjing, 
 Ma Chaojin; and the mayor of Shanghai, Wu Tiecheng), Jinan was able 
 to expand rapidly and even managed to recover after its campus was 
 destroyed by Japanese attacks in spring 1932.” As such, its develop- 
 ment and continued operation after 1932 were in sharp contrast to the 
 sad fate of Laoda. Indeed, the sharp difference in academic atmo- 
 spheres and campus life-styles between Laoda and Jinan made their 
 different fates even more ironic. 
 
 In contrast to its relations with Jinan, Laoda had few ties to Commu- 
 nications University (Jiaoda), a highly regarded and prestigious engi- 
 neering school considered by some as the mit of China. Located in 
 Shanghai’s southwestern suburb at Xujiahui, Jiaoda’s campus housed 
 extensive laboratory facilities for its engineering courses. Since 1907 
 the university had come under the Ministry of Communications, and 
 it was formally designated a national university in 1928. From Febru- 
 ary to June 1928, Cai Yuanpei, president of the Republic of China 
 University Council, also served concurrently as Jiaoda’s president. 
 After Cai, Minister of Communications Wang Baiqun served as Jiao- 
 da’s president for five months before Jiaoda was transferred to the 
 Ministry of Railways with Minister Sun Ke as president until October 
 1930. Because of the official support and institutional patronage of the 
 ministry, Jiaoda received solid and stable financial support for operat- 
 ing expenses and campus expansion.8° 
 
 Jiaoda’s curriculum was patterned after leading American institu- 
 tions such as mit and Cornell, with a dual emphasis on professional 
 training and liberal education. Experiment and practical work con- 
 stituted nearly half of all instruction and academic requirements at 
 Jiaoda. Its curriculum aimed at solid training in both theoretical 
 foundations and basic technical skills, with a pronounced utilitarian 
 objective of “academic learning for practical application.” Known for 
 its extremely heavy homework, frequent examinations, and rigorous 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 146 
 
 standards, Jiaoda maintained a highly competitive admission policy, 
 with less than 15 percent of all applicants admitted as freshmen in 
 1930 and less than 20 percent in 1931. In combining theory with 
 practice to meet Chinese realities, Jiaoda prided itself on the func- 
 tional trinity of “ministry, railways, and university” in their collabo- 
 rative organic relationship. The ministry provided material support 
 for university development, and the railways dispatched specialists to 
 lecture and teach on campus, while Jiaoda produced quality graduates 
 to serve the nation by joining the ministry, the railways, and other 
 enterprises.®! 
 
 In this sense, Jiaoda and Laoda shared the empirical orientation of 
 their curriculum design as well as their emphasis on practical applica- 
 tion of academic learning. Furthermore, Jiaoda students were known 
 for their relatively frugal life-style and high scholarship, with sports 
 and athletic participation their extracurricular strong suit. However, 
 despite such similarities in style and spirit, Laoda maintained only 
 very limited intercampus faculty ties with Jiaoda. According to all 
 four sets of Laoda faculty staff lists, it was only during academic 
 year 1930-31 that four Jiaoda professors served as part-time lecturers 
 in Laoda’s engineering college.8? Perhaps the difference in academic 
 standards and educational orientation limited fuller collaboration 
 between Jiaoda and Laoda at the faculty level, but the narrow special- 
 ization of Jiaoda as an engineering school may also have restricted the 
 possibilities of intercampus linkages. 
 
 The importance of institutional goals and the faculty’s educational 
 orientation (by training) as significant factors in institutional affini- 
 ties is also visible in the very limited collaboration of Laoda with two 
 other institutions with which it otherwise had important features in 
 common. Tongji University, a national institution located in Wusong 
 right next to Laoda’s agriculture college, did not share any faculty or 
 staff with Laoda, although in 1931 the university clinic listed two 
 physicians and two nurses with Tongji background.83 Perhaps a major 
 reason behind this apparent lack of intercampus faculty links between 
 these two national universities in the same Shanghai neighborhood 
 was their different academic modes and styles. Laoda was French 
 influenced with an explicit social reform orientation, while Tongji 
 was patterned after a German Technischen Hochschule and medizin- 
 ische fakultat, with German as the principal language of instruc- 
 tion.84 Furthermore, the two universities did not overlap in academic 
 specialization (except in engineering). Since most of Laoda’s “shared” 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 147 
 
 faculty personnel were involved with social sciences courses, there 
 was little common ground for collaboration between the two. Even in 
 the engineering programs, the strong German influence in curriculum 
 design, technical specifications and standards, instructional approach, 
 and laboratory facilities preclude any easy sharing with Laoda, which 
 was mainly staffed by French- and American-educated engineers. 
 Only near the very end, in autumn 1931, did a Berlin-educated engi- 
 neer, Tang Ying, serve as Laoda’s acting dean of engineering and chair 
 of its civil engineering department. 
 
 Despite common links to France, Laoda likewise had no direct 
 faculty ties with the French Jesuit Aurora University in Shanghai 
 (Chendan daxue, established in 1903). An obvious reason was the 
 sharp difference between Laoda’s blatantly secular and radical educa- 
 tional objectives and Aurora’s orthodox Catholicism in educational 
 practice and social orientation.®® This dissimilarity was exacerbated 
 by the anti-Christian movement and the campaign for the recovery of 
 sovereign rights in education that got under way in the 1920s.8¢ 
 Foreign missionary schools were viewed as both undesirable products 
 and dangerous instruments of cultural imperialism; additionally, the 
 anarchist legacy of Laoda fostered a predisposition at the university to 
 an extremely critical attitude toward the religious domination of 
 education (and religion in general).87 
 
 This may also explain the absence of any ties between Laoda and 
 two Protestant campuses in Shanghai—the American Episcopalian St. 
 John’s University (Shangyuehan daxue, established in 1879) and the 
 Shanghai Baptist College (Hujiang daxue, established in 1906 and 
 later renamed the University of Shanghai). As with Aurora University, 
 St. John’s took advantage of its immunity to Chinese jurisdiction 
 (thanks to its location in the International Settlement) to refuse to 
 register with the Chinese Ministry of Education, which would have re- 
 quired the transfer of university administration to Chinese nationals. 
 Indeed, St. John’s was commonly regarded at the time as an English- 
 speaking citadel of imperialist presence on the Chinese academic 
 and cultural scene, and a training ground for comprador elements.88 
 Where relations with Labor University were concerned, it probably did 
 not help that both St. John’s and Shanghai Baptist College recruited 
 their students from a primarily wealthy, upper- or upper-middle-class 
 background.8? 
 
 Finally, one noteworthy aspect of faculty sharing was the frequent 
 practice of Shanghai universities of recruiting nonacademic profes- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 148 
 
 sionals with valuable specializations. Noted examples of this type 
 of part-time teacher at Laoda included statistician Cai Zhengya of 
 Shanghai municipality’s Social Affairs Bureau, who also taught at 
 Jinan University; journalist Chu Xinong, a Tokyo Agricultural Uni- 
 versity graduate who was an editor of Shanghai Daily News and also 
 served as an executive secretary of the International Trade Associa- 
 tion in Shanghai, in addition to offering a course on agricultural 
 economy at Laoda during 1930-31; Yu Songhua, an editor of China’s 
 leading weekly, the Eastern Miscellany | Dongfang zazhi), who taught 
 a course on Chinese frontier problems; Ma Chongjian, editor of Shen 
 Bao, Shanghai's leading daily newspaper, who offered courses on jour- 
 nalism, advertising, and public opinions at Laoda in 1930 and 1931; 
 engineer Shen Mingban, the chief engineer with the Chapei Water and 
 Electric Power Company in Shanghai and also chair and associate 
 professor of the mechanical engineering department at Laoda, who 
 offered courses in steam turbine, automotive engineering, and electri- 
 cal engine experiment in 1931; and agriculturalist Qian Zhongnan, 
 chief of the agricultural section of the Shanghai Municipal Social 
 Affairs Bureau, who taught the course on veterinarian practice at 
 Laoda in 1931.99 In some sense, their part-time teaching at Laoda 
 reflected both the limited pool of modern professional talents avail- 
 able for academic and educational contribution in Republican China 
 and Laoda’s strategic location in Shanghai, where such professional 
 resources could be more easily tapped than almost anywhere else in 
 China. 
 
 While the ability to recruit faculty from other institutions served 
 Labor University well, it was a virtue born of necessity—economic 
 necessity. The relatively low salaries paid to most university teachers 
 in Republican China forced faculty to hold more than one job. This 
 was especially true for those teaching in private, nonmissionary uni- 
 versities. According to a 1931 official survey of higher education 
 published by the Ministry of Education, top monthly salaries for 
 teachers in private universities in the Shanghai region ranged from 
 Great China’s $290 per month to $294 at Fudan and $340 at Guang- 
 hua. The figures for public universities were significantly higher, with 
 Communications University registering its top faculty salary at $600 
 per month, which was typical of the national universities.?! Public 
 university faculty had their own motivations for “moonlighting,” 
 however. They often suffered from long delays or sharp reductions in 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 149 
 
 salary due to irregularities in official budget allocation and public 
 funding (see chapter 8). This situation benefited not just Labor Univer- 
 sity but also the other institutions with which it shared faculty. 
 Additionally, where the universities were concerned, low student en- 
 rollment at most universities (usually only several hundred under- 
 graduates) made the appointment of part-time faculty a practical, and 
 attractive, way to cover a wide variety of subjects with a limited 
 budget. 
 
 Economic necessity, however, may not be sufficient to explain spe- 
 cial ties between particular institutions. Ideological affinity along 
 with shared academic goals may help explain why certain institutions 
 were chosen over others for collaborative arrangements. This is con- 
 firmed by the close relations between Labor University and private 
 universities such as Fudan, Great China, Guanghua, and China Acad- 
 emy. These institutions all had in common a legacy of institutional 
 protest and academic defiance against cultural imperialism and edu- 
 cational corruption. If this legacy predisposed them to collaborate 
 with a novel institution such as Laoda, the collaboration itself would 
 generate joint activities with long-term political significance. 
 
 Fudan University, with which Laoda had the most intensive and ex- 
 tensive faculty ties, was established in t905 by Chinese educator Ma 
 Xiangbo as a protest against the French Jesuit domination and mis- 
 management of Aurora University. In terms of facilities, curriculum, 
 and standards, Fudan was the leading private university in China. 
 True to its dissident tradition, Fudan’s administration was extremely 
 supportive of Shanghai students’ anti-Japanese resistance in autumn 
 1931. Indeed, at the instruction of Fudan’s patriotic president, Li 
 Denghui, four professors accompanied eight hundred Fudan students 
 on a petition and demonstration trip to Nanjing on September 27, 
 1931, right after the Japanese seizure of Mukden. Of these four pro- 
 fessors, three—Sun Hanbing, Zhang Yousan, and Wu Songnie—were 
 concurrently professors at Laoda. Indeed, under the leadership of Pres- 
 ident Li, Fudan became a stronghold of student nationalism and pub- 
 lic mobilization for resistance against Japanese aggression throughout 
 the 1930s.92 
 
 Great China University was founded in mid-1924 by some 14 teach- 
 ers and 300 students who withdrew from the private Amoy University 
 in Fujian to protest against university mismanagement. With the 
 support of senior GMD leaders, including Wu Zhihui, Wang Jingwei, 
 and Wang Baiqun, Great China started instruction in September 1924 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 150 
 
 with 30 teachers and 280 students, and GMp intellectual Ma Junwu as 
 its founding president. (Ma later founded Guangxi University.) Great 
 China University students and teachers were at the forefront of patri- 
 otic mobilization against Japanese and British imperialism during the 
 May Thirtieth Movement in 1925. Indeed, the objective of Great 
 China was to revive Chinese national education. In the early 1930s it 
 established an extensive program for popular education in west Shang- 
 hai.93 
 
 Guanghua University was founded by Chinese teachers and stu- 
 dents who withdrew from St. John’s University on June 4, 1925 (at the 
 height of May Thirtieth Movement), after the university’s American 
 president, Francis Hawks Potts, objected to their hoisting of the Chi- 
 nese Republican flag. With the assistance of Fudan intellectuals and 
 others, Guanghua started instruction in September 1925 as a new 
 university with the avowed objectives of “resistance to foreign imperi- 
 alistic cultural aggression and the resumption of Chinese sovereign- 
 ty.” A wealthy parent of one of the students donated sixty acres of land 
 to build a new campus, which was completed in autumn 1929. Some 
 of China’s foremost intellectuals, including Hu Shi, Cu Jingnong, Pan 
 Guangdan, and Zhang Dongsun, taught there and even served as se- 
 nior administrators.?4 
 
 Hu Shi, the leading advocate for vernacular literature in the May 
 Fourth era, was also president and dean of arts of China Academy 
 (Zhongguo kongxue), which was founded in 1905 by Chinese students 
 who withdrew from Japanese universities and returned to China to 
 protest both Japanese discrimination against Chinese students and 
 Japanese aggression in China. Later in 1931, as a result of its radical 
 and nationalistic stance as well as domestic student unrests, China 
 Academy was investigated and suspended by the Education Ministry. 
 Its campus in Wusong was severely damaged by the Japanese in spring 
 1932.79 
 
 Last but not least, some of Fudan’s teachers and graduates also 
 taught at the most defiant and revolutionary of these institutions of 
 higher education, the People’s College of Shanghai (Shangda). Among 
 them, Li Shiquan and Chen Wangdao later also taught at Laoda, which 
 inherited Shangda’s campus in 1927.9° 
 
 Many of Laoda’s faculty members had substantial intellectual ties 
 and long-term academic affiliations with prominent secular pri- 
 vate universities that were well known for their nationalistic, anti- 
 imperialistic stance and socially radical defiance. In this sense, their 
 
Faculty and Scholarship 151 
 
 service at Labor University was more than a matter of professional or 
 economic necessity, and suggests a commitment to social and politi- 
 cal ideals which were to be actualized through the education and 
 training of a new type of Chinese youth. These scholars provided links 
 between educational institutions that contributed significantly to 
 fostering a social and political consciousness in the Shanghai aca- 
 demic community. Their participation in teaching at Labor Univer- 
 sity helped bring the university (and possibly its educational ideals) 
 into a broader educational network. 
 
6 Laoda Students, 
 Organizations, 
 Campus Life, 
 
 and Politics 
 
 Even to the critics of Laoda’s purpose and curriculum, the frugal style 
 of student life on its campus was a distinctive feature that made Laoda 
 unique among contemporary universities.! This frugal life-style was 
 partly the result of the socioeconomic origins of the students. While 
 few of them were actually laborers or peasants or came from genuine 
 labor or peasant families, the majority of Laoda students did share an 
 economically meager background in contrast to students enrolled in 
 the more expensive institutions. Their upbringing induced a more 
 frugal life-style. It also helped to motivate them to greater diligence in 
 their work and study on campus. 
 
 True to the anarchist and populist ideals of its founders, and befit- 
 ting its antielitist reform mission, Labor University charged no tuition 
 fees. Contrary to the common practice of many other universities, 
 Laoda also provided its students with free room and board. Its monthly 
 meal allowance, budgeted at six dollars per student, was considered to 
 be the best for public tertiary students in China. In addition, two sets 
 of university uniforms were issued to the students annually: a blue 
 outfit for the summer and a black woolen tunic for winter. Even 
 lecture notes for academic courses were distributed to students free of 
 charge. The students in return took care of the routine cleaning of the 
 premises, washed the dishes, and even made the metal frames of their 
 own dormitory beds as well as some of the sports equipment for the 
 sports ground, which was flattened and built by students themselves.* 
 In addition to the normal mandatory physical labor requirements of up 
 to fifteen or twenty hours per week in the university factory or farm, 
 Laoda students who remained on campus during the summer vacation 
 period also engaged in various kinds of manual work. In the summer of 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 153 
 
 1930, 108 agriculture majors who stayed on the Wusong campus spent 
 three hours per day on the experimental farm. Some were dispatched 
 to field practice in horticultural gardens in Suzhou, Central Univer- 
 sity’s farm in Nanjing, and a soy sauce plant in Shanghai. Engineering 
 students produced farm tools, while social sciences majors ran sum- 
 mer-school classes and a cinema for the masses. Detectable in these 
 extensive student welfare provisions—as well as the expectations of 
 labor service from the students—is the anarchist legacy of Laoda. 
 
 Because its nature, operational style, and purposes differed from 
 other national universities, Labor University adopted its own social 
 criteria for recruitment and set relatively different (and perhaps lower) 
 formal academic standards for admission in order to attract a more 
 “liberated” student body. At the same time, since its curriculum 
 emphasized labor service and social participation as integral parts of 
 its regular requirements, Laoda had considerable appeal to those stu- 
 dents who had a stronger social activist background and progressive 
 political consciousness.‘ 
 
 Social Origins, Educational Background, Numbers, 
 and Distribution of Laoda Students 
 
 From its very beginning in 1927 Laoda had been characterized by a 
 small student enrollment, even by contemporary Chinese university 
 standards. When instruction began on the Jiangwan campus in Sep- 
 tember 1927, a total of 400 students formed the inaugural class of the 
 industrial labor college. These 400 included 100 undergraduate fresh- 
 men, 100 intermediate-level students, as well as 100 normal course 
 and 100 cadre course trainees.° In October 1927 the agricultural labor 
 college was established and a class of 50 freshmen was recruited for 
 instruction starting in mid-November. In early February 1928 the 
 agriculture college recruited another batch of 150 new students for the 
 undergraduate course and the intermediate-level program.® 
 
 During the second academic year, 1928—29, the seven academic 
 departments in the industrial labor and agricultural labor colleges had 
 a combined total undergraduate enrollment of 289 students.” With 
 the expansion of programs and the creation of new departments, the 
 enrollment figures increased gradually during the 1929-30 academic 
 year. For instance, the new College of Social Sciences had a student 
 body of 159 in its inaugural academic year. Of these, 48 had trans- 
 ferred from the industrial labor college and 51 were from the agricul- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 154 
 
 tural labor college. In addition, a class of 60 freshmen matriculated as 
 new social sciences students in the fall of 1929.8 
 
 At this point Laoda’s undergraduate student body reached its peak 
 size, about 400, while its high school enrolled some 400 students and 
 the three primary schools had a combined total of another 400 pupils.? 
 This total enrollment figure of 1,200 in Laoda’s three-tier system of 
 education was only slightly lower than the spring semester 1929 total 
 of 1,400 when the normal training classes were still part of Laoda’s 
 undertaking.!° It needs to be underlined that in terms of resource 
 allocations, facilities, and personnel requirements, the 400 under- 
 graduates did not constitute the full pedagogical dimension of Laoda. 
 
 The figures for undergraduate enrollment at Laoda remained almost 
 unchanged for the academic year 1930-31 because recruitment of 
 freshmen was suspended under the Ministry of Education’s order in 
 June 1930.!! In the summer of 1931 Laoda’s first graduating class of 
 192 seniors completed their undergraduate studies.!2 These 192 stu- 
 dents formed Laoda’s only graduated alumni because the school was 
 closed down before another graduating class could complete their 
 senior year. Despite less than five full academic years of operation, 
 there is still much to be said about Labor University undergraduates 
 and their organizations and activities. 
 
 The published official Labor University records for the academic 
 years 1928, 1929, and 1930 delineate the size, distribution, local ori- 
 gins, and educational background of the undergraduate student body 
 (see appendix, tables A.1—A.6 and figures A.1—A.6).!3 Several pat- 
 terns are clearly discernible in the collective profile of the Laoda 
 undergraduate student body. 
 
 First, male students predominated over the token female under- 
 graduates in all departments of the three colleges. Of the 112 Group A 
 graduates in mid-1931 only 3 were female, while the Group B 1931 
 graduating class of 80 had only 5 female members. This situation 
 certainly reflected the prevailing inequality in education of the sexes 
 in Chinese society at that time. Notwithstanding the emphasis on 
 education as the means for social and individual liberation as well as 
 the advocacy of equality among classes and sexes in the aftermath of 
 the May Fourth Movement, Laoda had to accept what Chinese society 
 could offer or afford. However, the very fact that two of Laoda’s three 
 colleges specialized in disciplines that traditionally were not deemed 
 appropriate academic pursuits for female students—that is, engineer- 
 ing and agriculture—should not be ignored. It is ironic that Laoda’s 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 155 
 
 own emphasis on manual labor and empirical work could not mitigate 
 the traditional stereotype of academic (and by extension, career) pref- 
 erence and opportunities of young women. Indeed, of Laoda’s nine 
 academic departments, only four—the Departments of Horticulture 
 (4), Agriculture (1), Education (2), and Economics (1)—produced fe- 
 male graduates in 1931. 
 
 Second, in terms of geographic origins, the largest group of under- 
 graduates naturally came from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, which 
 were the lower Yangtze hinterland of Shanghai. But the third largest 
 group were the Hunanese students, which possibly reflected the Hu- 
 nanese connection of Laoda’s founding president, Yi Peiji, as well as of 
 some of the anarchists involved with the university. This paralleled 
 the concentration of Hunanese in the central administration and 
 teaching faculty. Other provinces were represented in the student 
 body without any significant “local monopoly.” 
 
 Third, based on the data on undergraduates’ age distribution, the 
 majority of Laoda students seemed to be slightly “over-aged.” The 
 figures for 1928, 1929, 1930, and 1931 show that, on average, nine- 
 teen-year-old freshmen to twenty-four-year-old senior enrollees were 
 the norm. This may reflect the slightly later entry into the formal 
 education process among Chinese children and youth in the early 
 Republican era. Another possible contributing factor might be that 
 most Laoda undergraduates came from rather meager socioeconomic 
 origins; as such, their preuniversity education and work experiences 
 often took them through a more lengthy and hazardous course. 
 
 Fourth, as illustrated in figure A.6, the educational background of 
 the great majority of Laoda undergraduates was the usual high school, 
 senior middle school, or normal school. In that sense Laoda admission 
 practices did not differ in any significant manner from those of other 
 Chinese public and private universities. 
 
 Formal Labor University matriculation examinations were con- 
 ducted on its Shanghai campus as well as at Beijing University, Na- 
 tional Wuhan University, and National Zhongshan University in 
 Guangzhou in the summer of 1928 and 1929 to recruit new students. 
 The only openly acknowledged exception to this examination re- 
 quirement was the special permission granted in November 1927 toa 
 nephew of the well-known Hunanese anarchist labor organizer Huang 
 Ai, who had been murdered when a warlord suppressed a textile mill 
 strike in Changsha on January 12, 1922.!4 In terms of educational 
 background and the admissions process, it is hardly justifiable to label 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 156 
 
 Laoda students as necessarily of inferior academic standards or intel- 
 lectual quality. University administrators, certainly, were adamant in 
 their refusal to compromise fairness or academic rigor in the admis- 
 sions process.!° 
 
 Outstanding Students 
 
 Despite the reputation Labor University suffered among establish- 
 ment educators as an institution of inferior intellectual quality and 
 inadequate scholarly standards, Laoda did produce a number of out- 
 standing students who later distinguished themselves in scholarship. 
 Noted Laoda alumni who were prominent scholars before 1949, and 
 have been active in the leftist/Chinese Communist intellectual cir- 
 cles since 1949, include the sociologist Feng Hefa and the economist 
 Xu Dixin. Feng, who was among the first graduates of Laoda (in the 
 premier class of 1931), was one of the team leaders in the Hangzhou 
 social survey field trip in spring 1930. Xu attended Laoda but did not 
 graduate (since the university was closed down in July 1932). Both 
 Feng and Xu are respected scholars and prolific authors and have 
 produced a substantial number of critical works on China’s rural 
 society and economy.!° Two other outstanding and extremely produc- 
 tive young undergraduates were Chen Biao in the Department of Edu- 
 cation, who played an active role in mass education outreach pro- 
 grams, and Lu Guoxiang in the Department of Sociology, who was very 
 active in social survey undertakings (also including the 1930 Hang- 
 zhou field trip). Feng, Chen, and Lu sometimes also served as rap- 
 porteurs for weekly assembly sessions and special lectures by guest 
 speakers. !7 
 
 Daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals were published by 
 the students and teachers on a regular basis. Labor University stu- 
 dents also contributed to outside newspapers and journals, making 
 them one of the most vocal and highly visible groups in Chinese 
 educational circles at that time.!* The presence of a functioning print- 
 ing plant on campus as part of the facilities of Laoda’s engineering 
 college, and the fact that many students worked there as part of their 
 regular training, were crucial factors facilitating their impressive out- 
 put. Student periodicals as well as official university journals such as 
 the Labor University Weekly |Laoda zhoukan, 1928—32), Labor Uni- 
 versity Monthly (Laodong daxue yuekan, 1928—31), and Labor Uni- 
 versity Quarterly |Laodong daxue gikan, 1931—32) were all printed at 
 the plant on campus. 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 157 
 
 Feng Hefa, Lu Guoxiang, and Chen Biao, classmates in the premier 
 graduating class of mid-1931, all became prolific authors while still 
 undergraduates at Laoda. Feng contributed five pieces to Labor Uni- 
 versity Monthly Journal in 1929—-30.!9 During the same period he 
 also published his notes of prominent Gmp intellectual official Zhou 
 Fohai’s speech at Laoda on the Three People’s Principles in Labor 
 University Anthology, and “On Women’s Liberation and Female- 
 centeredness” in Labor University Weekly.2° Furthermore, before he 
 graduated, Feng managed to publish “Labor Legislation and Protec- 
 tion of Female Labor” (in the ywca monthly The Green Year, 1930), a 
 piece titled “Population Problems in Chinese Agrarian Villages” (in 
 two parts, Journal of the Chinese Agricultural College, June—July 
 1931), and another essay on “Food Stuff and Agricultural Produce in 
 the Three Eastern Provinces” (International Trade Bulletin, Novem- 
 ber 1931). Soon after he graduated from Labor University, Feng pub- 
 lished four major volumes: Introduction to Rural Sociology: Research 
 on Chinese Rural Society (1932), Discussions on Chinese Rural Econ- 
 omy (edited, 1934), and Source Materials on Chinese Rural Economy 
 (1935), all published by the Dawn Bookstore managed by his Laoda 
 teacher Sun Hanbing; and Natural Disasters and Famines in China 
 (1934). In addition, he had four articles on Chinese land tenure, pot- 
 tery, industry, rural finance, and famine published in major scholarly 
 journals during 1932—34 and three essays in Rural China in 1937. 
 After his graduation, Feng Hefa pursued graduate studies in Japan and 
 then returned to teach at Fudan University in the spring of 1937 as a 
 professor of economics. His former Laoda teacher Sun Hanbing, as 
 Fudan’s dean of social sciences, was instrumental in Feng’s appoint- 
 ment.?! 
 
 Lu Guoxiang, a recognized student leader who won the November 
 1929 speech championship, was equally prolific with four pieces on 
 social survey and labor problems in the Labor University Monthly 
 Journal in 1929-30, an article on the 1926 Shanghai postal strike in 
 Labor University Anthology (1929), another article on sociological 
 perspective in Labor University Weekly, and a report on a survey of 
 Hangzhou labor education in Journal of Education (1930).22 After his 
 graduation from Laoda, Lu published seven articles in the China 
 Farmers’ Bank Monthly Journal (1934-37) on such topics as rural 
 credit, industrial cooperative, pawnshop capital, and usury in north 
 Jiangsu, two articles on Shanzi native banks and pawnshops (Nation 
 [1936]), plus two other pieces on the flour and match industries in 
 Shandong (Sino-Foreign Trade Bulletin [1934)). 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 158 
 
 No less productive than his peers, Chen Biao specialized in educa- 
 tional development and was active in Student Union affairs and out- 
 reach activities. While he was at Laoda, Chen’s articles often appeared 
 in the Labor University Weekly, in which he published at least six 
 pieces in 1929—30, covering education for child prodigies, adult edu- 
 cation in rural Denmark, a survey on labor universities in the world, 
 and Japanese labor schools, as well as three rapporteur’s notes on rural 
 reconstruction during political tutelage, vocational counseling, and 
 Laoda’s own second anniversary commemoration.2? In addition, Chen 
 wrote an essay on Soviet education for Labor University Anthology, a 
 report on experimental primary education in Nanjing for Labor Uni- 
 versity Monthly Journal (1930),24 and followed these with an inves- 
 tigative report on the implementation of labor adult education in 
 China in Education Journal (1931). 
 
 Laoda students’ expressiveness was by no means restricted to the 
 printed word. Student organs often put up billboards to display their 
 intellectual production and propagate their social messages. Notwith- 
 standing the Guomindang regime’s deliberate policy and systematic 
 measures to depoliticize and demobilize the once-militant mass orga- 
 nizations and popular movements in areas under its rule, Labor Uni- 
 versity students remained committed to their social mission and 
 collective ideals, which they tried to actualize through student orga- 
 nizations and public service undertakings on and off campus. 
 
 Student Organizations 
 
 Labor University students organized a Student Union in October 
 1927, only one month into the first term of the new institution. The 
 basic creed of the Student Union bore a clearly anarcho-syndicalist 
 imprint in its avowed goals to actualize group autonomy and commu- 
 nal life according to the “revolutionary, laboring spirit and the guiding 
 principle of mutual aid” in order to develop the organizational capac- 
 ity of students. Under the Student Union, with its general assembly as 
 the supreme organ, there were a host of functional units and subdivi- 
 sions of student groups. The functional units included Canteen Com- 
 mittee, Dormitory Committee, Hygiene Committee, Fire Prevention 
 Committee, Publication Committee, Social Committee, Recreation 
 Committee, Consumer Co-op Committee, and so on. The subdivi- 
 sions included the students’ associations of each of Laoda’s three 
 colleges, as well as academic societies for students affiliated with 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 159 
 
 individual departments or disciplines of study (such as the Mechanical 
 Society composed mainly of students in the Department of Mechani- 
 cal Engineering).25 In addition, there were independent bodies like the 
 Society for Research on Labor Education, the Social Sciences Research 
 Society (the oldest student academic organ at Laoda, founded in mid- 
 December 1927), and the Labor Movement Comrades’ Club, in which 
 students, teachers, and staff all participated. In many functional areas, 
 such as canteen, dormitory, and consumer co-ops, the student organs 
 in charge worked closely with teachers and staff, melding the three 
 categories of Laoda constituencies into a community organization 
 similar to the syndicate of laborers as the basic units for service, 
 production, and social life.?° 
 
 The physical separation of Laoda facilities affected student organi- 
 zations and activities as well. Since Laoda’s campus was divided into 
 two parts, one for the College of Agriculture and another for the 
 Colleges of Engineering and Social Sciences, student organizations 
 and activities were subdivided not just along the usual line of aca- 
 demic disciplines or subject interest criteria, but also spatially. For 
 instance, for those with a musical flair, a Western Music Society was 
 formed in autumn 1929. This society attracted a considerable mem- 
 bership which was divided into three sections of violin, piano, and 
 harmonica. The society even managed to have the university appoint 
 two teachers of musical instruments for the benefit of the members 
 and held a concert in April 1930. Despite such apparent success, this 
 Western Music Society of Engineering—Social Sciences Colleges, as its 
 full title implied, was restricted to those affiliated with the engineer- 
 ing and social science colleges on the main campus.?7 
 
 On the other hand, agriculture students had their own organs, such 
 as the Horticulture Society, which had thirty-one members in the 
 spring of 1930. At its general meeting in March 1930 the society 
 elected an executive committee of five, plus six team leaders in charge 
 of teams on vegetable gardening, fruit orchard, seeds, and so on. Due 
 to its nature and location (in the College of Agriculture adjacent to the 
 experimental farm) engineering and social sciences students from the 
 main campus were unlikely to belong to this society.28 
 
 It may be revealing to look briefly into the internal structure and 
 operation of these student organizations. A typical higher-level exam- 
 ple is the engineering college students’ association. The supreme 
 organ of the association was the general assembly of all its members, 
 which was held once every semester. Under this student parliament 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 160 
 
 was the executive committee, composed of nine regular members and 
 five alternates, which met once every two weeks. Under this executive 
 committee were nine functional sections, each headed by one execu- 
 tive committee member: secretariat, miscellaneous affairs, account- 
 ing (these three sections formed the general affairs committee), propa- 
 ganda, hygiene, canteen, recreation, sports, and cooperative. Each of 
 these six functional sections (with the exception of canteen) operated 
 as a committee comprising the section head and six other elected 
 members, two from each of the three departments in the college. As 
 for the canteen section, its committee members were elected from 
 dining-hall table representatives. All executive committee members 
 held office for one semester. Elections for new members were held at 
 the general assembly in the second week of the semester. The associa- 
 tion had a fairly detailed charter and a set of parliamentary rules for the 
 general assembly. These regulations and the proceedings of the general 
 assembly were published in the “Student Union” column of Labor 
 University Weekly. For instance, the fifth general assembly of the 
 engineering college students’ association, held on February 27, 1930, 
 and attended by fifty-eight students, was duly recorded in the March 8, 
 1930 (vol. 3, no. 2), issue of the Weekly.29 
 
 Detailed reportage of student organizations in the Weekly served the 
 twin purposes of promoting organization life among Laoda students 
 and fostering a sense of public, open accountability of these student 
 organs. For instance, the budget and accounting balance sheets of the 
 Student Union for the October 7—November 17, 1928, period were 
 published in the December 17, 1928, issue of the Weekly. The fifty 
 dollars per month subsidy for October from the university administra- 
 tion was recorded clearly in the union’s income column. The minutes 
 of the union’s executive meeting and those of its preparation commit- 
 tee for the First Labor Union Concert (to be held in December 1928) 
 were also printed in the same issue of the Weekly.3° 
 
 The university administration kept a close watch over student or- 
 ganizations on campus, and detailed regulations and operational 
 norms were Clearly prescribed for them. These regulations were for- 
 mally published in Laoda’s official catalogues and were vigorously 
 enforced.3! For instance, as indicated in the published work log of the 
 Student Guidance Office in the engineering college and its counter- 
 part in social sciences, an investigation was conducted in early Janu- 
 ary 1930 of the list of officers and class representatives to the Student 
 Union and the individual college students’ associations.*2 In addition 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 161 
 
 to such a screening of elected executive members and representatives 
 of student organizations, the university also provided a subsidy to 
 cover the expenses of the Student Union and the students’ associa- 
 tions.33 Furthermore, the Student Guidance Office held the right to 
 formally grant approval to the formation of student organizations. For 
 example, in early 1930 the Mechanical Engineering Society and the 
 co-op on the main campus were officially registered with the Student 
 Guidance Office.34 
 
 The very close scrutiny of the Student Union and other college 
 associations was openly acknowledged and even emphasized by Lao- 
 da’s administration as a matter of necessity. In the agriculture col- 
 lege’s second weekly assembly in fall semester 1929, Student Guid- 
 ance Officer Lin Xixian stated that “in the past, the Student Union 
 and college associations did not enjoy a close relationship with the 
 university. From now on, the Student Union will come under the 
 guidance of the University Secretariat while the students’ associa- 
 tions of the three colleges will be guided by the college’s Student 
 Guidance Office.” Lin further pointed out that problems in the past 
 semester were partly the result of a disagreement between the execu- 
 tive committee and the general assembly of the agriculture college 
 students’ association, but as “new elections will soon be held, that no 
 longer remains a problem.’’35 
 
 As events unfolded, autumn 1929 was a busy season for student 
 organizations. The establishment of the new College of Social Sci- 
 ences in mid-1929 involved not only considerable academic restruc- 
 turing and faculty personnel transfers, it also necessitated student 
 transfers and organizational realignment. On September 29, 1929, 
 the executive committee of Laoda’s Student Union appointed a five- 
 member preparation committee to lay the groundwork for a new 
 students’ association in the social sciences college. This new associa- 
 tion was formally established on October 7, 1929, with its own char- 
 ter, which called for a general assembly of all social sciences students, 
 who would in turn elect a supervisory committee of five and an 
 executive committee of eleven. As the supreme organ of the associa- 
 tion, the general assembly would meet twice each semester; the su- 
 pervisory committee would meet once every four weeks, while the 
 executive committee would meet once every two weeks or when 
 necessary. 
 
 Under the executive committee was a standing committee of three 
 members to take care of secretarial, accounting, and general affairs, 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 162 
 
 and five sections for recreation, hygiene, sports, food service, and 
 propaganda (with units for publication, investigation, and lectures). 
 All supervisory and executive committee members held office for one 
 semester but could be reelected for two more terms. They could be 
 removed from office if an impeachment petition signed by at least ten 
 students was approved by the general assembly.*° In many respects, 
 the social sciences students’ association’s structure and governance 
 procedures were almost identical to its counterparts in the engineer- 
 ing and agriculture colleges. 
 
 The October 7, 1929, inaugural session of the social sciences college 
 students’ association general assembly duly elected eleven executive 
 committee members and five supervisory committee members (in- 
 cluding Lu Guoxiang). Social sciences students also lost no time in 
 passing sixteen resolutions (and defeating two). Most of these resolu- 
 tions called for improvement in housing facilities, canteen operation, 
 and library services, all matters of common concern to undergradu- 
 ates everywhere.?” 
 
 Since some social sciences students had previously belonged to the 
 College of Engineering (in the Department of Industrial Sociology and 
 Industrial Education), their transfer to the new College of Social Sci- 
 ences in autumn 1929 also affected their involvement in the engineer- 
 ing college students’ association. For instance, in the October 3, 1929, 
 engineering students’ general assembly, attended by fifty-four stu- 
 dents, two members of the original presidium had to step down be- 
 cause they were by then social sciences students. An engineering 
 student was elected to the chair to preside over the general assembly 
 session, which elected a new (the fourth) nine-member executive 
 committee of the engineering college students’ association. Likewise, 
 the agriculture college students’ association also held its general as- 
 sembly and elected a new slate of executive committee members 
 around the same time.°8 
 
 The Laoda administration paid serious attention to these general 
 assembly meetings. To encourage student attendance, normal after- 
 noon classes in the college were always suspended on the day of the 
 general assembly. The March 15, 1930, issue of the Weekly recorded 
 an official notice dated February 27, 1930, from the Student Guidance 
 Office to the effect that in order to facilitate attendance at the social 
 sciences college students’ association’s general assembly to be held on 
 February 28, 1930, social sciences classes on that afternoon were 
 suspended.?° But the Weekly also reported on the next page that this 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 163 
 
 session of the general assembly could not be held because it lacked a 
 quorum (less than one-third of the full membership for a regular 
 session and one-half for a special session, the same as for the engineer- 
 ing students’ association).4° 
 
 This apparent student apathy might create a deceptive, and false, 
 impression of nonaction or uneventfulness with regard to organiza- 
 tional activities on the Laoda campus. As a matter of fact, the execu- 
 tive committee of the social sciences students’ association in the 
 previous semester started off with a host of personnel problems. At the 
 executive committee’s first and second meetings, on October 12-17, 
 1929, five of its eleven members tendered their resignations; despite 
 efforts at persuasion, the executive committee members in charge of 
 propaganda, hygiene, and food service resigned and had to be replaced 
 by three alternates.*! 
 
 The underattended general assembly session on February 28, 1930, 
 was to have elected a new executive committee to replace the above- 
 mentioned inaugural executive committee. As such, the low turnout 
 for the general assembly could have been the result of internal friction 
 and personality clash among social sciences students, who came from 
 three different sources: the forty-eight transferred from engineering, 
 the fifty-one transferred from the agriculture college (Department of 
 Social Sciences), and sixty freshmen recruited into the new Depart- 
 ment of Economics. 
 
 Personnel problems also besieged the engineering students’ associa- 
 tion executive committee. As reported in the Labor University Week- 
 ly, the engineering students’ general assembly on September 27, 1930, 
 elected the sixth executive committee, which took office two days 
 later. At its third (October 14, 1930) meeting, executive committee 
 chair Sun Letao (and concurrently standing committee member in 
 charge of secretarial affairs) was absent, but the meeting decided three 
 things. First, the decisions that had been reached at the last meeting 
 were deemed unconstitutional and had to be reintroduced for approval 
 due to the illegitimate status of Sun on the committee. Second, since 
 Sun Letao already held executive committee membership, he should 
 not concurrently serve as student representative. Third, a public warn- 
 ing should be issued to Sun for his improper conduct in failing to resign 
 at the start of the last meeting from his dual status (of being concur- 
 rently executive committee member and student representative). The 
 executive committee also accepted the resignation of two other mem- 
 bers and approved their replacement by reserve members, and ac- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 164 
 
 cepted the exchange of portfolios between the members in charge of 
 the accounting and sports sections.42 
 
 Student organs also made an effort to play an active role in the 
 protection of the interests of students and of the larger university 
 community. For instance, at the fifth meeting of the engineering 
 college students’ association executive committee, members decided 
 to support the request from an engineering student, Liu Guoze (also a 
 former member of the committee), to seek assistance from Labor 
 University for his release from jail. The executive committee resolved 
 to approach Laoda’s administration regarding Liu’s innocence and to 
 urge them to secure Liu’s freedom from the GMp municipal headquar- 
 ters.49 
 
 The same meeting also decided to send a student representative to 
 mediate a dispute over reduced meal stipends involving the Labor 
 University Workers’ Union. At the next executive committee meet- 
 ing, on December 2, 1930, it was reported that the workers’ union 
 meal stipend dispute had been settled with both sides agreeing to the 
 monthly sum of five and a half dollars. The same meeting also dis- 
 cussed an executive committee member’s report on mediation of a 
 dispute involving workers in the rubber factory (which was part of the 
 Labor University Factory compound but was leased to a private opera- 
 tor). On November 25, 1930, the rubber factory workers approached 
 the executive committee to mediate with the factory management, 
 and a settlement of some twenty items was soon reached. The factory 
 management later petitioned the Shanghai municipal Bureau of So- 
 cial Affairs and the GMp municipal headquarters renouncing these 
 items of agreement. According to Laoda’s Student Guidance Office, as 
 this matter was being handled by the Bureau of Social Affairs, the 
 students’ association ought not interfere. Against such a background, 
 the executive committee decided to write to the Bureau of Social 
 Affairs and the GMp municipal headquarters stating the reasons why 
 the students’ association had no other choice but to mediate this 
 industrial dispute in the rubber factory.44 From these cases it should 
 be clear that Laoda students did try to practice their academic training 
 in industrial relations and to fulfill their legitimate social functions as 
 labor leaders and social reformers. Also reflected is the students’ 
 determination to stand firm in the face of official pressure from the 
 GMD party-state. 
 
 Such determination and courage to confront official pressure from 
 outside reached a defiant and militant level in the fall semester of 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 165 
 
 1930. By then, an atmosphere of imminent crisis had already engulfed 
 the entire Laoda community. President Yi Peiji had been forced to 
 resign in September 1930 with no successor appointed, and the Minis- 
 try of Education’s official inspection and investigation was changed to 
 a takeover of Laoda in October 1930. Along with faculty and adminis- 
 trators, who were fully aroused in their strong opposition to the take- 
 over order, Laoda students also became embroiled in the crisis. This 
 prolonged battle for Laoda’s survival is treated in greater detail in 
 chapter 8. It suffices here to state that the Laoda Student Union and 
 students’ associations held a series of heated and intense assembly 
 meetings and issued manifestos and public statements during au- 
 tumn 1930. In these undertakings Laoda students demanded an early 
 appointment of a new university president who would meet criteria 
 and be prepared to plan for future development as the students spec- 
 ified.45 Furthermore, the student leaders adopted a “neutral” stance— 
 neither agreeing with nor opposing the Ministry of Education’s take- 
 over order.4° Thus, the students’ own organizational strength and 
 their unmistakable dissatisfaction with various aspects of Laoda’s 
 internal administration became important forces that had to be reck- 
 oned with by those in authority. 
 
 Campus Life: Canteen, Dormitory, Co-op, and Student Health 
 
 The scope and function of Laoda’s student organs were extraordinary 
 and vital to the daily requirements of campus life. Since almost all 
 Labor University students lived in dormitories on campus and took 
 their meals in the student canteens, no systematic organizational 
 effort had a better or more ready-made foundation than dining table- 
 based representation. This form of functional organization was par- 
 ticularly effective because the actual operation of the canteens and 
 the provision of food service had always been the responsibility of the 
 students. Under this system, on the main campus each canteen dining 
 table of ten students elected one representative, and a meeting of 
 these representatives then elected canteen committee members to 
 take charge of the actual management of the kitchen. The university 
 allotted a monthly per capita stipend to the committee to cover the 
 students’ meals. This canteen committee had its own accounting, 
 inspection, and hygiene officers to run the budget, monitor kitchen 
 operation, and control the quality of food.4” As the College of Agricul- 
 ture was located on a separate campus, agriculture students had their 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 166 
 
 own seven-member canteen committee. They were directly elected 
 once every two months, and the same individuals could not be re- 
 elected. To ensure fair and uncorrupted monitoring of finances, the 
 accounting section of the committee had a team of “weekly accoun- 
 tants.” Each accountant was nominated by his own dining table group 
 on a rotating basis and served for one week only. The other seven 
 members of the same dining table took turns serving as the daily 
 “purchaser” to supervise the food purchases and money transactions 
 of the kitchen staff.48 Thus, this system ensured the involvement of 
 each and every student in the actual running of their own food service, 
 quite befitting the anarcho-syndicalist spirit of mutual aid and full- 
 scale social participation in daily life and production. (It was such an 
 effective and vital operation that the students in Laoda’s high school 
 also had their own canteen committee of fifteen members under the 
 high-school students’ union.) Likewise, the student dormitories had a 
 system of “room representatives” to look after the residents’ interests. 
 The room representative system was set up to “foster the ability of 
 self-rule, the habit of service, and discipline of daily life.”49 Room 
 representatives were directly elected by residents of the dormitory 
 rooms on ballots prepared by the Student Guidance Office. The duties 
 of a room representative, not unlike those discharged by the headman 
 of the traditional Chinese baojia mutual security system, covered the 
 following tasks: to maintain the cleanliness and good order of the 
 room; to serve as the communication link between the university and 
 the student residents; to preserve public properties in dormitories; to 
 report the absence and leave requests of roommates; to report serious 
 sickness of roommates; and to carry out orders from the Student 
 Guidance Office and the decisions of the Council of Room Represen- 
 tatives. All room representatives served for one semester. Elections 
 took place within the first three weeks of each new semester and were 
 conducted by the Student Guidance Office, which could also call a 
 meeting of the Council of Room Representatives when necessary. 
 This system was also practiced in the Laoda high-school dormito- 
 ries.5° 
 
 Even though self-rule was the avowed objective, the official hand of 
 the university administration was unmistakably present behind the 
 facade of elected peer group autonomy in this significant area of 
 Laoda’s campus life and student discipline. Since Laoda’s administra- 
 tion kept a fairly close watch over student behavior both on and 
 off campus, the above-mentioned duties of the room representatives 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 167 
 
 could be vital tasks. For instance, the published work log of the 
 engineering college’s Student Guidance Office recorded that on De- 
 cember 11, 1929, a formal warning was issued to an undergraduate 
 (who was twenty-one years old according to a 1928 student list) for 
 “overnight absence” from his dormitory room without permission.>! 
 
 The health situation among Laoda students became a serious prob- 
 lem at times. The same routine daily work log of the engineering 
 college’s Student Guidance Office for the first two weeks of June 1929 
 registered seven cases of serious sickness among undergraduates on 
 the main campus that resulted in outside hospitalization.52 Other 
 than one known case of tuberculosis, and another of typhoid, the 
 actual illnesses of the other five student patients were not given. But 
 other relevant entries in this work log indicate that an epidemic of 
 typhoid had hit the Jiangwan campus. On June 15 and 19, Laoda’s 
 clinic was officially called upon to procure typhoid vaccine “to pre- 
 vent further spreading” of the virus. Despite the clinic’s reply of July 
 20 that preventive shots for students could be given once the vaccine 
 was purchased, on June 26 the University Secretariat also requested 
 on-campus anticholera injections from the Shanghai Bureau of Public 
 Health, suggesting that cholera was another probable cause of the 
 hospitalizations.53 
 
 The situation almost reached crisis proportions in mid-June. June 
 13 was a particularly hectic and sad day: at 8:00 a.m. the director 
 and another officer of the engineering college’s Student Guidance 
 Office and four Laoda students visited four student patients at the Red 
 Cross Hospital in Shanghai. At 11:30 a.m. one of the Laoda patients 
 was transferred from Red Cross Hospital to Paulun Hospital (part of 
 the Tongji University Medical School). At 1:30 p.m. Paulun Hospital 
 phoned the university to report the death of this newly transferred 
 Laoda patient; as a consequence, the student guidance officer, the 
 director of general affairs, and two of the four students had to rush 
 back to Shanghai to make funeral arrangements for the deceased.54 
 
 The academic work of many more Laoda students was affected at 
 this critical juncture right before the June 29—July 4 final examination 
 period for the 1929 spring semester. The work log for July 1-July 15, 
 1929, recorded a total of seventy-eight leave permissions granted to 
 students, with an additional seventy-four granted during the next ten 
 days.°5 At least seven students were so seriously ill that they could 
 not sit for the examination and were permitted to take a makeup 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 168 
 
 examination during the next academic year.*° In addition, on June ro 
 and June 14 one sociology student and one civil engineering student 
 exceeded the limit for sick leave (of one-third of the class sessions for 
 the semester) and were officially ordered to deregister.5”7 Right in the 
 midst of the examination period an education student suffered a 
 serious ulceric attack on June 30 and was rushed to the Red Cross 
 Hospital for surgery. He died in the hospital on July 3.5% 
 
 The operation of the consumer co-op on the main campus offers a 
 vivid illustration of the anarcho-syndicalist attempt to actualize the 
 mutual-aid ideal in everyday life. According to a report published in 
 Labor University Weekly, from November 12, 1929, to February 24, 
 1930, the co-op registered a total turnover of $2,140 with a net profit at 
 $337.80, which is quite remarkable for a total capitalization of $890 
 (eighty-nine shares at $10 each).59 However, as the co-op’s share sub- 
 scription announcement for the second phase revealed, the share 
 subscription for that first phase was far from successful. This an- 
 nouncement admitted that due to a lack of participation from univer- 
 sity members, the consumer co-op suffered the image of “consump- 
 tion without cooperation.” Thus the students’ associations of the 
 engineering and social sciences colleges not only approved a second- 
 phase share subscription drive, they also proposed to have the co-op 
 take over food service and canteen operations. This both enlarged the 
 operational scope of the co-op and brought a vital part of campus life 
 under its direct management, with the hope of arousing greater inter- 
 est on the part of Laoda elements to support the co-op. The announce- 
 ment for this second-phase subscription stated that the objective of 
 the co-op’s expansion was to “meet the university community’s needs 
 for daily necessities in order to avoid the monopolistic control of 
 unscrupulous merchants.’’©° It further specified that one thousand 
 shares were open for subscription at $1 per share; each individual 
 subscriber was limited to fifty shares, but charities or public bodies 
 could be exempted from this restriction. The announcement also 
 stipulated that the profits of the co-op would be accounted for at the 
 end of each semester with half of the net profit donated to public 
 charity and the remaining half distributed to shareholders on a pro- 
 rata basis. The sentiments underlying this profit/charity scheme were 
 transparently anarcho-syndicalist. 
 
 Later, on April 24, 1930, another consumers’ co-op organized by 
 Laoda elements opened for business in Sitong, near the site of the 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 169 
 
 Laoda’s second primary school. This new co-op was housed in a struc- 
 ture built for the purpose and located on the main road in Sitong in 
 order to attract the local peasants trafficking through. Its stated pur- 
 pose was to help improve the livelihood of the peasants and to offer 
 practical opportunities for schoolchildren to understand and manage 
 cooperative enterprises. It was also hoped that through their dealings 
 with the co-op, the peasants would appreciate and trust the co-op and 
 the school, thus facilitating a closer relationship between the Laoda 
 community and the peasantry, and laying the foundation for rural 
 reconstruction.°! 
 
 Partisan Politics and Popular Mobilization 
 among Laoda Students 
 
 The Guomindang’s interference in Labor University’s curriculum was 
 analyzed in chapter 4. But the Gmp’s influence also reached into many 
 other aspects of student life on the Laoda campus. Even extracurricu- 
 lar activities were within the party’s purview. 
 
 As if to affirm formally the Guomindang’s ideological hegemony in 
 Labor University, a Party Doctrines Library opened on the main cam- 
 pus, run jointly by the two Gmp subbranches in the engineering and 
 social science colleges. The reading room of the library was open from 
 7:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. Tuesday through Sunday. It was manned by six 
 student party members (three from the local Gmp no. 8 subbranch in 
 the engineering college and another three from the no. 5 subbranch 
 in the social sciences college). The library’s newspaper room was 
 open the whole day, seven days a week, and carried three major Shang- 
 hai dailies—Minguo Ribao (Republic Daily), Xinwen Bao (Shanghai 
 Daily News), and Shen Bao (the latter two were donated by Yi Keyi, 
 instructor of the Party Doctrines course for Laoda undergraduates, and 
 Zhou Changxian, head of the Student Guidance Office). 
 
 According to the general reading room’s registration records for 
 December 10, 1929—January 10, 1930, 140 people used the Party Doc- 
 trines Library, ranging from a per day maximum of 17 to a minimum 
 of 3. The reasons given for this rather low user’s rate (as compared 
 with the main library) were lack of funds for acquisition (the reading 
 room subscribed to only two magazines and had an odd assortment of 
 some complementary periodicals, while its total holding of books 
 numbered slightly over two hundred volumes) and the lack of heating 
 in the reading room during the winter. (In contrast, Laoda’s main 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 170 
 
 library was properly heated, which helped draw students.) The same 
 report also claimed that the ready availability of fresh information 
 {i.e., the daily newspapers) kept the newspaper room of the Party 
 Doctrines Library filled with students, drawing almost as many as the 
 newspaper room in Laoda’s main library.°2 
 
 This Party Doctrines Library was only a small part of the Guomin- 
 dang’s overt activities among Laoda students. In organizational terms, 
 Laoda’s main campus in Jiangwan came under the “jurisdiction” of the 
 Guomindang Shanghai Municipal Party Headquarters’ Seventh Dis- 
 trict. Within this Seventh District party hierarchy were the no. 5 and 
 no. 8 subbranches for party members in the engineering and social 
 science colleges, as well as the no. 2 subbranch in the Laoda high 
 school. Since the agriculture college in Wusong was located within 
 the boundaries of Baoshan County, it came under the jurisdiction of 
 the Guomindang Baoshan County Headquarters. 
 
 Activities of these GMp organs at Laoda were often reported in the 
 “Party Affairs” section of the Labor University Weekly. For instance 
 the December 17, 1928, issue of the Weekly had a lengthy “News on 
 Party Affairs” section which reported on the fourth meeting of the 
 Seventh District’s no. 5 subbranch held in Laoda’s auditorium on 
 Thursday, December 13, 1928. Attended by sixty members, the meet- 
 ing was chaired by Yi Hongtu, a staff member in the Student Guidance 
 Office. Originally this meeting was scheduled for Sunday, December 
 16, but it had to be held three days earlier to avoid clashing in time and 
 venue with the GmMp Seventh District Congress scheduled for Decem- 
 ber 16 in the same Laoda auditorium. However, as reported by Gmp 
 Seventh District Representative Shen Zuru (then on the staff of the 
 Student Guidance Office, although he had previously served in the 
 Hunan provincial GMp and the Nationalist Army Political Depart- 
 ment), the Seventh District membership registration was not yet com- 
 pleted, and the congress was postponed.°? This news item indirectly 
 indicates the intensity of the GmMp’s organizational activities on the 
 Laoda campus. It also reveals the concentration of GMD party cadres in 
 the student affairs organs of Laoda, which was already infested with 
 GMD elements in the compulsory party doctrine and military training 
 components of its curriculum. 
 
 A short item in the October 9, 1929, issue of the Weekly announced 
 the September 5 appointment of two social sciences students to take 
 charge of preparations for establishing the no. 8 subbranch of the 
 GMD Shanghai Seventh District. This new subbranch was temporarily 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 171 
 
 housed in a dormitory room on the Jiangwan campus.°4 One of these 
 two social sciences students was Yu Zhongbiao, a twenty-two-year- 
 old sociology major who was active in outreach programs and Student 
 Union activities. His high profile and extensive network of personal 
 contacts made him the ideal and natural choice for organizing a new 
 subbranch to cover the newly founded social sciences college. (After 
 his graduation from Laoda, Yu continued his studies at Charleroi and 
 later returned to teach in China.) Even Laoda’s high school was not 
 beyond the reach of the very visible hands of the Gmp. The same issue 
 of the Weekly also reported the establishment of a no. 2 subbranch of 
 the Gmp Shanghai Seventh District to cover the high school. Its in- 
 augural ceremony on September 18 in a classroom of Laoda’s high 
 school was attended by twenty-one of the subbranch’s thirty mem- 
 bers, and Shen Zuru, representing the Seventh District Gmp office, 
 gave the keynote speech.°° 
 
 The formal inauguration of the Gmp no. 8 subbranch was held in a 
 classroom of the social sciences college on Sunday, September 29, 
 thus completing the formal transfer of the no. 8 subbranch, which was 
 previously attached to the agriculture college (which had just moved 
 to Wusong in summer 1929), to the new social sciences college. As a 
 standard practice, Shen Zuru addressed the meeting on behalf of the 
 Shanghai Gmp Seventh District; Yu Zhongbiao and two other social 
 sciences undergraduates were elected subbranch executive commit- 
 tee members.° 
 
 As for the agriculture college, the March 29, 1930, issue of the 
 Weekly reported that the Baoshan County GMD no. 1 branch in the 
 Laoda agriculture college held its first general meeting of thirty-three 
 members on February 21, 1930. The immediate tasks of the branch 
 were to conduct a membership drive and to “promote the peasant 
 movement of the party, to politicize peasants into party elements” 
 through recreational activities for the peasants. To achieve these ob- 
 jectives the branch executive proposed to collaborate with Laoda and 
 its Student Union to establish recreational facilities for the peas- 
 ants.°7 On February 18, 1930, the six-month-old no. 2 GMp subbranch 
 at Laoda high school held its tenth general meeting, which was at- 
 tended by twenty of its twenty-one members. The second-term execu- 
 tive committee of the three full members and two alternates was 
 elected under the supervision of an official representative from the 
 GMD Seventh District. The three subbranch executive members were 
 each entrusted with specific tasks: general affairs, organization and 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 172 
 
 training, and propaganda. The executive committee met once a week, 
 while the general meeting of the subbranch was held once every two 
 weeks.8 
 
 In addition to these internal activities, the GMD also played a rather 
 active and high-profile role in public events on campus and in the 
 Laoda neighborhood. During the late 1920s, while the GMD was vigor- 
 ous in its liquidation of underground communist and left-wing orga- 
 nizations, some GMD cadres were still interested in staging their 
 own popular mobilization and public campaigns on officially selected 
 occasions. The GMp’s involvement with Laoda student collective 
 actions often took the form of setting the target of protest or com- 
 memoration, laying down the propaganda guidelines, directing the 
 organization, and providing the key leaders for the unfolding of public 
 activities as the party leadership desired. A vivid example can be 
 found in the detailed accounts of the Labor University Weekly's De- 
 cember 17, 1928, issue regarding an anti-Japanese campaign spon- 
 sored by the GMp. First, on December 11 the executive committee of 
 the no. 5 GMp subbranch at Laoda issued a public circular (under 
 instructions from the GMD municipal propaganda department) calling 
 for a public protest on December 15 against Japanese infringement on 
 railways in the Manchurian provinces. In particular, this circular 
 solicited maps and posters to be used for propaganda purposes. Two 
 days later, the no. 5 subbranch issued another circular on the Saturday, 
 December 15, afternoon parade involving Laoda students, faculty, and 
 staff under “the leadership of comrade Cheng Ganyun.”©? 
 
 The engineering college’s Student Guidance Office worked over- 
 time to prepare propaganda materials (mainly nine giant maps drawn 
 by Yi Hongtu and over 1,000 small printed maps drawn by a student, 
 plus many more printed slogans and leaflets) for this anti-Japanese 
 campaign. The office also issued a circular stating that in response to 
 the Shanghai municipal Gmp’s designation of December 14—16 as the 
 anti-Japanese campaign period and December 15 as Mass Propaganda 
 Day, Labor University, “as a revolutionary and labor school, will of 
 course fully follow the party’s instruction.” Thus, classes would be 
 suspended for the afternoon of Saturday, December 15, so that the 
 entire body of 134 engineering undergraduates could participate in the 
 public campaign off-campus. On that day these 134 Laoda students, 
 already organized by the Student Guidance Office into 14 propaganda 
 teams, each headed by a student team leader, marched out from Laoda 
 at 2:00 P.M. to selected locations in Jiangwan where they put up 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 173 
 
 slogans and made public speeches to arouse the populace to boycott 
 Japanese goods and support the Nationalist regime against Japan.7° 
 Despite the relatively low level of civic awareness on the part of the 
 local masses and the problem of dialects (which had caused some com- 
 munication gaps in a previous officially sponsored public campaign in 
 support of the abolition of unequal treaties), this anti-Japanese demon- 
 stration was acknowledged as “highly successful” by the organizers.7! 
 Such official sponsorship and endorsement of student mobilization 
 against Japanese imperialism later became a rather sharp and embar- 
 rassing contrast with the Gmp’s increasingly hostile stance toward 
 spontaneous student protests against the regime’s nonresistance pol- 
 icy with regard to the Japanese invasion of the Manchurian provinces 
 in the 1930s. 
 
 The Gmp organs in Laoda also took a leading role in staging various 
 patriotic and historical commemorative events on campus. For exam- 
 ple, on March 18, 1930, the fourth anniversary of the March 18, 1926, 
 Beijing massacre (in which warlord soldiers and police fired on stu- 
 dent protesters), the GmMp no. 5 subbranch not only ordered all its 
 members to attend the commemorative meeting held at Laoda (see 
 chapter 4 for the proceedings), it also issued a public proclamation to 
 commemorate the fifth anniversary of Dr. Sun Zhongshan’s death on 
 March 12, 1925. The full text of this document was published in the 
 Labor University Weekly for the benefit of the Laoda community. It is 
 also interesting to note that the no. 5 subbranch dispatched four 
 comrades to distribute the printed copies of this proclamation on the 
 streets of Jiangwan.’2 The “Student Activities” section of Labor Uni- 
 versity Weekly reported that the students’ association of the agricul- 
 ture college planned to invite the Gmp branch in the college to cohost 
 the 1930 May First Commemorative Meeting.’? Even events more 
 social or recreational in nature, like the 1929 New Year party hosted 
 by the Student Union, relied on the support of the local Gmp organs.74 
 
 Thus the “legitimate” and “necessary” involvement of local Gmp 
 organs in public events on campus seemed to be an inevitable and 
 accepted fact of life in Laoda. These overt and public political actions 
 by GmpD elements in Labor University seemed to substantiate Feng 
 Hefa’s accusation that the Guomindang’s Jiangwan branch exercised 
 powerful control over Laoda, which suffered from “a pervasive atmo- 
 sphere of white terror.” According to Feng, the GMp’s real objective in 
 founding Labor University was to train anticommunist labor cadres. 
 When Laoda was first established, anarchist thought was prevalent on 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 174 
 
 campus and the Gmp did not yet control the university administra- 
 tion, partly because the Gmp Nanking regime at that point lacked 
 capable educators, and partly because the university’s budget came 
 from French remission of the Boxer Indemnity Fund. Therefore the 
 GMD had little choice but to rely on the leadership of anarchists like Li 
 Shizeng, and it hoped to use anarchism to oppose communist ideol- 
 ogy. Before long, though, conflicts broke out between anarchists and 
 the GMb Shanghai branch, with the latter gaining control of Laoda. 
 Feng recalled that despite the GMp’s ascending influence, revolution- 
 ary thought still remained prevalent on campus because many pro- 
 gressive youths enrolled in Laoda for refuge following the collapse of 
 the GMp-ccp united front in 1927. Contrary to the original intention 
 of the Gmp regime in establishing the university, Laoda became in- 
 stead an asylum for progressives and underground ccp members.7° 
 Feng’s fellow Laoda alumni who were prominent Chinese Commu- 
 nists included Xu Dixin, Ma Chungu, and Xu Maoyong. They proba- 
 bly had to be on constant alert to hide their true ideological inclina- 
 tion in order to survive the anticommunist “witch hunts” at Laoda. In 
 fact, as early as November 8, 1927, less than three months after the 
 first day of classes, an emergency inspection was conducted on cam- 
 pus. On the next day, seven communist students were expelled from 
 Laoda.’° According to a biographical account of Sun Hanbin pub- 
 lished in Shanghai in 1985, some Laoda students were radicals who 
 had participated in the 1925—27 revolution and later matriculated 
 into Laoda in disguise or under assumed names. Even though anar- 
 chist doctrines were propagated on the campus by some faculty mem- 
 bers in the early days, many students were eager to learn about Marx- 
 ism instead.’7 
 
 The biographical sketch of the noted historian Shen Yunlong (an 
 active member of the Chinese Youth Party in Shanghai during the 
 1930s) also mentions members of the party’s Chinese Statist Youth 
 Corps among Laoda students. Members of the corps in Shanghai in- 
 cluded students in twelve other local tertiary institutions such as 
 Fudan, Great China, Aurora, and Guanghua University, where Shen 
 was a student.’8 It is indeed ironic that the Chinese anarchists’ earlier 
 attempt at labor education through the diligent-work frugal-study 
 program in France unintentionally produced pioneer Chinese Com- 
 munists (such as Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Li Lisan, and others), 
 while their Labor University experiment, on the one hand, opened the 
 door to GMp authoritarian control and, on the other hand, provided 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 175 
 
 asylum to radicals of the Left (ccp members) and partisans of the 
 Right (Chinese Youth Party elements), both archenemies of the anar- 
 chists. Of course, the anarchists were also involved in the university 
 in other than official capacities; the radical Sichuan anarchists of the 
 People’s Vanguard Society (Minfeng she), who opposed collaboration 
 with the Guomindang, were active among faculty and students in 
 encouraging opposition to the Guomindang. Lu Jianbo recalled that a 
 meeting they held to discuss this struggle was attended by “several 
 tens of individuals.”7? 
 
 The presence of all these rival partisans of contradictory ideological 
 persuasions did pose serious problems to the GMpD’s hegemony in 
 Laoda. Even the Gmp’s own party organs at the university had been 
 infiltrated by communist elements, and officially registered, card- 
 carrying GMD membership could not be considered a reliable guaran- 
 tee of political loyalty or ideological purity. A noted case illustrating 
 such an embarrassing situation for the Gmp establishment at Laoda 
 took place on October to, 1928, the regime’s National Day. 
 
 On that day, Wang Jianmin, an intermediate-course student in Lao- 
 da’s agricultural labor college, was caught in the act of distributing 
 anti-GMD leaflets on a main road in Jiangwan by a plainclothes army 
 officer. A body search yielded other propaganda materials issued by the 
 ccp Jiangsu Provincial Committee. Under interrogation, Wang admit- 
 ted his student status at Laoda, where he had first joined the ccp. 
 During an interrogation back at Laoda conducted by Shen Zuru, an 
 officer in Laoda’s central administration and also the Gmp branch 
 committee’s “guiding member,” Wang named one Laoda undergradu- 
 ate as the person who had inducted him into the ccr and another three 
 intermediate-course students as cohorts. Laoda authorities searched 
 and interrogated the four students named by Wang but found no 
 evidence of any ccp ties.8° At his formal trial, conducted on-campus 
 jointly by representatives of the military, the Shanghai Public Security 
 Bureau, the Gmp branch, and Laoda, Wang finally admitted, under 
 severe threats, to falsely naming those four students as communist 
 cohorts. Wang also pointed to agricultural labor undergraduate Zhang 
 Zhizhong as his ccp inductor and to three other students as his real 
 communist cohorts. By the time Laoda authorities tried to take action 
 against them, these four real ccp elements had fled the campus with- 
 out a trace. 
 
 Laoda faculty vouched forcefully for the purity and conduct of the 
 four falsely named students, and the university did not visit any 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 176 
 
 injustice on them. Wang's false accusation of innocent peers upset 
 many members of the Laoda community, who developed an even 
 stronger dislike of communist elements. Besides gaining time for the 
 real ccp members to escape unharmed, such false-accusation tactics 
 served the purposes, as pointed out in a report in the anarchist Revolu- 
 tion Weekly, of dragging others into the mud, settling old scores, 
 creating confusion among the enemy, and frightening others with the 
 threat of implication, thus reducing opposition to ccp activities.8! 
 
 The most ironic and damaging aspect of this case, however, is that 
 Wang Jianmin, Zhang Zhizhong, and their cohorts on the Laoda cam- 
 pus were all registered, card-carrying members of the Gmp, and sup- 
 posedly vouched for by the Gmp party machine in Laoda headed 
 by Shen Zuru, whose reputation suffered considerably. In order to 
 defend itself and to boost morale among the Gmp faithful at Laoda, 
 the Gmp Fifth District Executive Committee ran a “clarification of 
 rumors” statement in issue no. 41 of the National Labor University 
 Weekly to refute the charges of lax supervision of party membership 
 voiced by anarchist reportage. Despite such attempts at refutation, 
 the fact remained that some properly registered GMb members at 
 Laoda were ccp members in disguise.82 It also seems that instead of 
 effectively purging communist elements from their own ranks, the 
 GMD organs at Laoda were more concerned with silencing local anar- 
 chist exposés and criticisms. 
 
 In the same November 18, 1928, Revolution Weekly article that laid 
 bare the factual details of the Wang Jianmin case, it was also reported 
 that Shen Zuru had petitioned the Gmp Central in Nanking to ban 
 the Revolution Weekly as a “reactionary” journal. “Fortunately, the 
 central authorities, recognizing the anticommunist stance of the 
 Weekly, investigated it but pointedly declined to ban it.’ It is even 
 more ironic that this “Red scare” ended with Shen Zuru as its major 
 casualty. When the Laoda faculty-staff roster was published in fall 
 1929, Shen’s name was no longer listed.84 By that time, open anarchist 
 influence at Laoda had declined sharply and visibly. But more GMp 
 efforts to ensure political discipline and ideological purity in the 
 Laoda student body were to come. 
 
 The Labor University Weekly also carried a number of entries re- 
 garding purported political or ideological “irregularities” of individual 
 Laoda students. For instance, at the joint engineering—social sciences 
 weekly assembly on September 23, 1929, Zhou Changxian of the 
 Student Guidance Office concluded his report by stating that on the 
 preceding day the university had caught a member of the Communist 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 177 
 
 Party, who was sent to the Bureau of Public Security for investigation. 
 Zhou further urged Laoda students to exercise mutual supervision 
 and mutual guidance in order to produce a large number of “pure, 
 Three People’s Principles-indoctrinated talents for the labor and peas- 
 ant movements in order to gain the greatest interest and benefit for 
 the grass-roots masses.’”8° 
 
 The social sciences college’s Student Guidance Office work log 
 recorded a late-night search (conducted September 23 on the instruc- 
 tions of the university president) of the books, notes, letters, diaries, 
 and other belongings of four social sciences students, and the presi- 
 dent’s September 24 order for two of these four student suspects to 
 withdraw from Laoda on the ground of “improper character and con- 
 duct.’86 
 
 The work log of the University Secretariat for September 26 noted 
 that a secretary had been sent to observe the interrogation of the 
 arrested communist student Xiong Zhongmin (a nineteen-year-old 
 mechanical engineering junior from Guizhou who first entered Laoda 
 in September 1927).8”? The engineering college’s Student Guidance 
 Office work log entry for September 22 reported the arrest of Xiong 
 Zhongmin on suspicion of communist ties, the search of Xiong’s 
 luggage, letters, and documents, and the office staff’s visit to the 
 Shanghai Gmp headquarters to handle Xiong’s case. The entry for the 
 following day recorded that one of its staff went to the Bureau of 
 Public Security to join the municipal Gmp representatives in the 
 interrogation of Xiong, and the announcement from the president’s 
 office of Xiong’s dismissal from Laoda.88 
 
 That was not the end of Laoda students’ trouble with the regime. On 
 September 30, Dean of Students Zhou Changxian and a university 
 secretary went to the Shanghai Garrison Command to investigate a 
 case of an arrested student. On the same day, the expulsion of two 
 undergraduates due to “improper conduct and impure thoughts” was 
 announced at the social sciences college weekly assembly. On Octo- 
 ber 8 the University Secretariat dispatched one of its staff to the Gmp 
 Shanghai headquarters to discuss joint efforts to deal with communist 
 problems. Three days later, an Executive Committee member from 
 the municipal Gmp visited Laoda to discuss ways and means to liqui- 
 date communist elements.8? Thus not only was the Laoda Student 
 Affairs Office staffed by Gmp cadres, but the university administra- 
 tors also worked closely with Gmp apparatchiks to eliminate commu- 
 nist influence from Laoda. 
 
 Another case of dismissal from Laoda due to politically suspect 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 178 
 
 conduct occurred less than two months later. According to the work 
 log of the social sciences college’s Student Guidance Office, on the 
 evening of December 10, 1929, economics freshman Hang Dongliu 
 was caught in the act of distributing leaflets on campus by Shen Zuru, 
 who immediately reported the case to the University Secretariat. 
 Right after that, the Guidance Office conducted a search of the be- 
 longings of Hang and another undergraduate, Ren Haozhang, and also 
 spoke with them. Earlier on the same day the Student Guidance 
 Office had written to notify the Labor Education Promotion Commit- 
 tee that Hang, Ren, and another student were prepared to serve as 
 editors for the Labor Weekly (as such Ren also became a suspect). On 
 the following day the Guidance Office continued its investigation of 
 their belongings and also collaborated with the University Secretariat 
 in dealing with Hang and Ren. On the third day, December 12, the 
 University Secretariat announced their dismissal from Laoda. Both 
 Hang and Ren were ordered to hand in their Laoda uniforms and 
 university badges and were evicted from the campus. It is interesting 
 to note here that it was only on December 9g, 1929, that the Student 
 Guidance Office started to conduct a night patrol of the entire Jiang- 
 wan campus at midnight. The second night’s patrol lasted until dawn, 
 perhaps because of the Hang and Ren case, and the night patrols 
 ceased after the last round was made on December 15.99 
 
 In addition, there was the case of an arrested Laoda engineering 
 student, Liu Guoze, who wrote from jail to the Laoda engineering 
 students’ association seeking help for his release in November 1930. 
 As revealed in the work log of the engineering college’s Student Guid- 
 ance Office, the following sequence of actions occurred: on Saturday, 
 October 18, the office discussed rendering assistance to Liu with the 
 University Secretariat; on Monday, October 20, Dean of Students 
 Zhou Bangshi and a secretary from the University Secretariat went to 
 the Gmp Shanghai municipal office to inquire about Liu’s arrest; the 
 next day Zhou, the university secretary, and a student representative 
 made a second visit to arrange bail for Liu and another arrested Laoda 
 high-school student; on October 23 the municipal Gmp notified Laoda 
 that the clothing delivered to Liu was rejected by the Bureau of Public 
 Security; as such it had to be retrieved, and the Student Guidance 
 Office wrote two days later to reclaim Liu’s clothing.?! This seemed to 
 be the end of Laoda’s efforts to assist students running afoul of the 
 GMD, as nothing further on Liu’s fate was reported. There can be no 
 doubt that the cmp authorities’ strong claws were only too keenly felt 
 by some Laoda elements. 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 179 
 
 The work log of the engineering college’s Student Guidance Office 
 for late September 1929 carried several entries that are very revealing 
 as to the extent of the penetration of nonorthodox, “reactionary” 
 information among Laoda students. These entries read: 92 
 
 September 20, 1929 
 
 —Burn reactionary journals and materials. 
 
 —Carve an official stamp bearing “stamp for the inspection and sup- 
 pression of reactionary journals and materials.” 
 
 September 23, 1929 
 —Inspect items of reactionary journals and materials mailed from 
 outside. 
 
 September 25, 1929 
 —Burn reactionary journals and materials mailed from outside. 
 
 September 27, 1929 
 
 —Carve “stamp for the inspection and suppression of reactionary jour- 
 nals and materials.” 
 
 —Bumm reactionary journals and materials. 
 
 September 28, 1929 
 —Inspect journals and materials mailed from outside. 
 
 Later, in 1930, the Student Guidance Office again reported the 
 discovery and confiscation of unidentified “reactionary” propaganda 
 leaflets on campus and just outside Laoda’s premises. At the social 
 sciences—engineering joint weekly assembly on April 14, 1930, Stu- 
 dent Guidance Officer Peng Xiang warned Laoda students to be aware 
 of the intrusion of “undesirable elements from the outside who appear 
 on campus with the intention to instigate the students and to create 
 disturbance.” Peng further said that such incidents had already oc- 
 curred in various Shanghai universities and urged Laoda students to be 
 alert in order to avoid any such incidents.?3 This kind of political 
 undercurrent also affected the agriculture students on the more re- 
 mote rural Wusong campus. The Gmp authorities, of course, did not 
 relax their close scrutiny of various aspects of the students’ work and 
 life on campus, including their academic studies. The May 16, 1930, 
 entry in the Labor University Secretariat work log reported an inves- 
 tigation of the contents of sociology courses conducted by personnel 
 from the Gmp Shanghai municipal training department.?4 This kind 
 of “visit and search” represented a clear official intrusion into and 
 political interference with normal academic life in higher education 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 180 
 
 that could justifiably be labeled illiberal and disturbing, not only by 
 anarchists but by any enlightened observer. 
 
 At the weekly assembly on April 21, 1930, the dean of agriculture 
 made a detailed and pointed report on the dark shadow cast by GMp 
 politics over education. Dean Li Lianggong stated that educational 
 enterprise should not be influenced by politics; however, the present 
 reality was such that academics could not avoid being dragged into 
 political turbulence. 
 
 We all know about the recent incident of the Xiaozhuang Normal 
 School in Nanjing. Because its students took part in a protest 
 march and political movements, they came under suspicion as 
 “reactionaries.” The school was closed and several students were 
 arrested by the government. Nowadays one cannot but be very 
 careful about each and every act and each and every move. If it 
 only involves an individual, it would be a relatively minor matter. 
 But if because of an individual it affects the school and even the 
 whole of educational enterprise, then it becomes a matter for 
 critical concern. Recently there have been many outside rumors 
 and criticisms regarding our university, some even suspect politi- 
 cal impurity among our students. Fortunately our students in fact 
 did not commit any reactionary conduct. Nonetheless, . . . we 
 should be extraordinarily cautious so as to prevent any misunder- 
 standing due to personal misconduct which might affect our 
 university.?° 
 
 In addition to this stern warning, the university authorities adopted a 
 host of security measures, such as compulsory identification badges 
 for all Laoda students, teachers, staff, and even workers employed in 
 the university factories from April 26, 1930, onward, as well as closing 
 some entry and exit gateways, fencing off the sports ground, and very 
 tight reception procedures for visitors and printed materials.?° 
 Outside accusations and innuendos against Laoda and its students 
 as a haven for the Chinese Communist Party were openly refuted by 
 a highly authoritative and politically reliable body, the GMp’s own 
 organ at Laoda. On November 28, 1930, at the thirty-fourth members’ 
 meeting of the GMD no. 5 subbranch in the College of Engineering, a 
 formal resolution was passed to issue a public statement affirming the 
 “enthusiasm and dedication of Laoda students to the Three People’s 
 Principles as well as acknowledging the actual contributions from the 
 subbranch comrades in liquidating communist elements.” 
 
Students, Campus Life, and Politics 181 
 
 Despite these control measures instituted by the university admin- 
 istration and the rather tense atmosphere on campus, many Laoda stu- 
 dents still actively participated in public events for patriotic causes. In 
 fact, outside the campus, Laoda students were in every sense truly 
 equal to their peers at other Shanghai universities in demonstrating 
 their patriotic sentiment and political activism against Japanese impe- 
 rialism. During their first year at the new university, Laoda students 
 joined forces with students from four other colleges in Shanghai to 
 stage a public commemoration of National Humiliation (stemming 
 from the infamous Japanese Twenty-one Demands of 1915) on May 9, 
 1928. The public meeting was followed by open street lectures by the 
 students calling for a boycott of Japanese goods to protest against 
 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, Shandong. A week later, on May 16, 1928, 
 Laoda students again took part in a mass campaign (in league with 
 students from six universities and four high schools in Shanghai) 
 against Japanese aggression. Propaganda brigades and fund-raising 
 teams were dispatched to various locations in Jiangsu and Zhejiang 
 provinces during this four-day public campaign.®® At this early stage of 
 the Nanking Decade, the Gmp regime tolerated and even supported 
 these patriotic collective actions, just as it actively promoted the 
 December 1928 anti-Japanese campaign. 
 
 Three years later, in response to Japan’s invasion of the Manchurian 
 provinces following the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931, 
 Labor University students were again at the forefront of Shanghai’s 
 patriotic mass mobilization. On September 21, 1931, Laoda students, 
 in collaboration with their counterparts (under the leadership of Shen 
 Yunlong) from Guanghua University, formed an Anti-Japanese Na- 
 tional Salvation Society to promote and coordinate protest activities. 
 Following Laoda’s example, five other tertiary institutions and four 
 high schools in Shanghai also organized Anti-Japanese National Sal- 
 vation Societies within the next two days. It was out of these patriotic 
 societies that the Shanghai University Students’ Anti-Japanese Na- 
 tional Salvation Federation was established with student representa- 
 tives from various local institutions. This new federation galvanized 
 the patriotic sentiments among Shanghai students into an organized 
 social force with an agenda for collective militant action. Its mobiliza- 
 tion efforts climaxed in a week-long student strike during September 
 24-30, 1931, to protest the GMD regime’s “nonresistance” approach to 
 Japan’s aggression.?? 
 
 It is perhaps ironic that despite the leading role its students played 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 182 
 
 in the 1931 anti-Japanese protest movement, Labor University itself 
 soon fell victim to Japanese imperialism. The Japanese attack on 
 Shanghai during January—February 1932 reduced the Laoda campus in 
 Jiangwan to ruins. However, the true causes of Laoda’s tragic and 
 premature demise in 1932 were much more deeply rooted and far 
 more complicated than the physical destruction of its main campus 
 by the Japanese. In July 1931, two and a half months before their anti- 
 Japanese mobilization, Laoda students had already staged strong pro- 
 tests against the university administration.! Partisan conflicts and 
 realpolitik within the GmMp took their tools on the fate of Labor 
 University. It might be suggested that as an anarchist alternative to 
 the more traditional mode of academic training, Labor University, a 
 bold experiment in higher education with its own social agenda and 
 countercurriculum, had little real hope of success under the increas- 
 ingly regressive and tightening reign of the GMp after 1927. 
 
7 Labor 
 Education Programs 
 and 
 
 Outreach Activities 
 
 Under the positive influence of its founding president, Yi Peiji, extra- 
 curricular activities were encouraged among the Labor University 
 students. Besides the activities of the various academic societies, each 
 of the three colleges had its own drama company and chorus group. 
 The drama company of the social sciences college in particular en- 
 joyed popular fame, drawing huge audiences from the populace in 
 Jiangwan. The community services and mass movement efforts of 
 Laoda’s social sciences students among the local grass roots helped 
 encourage popular interest. Laoda also had a basketball team which 
 competed in Shanghai intervarsity games. The requirements of man- 
 ual labor led to an emphasis on physical fitness and thus enthusiasm 
 for athletic competition and sports on campus.! 
 
 The Labor Education Promotion Committee 
 
 By far the most important component, one may even say the core 
 thrust, of Labor University students’ extracurricular activities was 
 their systematic participation in community outreach programs. 
 Most of the Laoda outreach programs were coordinated by and con- 
 ducted under the auspices of the university’s Labor Education Promo- 
 tion Committee (LEpc, Laodong jiaoyu tuiguang weiyuanhul) estab- 
 lished in February 1929. This was a university-wide, high-level organ 
 whose membership included central administrators, college deans, 
 department chairmen, and teachers in the relevant subjects. However, 
 due to lack of funds (the proposed budget called for $1,200 to start up 
 and over $500 for monthly maintenance for seven projects), no actual 
 work was done during the first semester of its existence. Still, the 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 184 
 
 committee took advantage of the summer and mobilized the students 
 who remained on campus to form three committees for summer 
 programs: summer school for the masses, library for the masses, and 
 mass cinema, to operate a school, library, and cinema for the masses, 
 respectively. 
 
 At the start of the following academic year (September 1929), a full- 
 time executive secretary, Tan Yifan, a graduate of Beijing Normal 
 University and former high-school teacher, was hired to take charge of 
 the committee’s work in his new office with an allocation of $1,000 
 for project start-up plus a monthly budget of $300. It was announced 
 at the inaugural ceremony of the new academic year on September 9, 
 1929, that new undertakings like a mass tea garden, a school for the 
 masses, a library for the masses, as well as factory and village surveys 
 would be possible, and students were encouraged to participate in 
 their preparation and actual operation.? 
 
 On September 25, 1929, the first regular meeting of Labor Educa- 
 tion Promotion Committee was held to amend its own charter and to 
 specify initial undertakings and budget allocation.4 The committee 
 decided that the following eleven facilities and programs should be 
 established with specific budget allowances: (1) an evening school for 
 Laoda workers, two schools, total $40, and a school for the masses, 
 two schools, total $60; (2) a library for the masses, $42; (3) a small- 
 scale newspaper, $60; (4) a canteen, $10, and tea garden, $20; (5) a 
 cinema for the masses, $40 (all the above allotments came under the 
 category of “recurrent expenses,” provisionally limited to $300 per 
 month, including $28 as the committee’s own business expenses); 
 (6) a social survey; (7) a factory survey; (8) a village survey, total $600 
 for the three; (9) a lecture corps, $50; (10) a drama company, $200 
 (items 5 to 10 came under “temporary expenses,” budgeted at $1,000 
 to cover start-up costs and short-term subsidies); and (11) a museum 
 for the masses (which was temporarily postponed and not budgeted 
 for). The Lepc also decided that student participation in the actual 
 operation of these outreach programs should constitute part of the 
 mandatory manual labor or social fieldwork components of their 
 undergraduate curriculum. On October 5, 1929, the following set 
 of regulations was announced concerning students’ participation in 
 mass education outreach activities under the committee: 
 
 Each social sciences student must serve in one of the commit- 
 tee’s social enterprises every semester; engineering and agricul- 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 185 
 
 ture students are also required to work in committee under- 
 takings closely related to their academic training and technical 
 skills, they are free to volunteer for other ordinary programs. 
 
 Students are free to choose the particular undertaking in which 
 they wish to serve according to the schedule and slot announced 
 by the committee; when necessary, the committee together with 
 the Student Guidance Office could appoint a particular student 
 for a specific task. 
 
 Students working for committee activities are expected to de- 
 vote up to five hours per week on a half-year basis for permanent 
 programs or until the completion of short-term projects. 
 
 Students on committee duties are expected to work according 
 to schedule; in case of inability to work they must seek permis- 
 sion from those in charge and also arrange for another student 
 replacement for the work. 
 
 Students taking part in committee service must attend all the 
 meetings or discussions as called by the committee when neces- 
 sary; they shall submit two reports (one to the committee and the 
 other to the Student Guidance Office) at the completion of each 
 task, or a monthly report in the case of permanent enterprises. 
 
 The committee shall make recommendations to the university 
 president for the award of certificate of merit or other special 
 treatment to students with most outstanding service records in 
 committee activities; those students deemed to be irresponsible 
 and causing damage to the committee undertakings will be sub- 
 ject to Student Guidance Office penalty.® 
 
 According to the Student Guidance Office’s report at the weekly 
 assembly on October 14, 1929, initial response from engineering stu- 
 dents regarding participation in LEPC activities was quite positive, and 
 many students had already signed up for various programs.© Another 
 report published in the November 4, 1929, issue of the Labor Univer- 
 sity Weekly described the response to the committee’s programs from 
 engineering and social sciences students as extremely enthusiastic. In 
 less than two days after the LEPc’s recruitment list was publicized, all 
 the slots for the twelve enterprises were oversubscribed. Altogether 
 some two hundred Laoda students enlisted in the activities sponsored 
 by the committee.” A detailed breakdown of these two hundred engi- 
 neering and social sciences volunteers on the Jiangwan campus shows 
 the following:® 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 186 
 
 Jiangwan school for the masses, 21 
 Jiangwan library for the masses, 19 
 Mass cinema, 16 
 
 Drama company, 32 
 
 Labor Weekly, 12 
 
 Lecture corps, 14 
 
 Social survey, 35 
 
 Factory survey, 34 
 
 Jiangwan mass canteen, 5 
 
 From October 12 onward for ten days, a series of meetings were held 
 in the off hours (Sunday morning, Monday through Saturday eve- 
 nings) with these student volunteers to plan and organize the new 
 programs.” By then, most of the committee’s labor education enter- 
 prises in Jiangwan had become operational. The Laoda workers’ eve- 
 ning school and the school for the masses began classes on October 21, 
 and the library for the masses also opened its door on the same day; 
 the mass cinema started its movie shows on October 19 and 26; the 
 mass drama company by then had hired an instructor to start training 
 in voice (in Mandarin), acting, and make-up, with twice-weekly re- 
 hearsals; the Labor Weekly brought out its premier issue on October 
 26; and the lecture corps, having acquired banners and flags, was ready 
 to set off on lecture tours. Only the social and factory surveys, because 
 of the lack of tutors/advisers and shortage of funds, had yet to hold a 
 preparation meeting; the mass canteen did not proceed on schedule 
 because of troubles with the caterers. 
 
 In contrast, only a few students had enlisted for the projects in the 
 agriculture college in Wusong. Fortunately, the volunteer effort and 
 strong initiative on the part of three college staff members and the 
 Laoda branch primary school headmaster (all alumni of the original 
 Laoda “normal course” in 1927—28) allowed some of the programs to 
 materialize. Under their leadership, the mass tea garden at Sitong 
 started service on October 5, the evening school for the masses was 
 able to begin instruction on October 14, while the evening school for 
 Laoda workers on the Wusong campus was administered directly by 
 the agriculture college’s General Affairs Office. Due to inadequate 
 student participation, the village survey and small-scale newspaper 
 (for the Wusong area) still awaited launching. !° 
 
 Budget problems were a major concern at the October 22, 1929, sec- 
 ond meeting of the Labor Education Promotion Committee chaired by 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 187 
 
 Xiong Mengfei, university secretary general, and attended by Tan 
 Yifan, the three college deans, the registrar, the manager of the univer- 
 sity factory, and the student guidance officers. Both the original start- 
 up allowance of $1,000 and recurrent monthly support of $300 were 
 inadequate to cover the expenses of all the programs. All those in 
 charge of running the various social enterprises petitioned the Lepc for 
 budget increases. The mass cinema requested a monthly increase of 
 $20, the mass drama company asked for an additional start-up al- 
 lowance of $340 and recurrent expenses of $260, the lecture corps 
 needed an extra $15 per month, and the Labor Weekly wanted $10 
 more per month, whereas the library for the masses had already used 
 its start-up money and the mass tea garden had already spent its $100. 
 Altogether these requests totalled $500 in start-up allocations plus 
 $1oo in monthly allowances. However, due to the political difficulties 
 then affecting government finances, Yi Peiji had already issued orders 
 from Nanjing that Laoda’s plans for expansion in various departments 
 would have to be shelved for the moment.!! 
 
 The committee thus decided against the budget increases requested 
 by the various organs. Still, it also accorded high priority to the social 
 survey and factory survey, which were to be conducted, albeit on a 
 smaller scale with reduced scope. It also approved Tan Yifan’s pro- 
 posal to reorganize the mass canteen. Soon afterward, the Labor Uni- 
 versity Social Survey Corps was established, and a set of regulations 
 and a detailed operational manual were laid down at the third meeting 
 of the corps on November 29, 1929, thus putting into motion the last 
 social enterprise objective of the committee. !2 
 
 In order to study mass education development, the Labor Education 
 Promotion Committee obtained six volumes of mass education ex- 
 periment reports from the Central Mass Education Institute, and from 
 the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Education two booklets on mass 
 tea garden and social survey corps. It also made a request for mass 
 education plans and operational details from Xiaozhuang Normal 
 School in Nanjing as part of the effort to collect and display books and 
 journals on mass education in order to facilitate more research in this 
 field.13 
 
 As of spring 1930, the committee’s membership included Gong 
 Xiangming of sociology, Zheng Ruogu of education, Zhu Tongjiu of 
 economics, Li Xixian of agriculture, Peng Xiang of the Student Guid- 
 ance Office, Xiong Mengfei of social sciences, Zheng Ganyun of engi- 
 neering, and Tan Yifan, the executive secretary of the committee. The 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 188 
 
 published minutes of the committee’s third meeting on March 21, 
 1930, clearly illustrate the scope of activities and the expenses in- 
 volved in Laoda’s efforts to reach into the community grass roots 
 through mass education. In some sense they constitute an informa- 
 tive “half-year progress report” !4 on the actual state of development of 
 the committee’s programs from September 1929 to March 1930. 
 
 By then, the committee had established and was directly managing 
 the school for the masses, Labor Weekly, the library for the masses, 
 and the mass cinema. In addition, it cosponsored various public wel- 
 fare and charitable undertakings jointly with other mass organiza- 
 tions and public bodies. The third regular meeting of the committee 
 decided to establish a public lecture series and also proposed two areas 
 for future development: a hospital for the masses with related public 
 health facilities, and a vegetable market. The committee further un- 
 dertook to supervise and subsidize the following facilities and ac- 
 tivities conducted by the students themselves: social survey, survey of 
 labor education, popular drama company, factory survey, rural survey, 
 and mass tea garden. In view of the extensive range of activities and 
 facilities involving the university community, the meeting also pro- 
 posed the expansion of its own membership to include the General 
 Affairs officers of the three colleges, the director of the university 
 clinic, and the directors of the university factory and the university 
 farm. In order to encourage social sciences students to volunteer their 
 service with labor education activities, a resolution was passed ruling 
 that their mandatory manual labor requirements on campus could be 
 reduced by manpower contribution to outreach programs. The actual 
 budget for monthly expenses allotted in the spring semester 1930 for 
 the various activities under the committee was as follows:!5 
 
 School for the masses, $20 
 
 Labor Weekly, $50 
 
 Mass cinema, $30 
 
 Library for the masses, $50 
 
 Mass tea garden, $30 
 
 Popular drama company, $50 
 
 Subsidies to activities hosted by other organs, $40 
 Committee’s own business expenses, $30 
 
 Total, $300 
 
 The actual operation of and public responses to these outreach pro- 
 grams during the 1929-30 period may serve as useful indications 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 189 
 
 of the extent of success of Laoda’s attempt at societal regeneration 
 through education of the masses. In a sense, the participants’ involve- 
 ment in these undertakings constituted the verdict on the ideals and 
 objectives of Laoda’s “grand strategy for the promotion of labor educa- 
 tion,” which had as its avowed objectives to implement supplemental 
 education for labor and peasant masses, to publicize and carry out 
 labor education, to develop the spirit and ability of social service 
 among students, and to arouse labor and peasants to participate in the 
 national revolution. !° 
 
 The formal pedagogical component of Laoda’s mass education out- 
 reach programs had its head start in the summer school for the masses 
 of August 1929. Indeed, the summer school became the prototype for 
 the two schools for the masses in Jiangwan and Sitong established by 
 the labor education promotion committee in October 1929. Thus, it is 
 interesting to review the brief history of this summer school as the 
 first undertaking of the LErc. 
 
 The Summer School of 1929 
 
 According to the report submitted by the summer school general 
 affairs coordinator, the Lepc decided in June 1929 to have Laoda stu- 
 dents use their summer vacation for social service, especially to pro- 
 vide free schooling for uneducated adults and youth.!”7 The Lepc ap- 
 pointed eighteen education, economics, and sociology majors who 
 were staying on the campus for the summer to run the school. At a 
 meeting on July 23 these students chose their own tasks in the school; 
 eight opted for staff positions, the other ten (including Chen Biao}) 
 signed up as teachers. In a meeting on July 27, administrative and 
 instructional details were finalized: a publicity committee involving 
 all teachers and staff would be set up to recruit students, who could 
 apply during July 28—30 at the summer school’s premises (the original 
 no. 3 adult school on the Jiangwan campus); the term would last a full 
 month, August 1-31; classes would meet from 7:00 to 9:00 P.M.; total 
 enrollment was set at sixty, to be equally divided between a basic class 
 and an advanced class; and operating expenses would come from the 
 LEPC. 
 
 At 7:00 P.M. on August 1, 1929, the summer school held its inaugu- 
 ration ceremony, which was attended by over a hundred students, 
 staff, and teachers, as well as two members of the LEpc (Laoda’s direc- 
 tor of general affairs and a staff member of the Student Guidance 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 190 
 
 Office), who also delivered speeches. Instruction began the next day. 
 The curricula of the two classes were: 
 
 Subject Hours per week 
 
 Advanced class 
 
 Weekly assembly V, 
 Chinese language 3 
 Practical writing 3 
 Civics 2 
 Arithmetic 2 
 Popular hygiene I 
 Calligraphy Y/, 
 
 Total 12 
 
 Basic class 
 
 Weekly assembly Y/, 
 Chinese language 3 
 Basic characters B} 
 Arithmetic 2 
 General knowledge D 
 Natural science I 
 Hygiene I 
 Calligraphy Y; 
 
 Total 12 
 
 Several problems arose during the summer school. Due to lack of 
 space in the school premises where registration was held, many peo- 
 ple who had not applied but instead came directly to the school in 
 early August could not be accommodated. On the other hand, those 
 who had already enrolled exhibited sharp differences in aptitudes, and 
 the impossibility of setting up special classes according to academic 
 levels caused many of the better-qualified students to depart in dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 Another problem that was acknowledged to be a concern in con- 
 ducting mass education was the fact that many of the teachers were 
 natives of distant provinces whose dialects were difficult for the local 
 enrollees to comprehend. In this particular case, according to the data 
 available in the Laoda student lists for fall 1928 and December 1931, 
 five of the summer-school teachers were natives of Jiangsu/Zhejiang, 
 while the other five were from Anhui, Hunan, and Sichuan.!8 Thus, 
 while the classes drew full attendance at the beginning, enrollment 
 declined gradually to a daily average of around thirty. When the sum- 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 191 
 
 mer course concluded on August 21, less than twenty students re- 
 mained. 
 
 The final report paid tribute to the attentiveness of the enrollees 
 during class and to their very cordial relationship with their teachers. 
 It drew the lesson that if properly conducted, schools for the masses 
 could gain extremely good results.!9 Such strong faith in future im- 
 provement was justified. An item in the August 18, 1930, Shanghai 
 Daily News reported that the 1930 mass summer school conducted by 
 Laoda social sciences undergraduates drew more than a hundred en- 
 rollees who concluded their studies with a farewell party.2° 
 
 The School for the Masses in Jiangwan 
 
 The original plans of the LEPc envisaged four separate schools: a 
 school for the masses in Jiangwan, another school for the masses in 
 Wusong, as well as the revival of the two evening schools for Laoda 
 workers—one on the engineering—social sciences campus in Jiang- 
 wan, and the other on the agriculture campus in Wusong. The focus 
 here is on the school for the masses in Jiangwan, which had a rather 
 short preparation period in fall 1929. On October 13, LEPC executive 
 secretary Tan Yifan chaired the first meeting with the twenty-one 
 students who had enlisted for this task. The administrative structure 
 for this school was decided as follows: 
 
 Provisional Steering Recruitment 
 Committee Committee Committee 
 
 Training Committee 
 Teaching Committee 
 General Affairs Committee 
 
 Students, 
 committee members, 
 staff, 
 workers 
 
 Each class was to have a master who would be an ex officio member of 
 the training committee and the teaching committee (which also in- 
 cluded all the teachers). All school appointments were for one term of 
 six months. Steering committee members were put in charge of the 
 committees on teaching, training, and general affairs; and the recruit- 
 ment committee had five members.?! 
 
 According to school regulations, anyone between sixteen and forty 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 192 
 
 could enroll in the school. Those peasants, workers, and shopkeepers 
 whose literacy level was less than five hundred characters would be 
 assigned to the basic class, while those who knew more than five 
 hundred characters but had not attained the level of primary-school 
 graduation belonged to the advanced class. The duration of each class 
 
 was half a year. The curricula of the two classes were as follows: 
 
 Basic class 
 
 Advanced class 
 
 Language 50 percent of total 30 percent 
 education instruction characters 
 characters practical writing 
 calligraphy 
 Civics 30 percent 30 percent 
 education Three People’s Princi- Three People’s Princi- 
 ples ples 
 general civics (to pro- general civics 
 mote the ability for weekly assembly 
 autonomy) singing 
 weekly assembly (to scientific knowledge 
 enhance understand- (on natural phenom- 
 ing of current affairs) ena and agrarian pro- 
 singing (to foster inter- duction) 
 est in healthy enter- 
 tainment) 
 Practical 20 percent 40 percent 
 education letter writing vocational knowledge 
 
 abacus (to assist in 
 daily business trans- 
 actions) 
 
 bookkeeping 
 
 and training 
 arithmetic 
 
 Teaching materials for these two classes included the “Modern 
 Mass School Textbooks” series published by the Commercial Press, 
 the “Three People’s Principles Educational Texts” published by the 
 World Bookstore, and lecture notes prepared by Laoda volunteers. 
 Textbooks, notes, and stationery were supplied by the school to the 
 students free of charge but had to be returned by those who withdrew 
 before completing the class. The monthly budget of each class (of 
 thirty-five students) was set at $20. This covered the following: 22 
 
 Books and stationery, $7 
 Classroom rent, $4 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 193 
 
 Lighting, $2 
 Newspapers and periodicals, $2 
 Repair and maintenance, $3 
 Miscellaneous, $2 
 
 Total, $20 
 
 The mass school committee met on the evening of its formation 
 (October 13, 1929) to discuss the ways and means to publicize recruit- 
 ment for the school, including posters, propaganda teams, the assis- 
 tance of local institutions, and even door-to-door visits. However, the 
 laboring masses in the Jiangwan area were so busy during the daytime 
 that early morning and Sunday classes had no applicants; the evening 
 classes received over thirty applications. The school held its inaugura- 
 tion ceremony on October 21, and formal instruction began the next 
 day. (More applications were received after that date.) Since these 
 thirty or so students were of uneven levels of literacy and academic 
 training, they were divided into the basic and advanced classes provi- 
 sionally. A November 1929 report held the hope that in the future, 
 with higher enrollment, further divisions for instruction could be 
 made to reduce the difficulties in teaching such a diverse group.?% 
 
 The second (1930 spring) term of the school started on March 3, 
 1930. Because of past experience with overextension of resources, this 
 time only one class at the elementary level was offered in order 
 to consolidate resources and provide the students with maximum 
 attention. Both verbal and oral means were employed to publicize 
 the evening class. Two Laoda students in charge of student recruit- 
 ment even conducted door-to-door visits in the Jiangwan working- 
 class neighborhood adjacent to Laoda where the school was housed. 
 This kind of personal contact seemed to yield some positive results, as 
 those who signed up for the evening class exceeded the original quota 
 of forty students. 
 
 Chairman Wang Weigan, a Laoda student who took charge of the 
 recruitment and was also one of the instructors, made a speech at the 
 inaugural session. Wang summarized the major reasons behind the 
 local people’s reluctance to attend the evening class: (1) the people 
 were not conscious of the need of an education and literacy; (2) they 
 lacked the time due to heavy work schedules; (3) as adults, they felt 
 that it was too late for them to receive formal education; and (4) the 
 nice treatment in this evening school aroused suspicions that the 
 class was “a prelude to military conscription.” Thus, recruiters must 
 explain the true nature of the school and enlighten the people on the 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 194 
 
 Table 1. Evening class schedule for the Sitong school for the masses, October 1929 
 
 Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday 
 6:40-7:25 Composition Arithmetic Natural History and 
 Science Geography 
 7:35-8:40 Composition Abacus Natural Three People’s 
 Science Principles 
 
 
 
 Source: LDZK 2.27 (November 4, 1929). 
 
 disadvantages and pains of illiteracy in order to arouse and confirm 
 their interest in receiving an education and reinforce their trust in the 
 evening school.?4 
 
 This four-month evening class was totally free of charge. Even the 
 textbooks were free. The textbooks were of the most basic nature, 
 intended to enable the students to achieve a level of functional liter- 
 acy with command of one thousand characters sufficient to cover 
 everyday usage.2° In addition, students in the mass school were also 
 taught simple arithmetic and the use of the abacus. Those in charge of 
 the evening class took their task seriously; a roll call was taken at each 
 session, and students with frequent absences were expelled from the 
 school. Once a week there was a one-hour weekly assembly for the 
 evening-class students followed by another hour of regular instruc- 
 tion. The other five evenings consisted of two full hours of classroom 
 instruction. Such a schedule required considerable manpower to run 
 the school: three instructors for the courses and six staff members, 
 one per evening, to serve as duty officer.?° 
 
 Reflecting the inevitable trend of party-state interference in educa- 
 tion, even at the grass-roots level, instructional materials provided to 
 the evening-class students included the Guomindang party anthem 
 and notes on party doctrine.2”? Despite this political blemish, the 
 evening class of the school for the masses in Jiangwan seemed to be 
 fairly successful, and in mid-April 1930 mid-session students were 
 also recruited.28 
 
 The School at Sitong 
 
 Located at the Sitong site of Laoda’s primary school near the College of 
 Agriculture in Wusong, this school for the masses held its inaugura- 
 tion on October 15, 1929, and instruction began the next day. Initially, 
 only seven peasant youths came to the class. After repeated publicity 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 195 
 
 Friday Saturday 
 Characters Calligraphy 
 Letter Entertainment 
 Writing 
 
 
 
 efforts by its teachers and staff (who also resorted to playing phono- 
 graph records and musical instruments before and after class to enter- 
 tain the students), enrollment at the school improved significantly. By 
 October 22, 1929, more than twenty students had enrolled. It ran a 
 curriculum on the schedule shown in table 1. Because the student 
 body was mainly composed of members of the local farming commu- 
 nity, the subjects taught differed somewhat from those taught at the 
 other school in Jiangwan, an industrial suburb of Shanghai. 
 
 Once the growing season was over, the number of local peasants 
 who wanted to attend the school would greatly increase, but the 
 spatial restriction imposed by the small classroom would make it very 
 difficult to accommodate all of them. The severe teacher shortage was 
 another factor behind the relatively slower pace of growth and de- 
 velopment of the school. Originally, since the response from Laoda’s 
 agriculture undergraduates was inadequate, this Sitong school man- 
 aged to become a reality only because of the dedication and commit- 
 ment to mass education on the part of four Laoda staff members (all 
 graduates of the 1927—28 one-year “normal course” at Laoda). Besides 
 these four, two Laoda undergraduates also served as teachers in the 
 school. Since the six teachers all carried rather heavy loads in their 
 regular work or studies, they could expand the school programs only 
 gradually.29 
 
 The Evening Schools for Laoda Workers 
 
 In the early days of Laoda, an evening school for the university’s 
 workers was run as part of the university’s Division of Adult Educa- 
 tion, whose instructional efforts through evening classes (of two hours 
 duration per night) had enlightened over a thousand adults at eight 
 branch schools. In early 1929 the Office of General Affairs took charge 
 of the school, and in September 1929 it came under the purview of the 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 196 
 
 LEPC, which allocated a monthly budget of $40 (for two schools) to 
 cover books, stationery, and supplies.3° 
 
 The initial response from engineering and social sciences under- 
 graduates was so strong that within two days they had oversubscribed 
 the personnel requirements for this school. At the first meeting on 
 October 12, 1929, details on structure, management, and personnel of 
 the school were finalized on a pattern identical to that of the school 
 for the masses, with sections on teaching, training, and general affairs. 
 Besides the three section administrators, there were ten teachers, 
 each in charge of a given subject. They also decided on a set of teaching 
 methods and pedagogical standards on the following key points:?! 
 
 —Teaching materials should be relevant to current application; in 
 order to arouse student interest, teachers should be active, warm, 
 sincere, and resourceful toward the students, and whenever possible 
 should enhance students’ direct participation. 
 
 —Students in the advanced and basic classes were further divided into 
 four groups according to levels; the best student in each group would 
 be designated group leader and would before and after class sessions 
 assist the teacher in the instruction of group members. 
 
 —Special individual instruction was to be given to students of inferior 
 performance. 
 
 —Homework assignments should afford opportunities for practice. 
 
 —Make-up sessions would be conducted by teachers or group leaders 
 for those who had missed the regular class. 
 
 —Teachers should be present in the classroom before the arrival of 
 students. 
 
 —One teacher served on a rotating basis as daily coordinator who took 
 charge of students’ leave requests and arranged for a replacement if a 
 teacher was absent. 
 
 —Unless absolutely necessary, the school would adhere to a full sched- 
 ule with no holiday. 
 
 On October 21, this reorganized evening school for Labor Univer- 
 sity workers on the main campus was formally inaugurated in a 
 ceremony attended by LEepc executive secretary Tan Yifan, Dean of 
 Student Affairs Zhou Bangshi, and all the teachers and staff of the 
 school. Instruction began the next evening, and the forty students 
 were assigned to advanced and basic classes. Results from a simple 
 test survey of the students were used as the criteria of their division. 
 
 The first part of the test asked the following questions: 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 197 
 
 What is your name? 
 
 How old are you? 
 
 Where do you come from? 
 
 What is your present job? 
 
 How many years of school have you attended? 
 What books are you reading now? 
 
 Do you want to go to school now? 
 
 Why do you not go to school now? 
 
 The second part of the test asked students to mark the characters 
 they knew from a list of forty commonly used characters. Those who 
 could answer four or more of the eight questions in the first part and 
 mark at least twenty characters out of forty were assigned to the 
 advanced class; the rest joined the basic class.32 The curriculum was 
 very similar to that of the school for the masses, which also used the 
 same textbooks (see table 2). 
 
 In addition to the two series of textbooks used as the main teaching 
 materials, students in the advanced class were also taught how to use 
 the “four-corner dictionary numbering system” as part of the literacy 
 lessons, and they read other popular education booklets, selected 
 newspapers, and periodicals provided by the school. In order to econo- 
 mize, each student was issued only a pencil and some white paper, 
 while writing brush, ink, ink pots, composition books, and bookkeep- 
 ing sheets were dispensed with altogether. 
 
 One aspect of this school that deserves particular attention is the 
 “training section” that was headed by Li Chongpu, a certified (by the 
 Shanghai Gmp branch) high-school party doctrine instructor. Under 
 Li’s charge, the school adopted a rather elaborate training program 
 which emphasized the following goals: (1) to inculcate among the 
 students a strong mission of social service; (2) to break with supersti- 
 tion and bad habits; (3) to provide guidance on how to organize and 
 conduct meetings and on the formation of collective bodies; (4) to 
 advise students to publicize the Three People’s Principles, the politi- 
 cal platform of the Gmp, the current situation of the Nationalist 
 government, and the national revolution; (5) to train students to de- 
 velop the labor and peasant mass movements under the Gmp,; and 
 (6) to enhance the students’ vocational skills in order to raise their 
 career prospects and also to train them in various recreational ac- 
 tivities. 
 
 The major training efforts took the form of weekly assembly ses- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 198 
 
 Table 2. Class schedule for the evening school for Labor University workers, 
 October 1929 
 
 Monday Tuesday Wednesday 
 Advanced class 
 7:00-7:50 Practical Writing Abacus Characters 
 8:00-8:50 Weekly Assembly/ Singing Bookkeeping 
 
 Party Doctrines 
 Basic class 
 7:00—7:50 Characters General Knowledge Characters 
 8:00-8:50 Weekly Assembly/ Bookkeeping Abacus 
 Party Doctrines 
 
 Source: LDZK 2.27 (November 4, 1929). 
 
 sions not unlike those held for Laoda undergraduates. Evening-school 
 assemblies were conducted for the purpose of “developing students’ 
 habit of organizational life, their concern for social affairs, and their 
 knowledge in meetings and association work in order to actualize the 
 Three People’s Principles.’’33 
 
 Thus mass education programs were not simply for the purposes of 
 raising the level of popular literacy and basic practical skills of the 
 masses. Rather more significantly, they constituted a deliberate at- 
 tempt at citizenship training and ideological indoctrination in the 
 GMD, not the anarchist, mode. 
 
 The Library for the Masses 
 
 This library was first established in 1928 and was run by Laoda stu- 
 dents, although it made little headway during the first year of opera- 
 tion. After autumn 1929, under the management and with the finan- 
 cial support of the Labor Education Promotion Committee, the library 
 entered a stage of rapid expansion as a vital part of Laoda’s renewed 
 effort to develop mass education in Jiangwan. The committee adopted 
 two sets of regulations, one on the internal library administration 
 (acquisition, cataloging, paging, shelving, and records and statistics 
 keeping) and another on readership, circulation, and reading-room 
 discipline, to institutionalize the library operation. The library was 
 open from 8:00 tO 11:00 A.M., 1:00 tO 5:00 P.M., and 7:00 to 8:00 P.M., 
 Monday through Friday; only the newspaper/periodical section re- 
 mained open on Sunday, while the entire library was closed on Satur- 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 199 
 
 Thursday Friday 
 Civic Knowledge Characters 
 Scientific/ Vocational Calligraphy 
 Knowledge 
 Characters Calligraphy 
 Singing Characters 
 
 
 
 days and holidays.34 An economics freshman served as the director of 
 this library for the masses in fall 1929. He was assisted by a staff of 
 nineteen (eight for readership-circulation, the rest for cataloging, rec- 
 ords, and administration) Laoda undergraduates and had a monthly 
 budget of $42. The library requested and received from government 
 agencies, public organizations, and mass education bodies comple- 
 mentary copies of books and journals. For instance, the Ministry of 
 Agriculture and Mining sent two volumes, the Ministry of Health 
 presented five books, the Commercial Press donated 126 titles, and 
 the United Sericultural Reform Society gave six items. These gifts 
 together with an existing collection of nearly 1,500 volumes (from the 
 school for the masses, the consumer co-op in Jiangwan, and the read- 
 ing room of a club for the masses) provided the foundation of the 
 library. New purchases of books and subscriptions to periodicals were 
 made on a continuous basis.°° 
 
 Under the conscientious service of these student librarians, the 
 library made considerable progress during the first half year of LEPC 
 sponsorship. According to an internal report from April 1930, a brand- 
 new periodicals room which subscribed to some 4o current titles was 
 added to the existing general reading room and newspaper room of 
 the library. At that time, newly purchased books numbered more than 
 800 volumes, with continuing monthly acquisitions. New systems of 
 reader registration and management procedures were also adopted. 
 Besides the librarian and a janitor, a number of part-time student 
 volunteers were required to run the library. Because the library was 
 specifically designed for after-work use, the opening hours were set 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 
 
 200 
 
 Table 3. Library for the masses users in March and April 1930 
 
 Soldiers/ 
 Workers Peasants City folk police Students 
 March 1930 
 Newspaper room 143 6 136 25 338 
 (21%) (0.9%) (20%) (3.7%) (50%) 
 Reading room 19 ] 10 _ 120 
 (10.9%) (0.7%) (6.8%) _ (81.7%) 
 April 1930 
 Newspaper room 319 17 285 50 653 
 (21.2%) (1.1%) (19%) (3.3%) (53.4%) 
 Reading room 47 — 21 — 186 
 (17.5%] me (8%) = (69.1%) 
 
 
 
 Source: LDZK 3.12 (May 17, 1930). 
 
 initially at 8:00—11:00 A.M., 1:00—4:00 P.M., and 7:00—9:00 P.M. Since 
 these hours clashed with the class schedules of the student volun- 
 teers, in the end it was decided that the library would be closed on 
 Sunday evening and during the day on Monday.*° The readership and 
 circulation statistics of the library for the months of March and April 
 1930 are clear indicators of the popularity and impact of its services 
 (see table 3).37 
 
 A detailed breakdown of the 620 new books purchased during March 
 1930 yielded the following: social science (230), applied science (209), 
 language and literature (108), history and geography (39), natural sci- 
 ence (10), philosophy (10), general (8), fine arts (5). The total library 
 readership figure increased from 822 in March to 1,773 in April, 
 probably because of the newly expanded facilities.3® 
 
 The library was perhaps the most successful undertaking among 
 the various outreach programs established in Laoda. Yet the reader- 
 ship figures clearly reveal that workers and peasants constituted only 
 a minority of library users, while students (high school and primary) 
 formed the majority. This raises questions about the actual long-term 
 effectiveness of this kind of university-funded and student-manned 
 community educational effort in penetrating the laboring commu- 
 nity. 
 
 Labor Weekly 
 
 Formally established in mid-October 1929 under LEPC auspices, a 
 small weekly journal was edited and published by Laoda undergradu- 
 

 
 Women 
 
 4 
 (0.6% 
 
 23 
 (1%) 
 
 Labor Education and Outreach Activities 201 
 
 Children Total 
 
 23 675 
 (3.4%) 
 
 BY te 147 
 
 157 ‘1,504 
 (10.4%) 
 
 = 15 269 
 as (5.6%) 
 
 ates on an initial monthly budget of $60. As laid down at the first 
 meeting on October 16, 1929, its staff of 12 under the publisher were 
 divided into two sections: management-circulation, 4; editorial, 5 (1 
 chief editor, 4 editors/translators, including Chen Biao, and 2 re- 
 porters, plus an extra correspondent based in the agriculture college in 
 Wusong). The publisher, manager, and chief editor of Labor Weekly 
 were all economics freshmen. 
 
 The Weekly aimed at “enhancing the knowledge . . . and improving 
 the life of laborers.” Its wide-ranging scope was to cover a digest of 
 current affairs, party doctrine, lectures on labor issues, factory infor- 
 mation, rural news, social news, survey reports, mass literature, and 
 advertisements. This meeting also decided that only the vernacular 
 language, not the classic, formal wenyan style, would be used in the 
 Weekly. In order to meet the requirements that each issue be available 
 for public sale on Saturday, the deadline for submissions was set for 
 Tuesday, with printing done on Wednesday, proofreading on Thursday, 
 and distribution on Friday. Those in the editorial section would each 
 contribute at least one piece every week, while those in the other 
 section would pen at least two items each month. The premier issue 
 of Labor Weekly came out on schedule on October 26, 1929. Priced at 
 two copper pennies per issue, one thousand copies were printed on a 
 weekly basis on the printing press on campus.%? 
 
 Labor Weekly was distributed through local labor unions and labor- 
 related institutions. Judging by the work log of its operations commit- 
 tee in spring 1930, considerable effort was devoted to its copyediting, 
 proofreading, printing, and distribution. Since most of the editorial 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 202 
 
 staff were students in the social sciences college, they even produced a 
 special issue of Labor Weekly (no. 7) for the International Labor Day 
 on May 1, 1930. Besides Laoda students and teachers, the Weekly also 
 solicited articles and columns from outside sources with a fixed rate 
 for royalties, which must have been nominal as the monthly budget 
 for the Weekly was then only $50.49 Unfortunately, copies of this 
 Weekly and its actual circulation figures are not available for a more 
 detailed analysis of its contents and social impact. 
 
 The Mass Cinema 
 
 Another popular activity sponsored by the committee was a weekly 
 cinema for the public that was started in October 1929. More than half 
 of the mass cinema’s start-up funds were spent right away on the 
 purchase of a movie projector for $600. The willingness to commit so 
 much of the LEpc’s limited resources on this single undertaking was to 
 some extent influenced by the success of its prototype program, the 
 1929 summer mass cinema. 
 
 According to a report published in the Labor University Weekly in 
 November 1929, a Summer Mass Movie Cinema Committee com- 
 posed of seven students was formed on July 17, 1929. Members in- 
 cluded well-known Laoda activists such as Feng Hefa, who was vice 
 chairman and in charge of the general affairs section, and Lu Guo- 
 xiang, who served as accountant. After five days of preparation, the 
 premier movie was shown on July 22. Between then and its termina- 
 tion on September 10, when classes began at Laoda, this summer mass 
 cinema showed a total of eight movies (one every Saturday).4! 
 
 Seven of the summer films were shown in the newly built audi- 
 torium on Laoda’s main campus in Jiangwan to an audience of be- 
 tween 210 and 530, each paying an admission charge of 20 copper 
 pennies (10 for workers). In addition, another film was shown to the 
 public, free of charge, in the open-air setting of a I,400-person mass 
 meeting in the Jiangwan town center. Four of the eight movies were 
 Chinese films (all dramas) with a rental charge of $30 each, the other 
 four were foreign films (a love story, a comedy, an action piece, and a 
 social education subject) rented at $17 each. Even with the discounts 
 on some foreign films, the movie rental, projector rental ($8 per film), 
 and transportation cost the committee between $12 and $42 for each 
 showing. With total revenue from admission charges of $136.22 and 
 actual expenses of $297.96, the cinema sustained a deficit of $161.67, 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 203 
 
 considerably more than the committee’s start-up allowance and ad- 
 vertising proceeds, which amounted to less than $5 1.42 
 
 The report acknowledged the hard work and contributions of the 
 cinema staff in negotiating film rental discounts, designing, and ad- 
 vertising. Yet it also admitted to a host of problems: the common lack 
 of experience of the staff; their lack of coordination and the ineffi- 
 cient, confusing job substitution due to absence and sickness; and the 
 lack of an appropriate venue with good seating for film shows. From 
 these eight showings, the summer cinema committee drew the fol- 
 lowing conclusions: 4 
 
 1. Attendance figures and the limited number of tea houses, restau- 
 rants, and wine cafés in the town of Jiangwan indicated consider- 
 able need for a local cinema. 
 
 2. The masses in Jiangwan in that period were really interested only 
 in Chinese films. The three foreign films shown at Laoda drew an 
 audience of 210 to 280, while the four Chinese films attracted 430 
 to 530, nearly twice that number. 
 
 3. In order to enable the local masses to enjoy good entertainment at a 
 nominal charge, a larger capacity (up to 1,000 seats) auditorium 
 with more comfortable seats was needed, but higher admission 
 charges might be necessary in order to make it a self-supporting 
 venture. 
 
 4. Once the cinema started its weekly showings, there should be no 
 interruption in the schedule. A suspension of one week (due to the 
 use of Laoda’s auditorium for matriculation examinations) led to a 
 drastic decline in audience size at the following film show (from 
 490 to 210, the lowest box-office record for all eight films). 
 
 Despite all these expenses, film as an effective magnet attracting 
 massive turnout had clearly demonstrated its mass education-social 
 indoctrination potential, and Laoda activists were keen to develop it 
 further. With such experience in the background, the Lepc’s Mass 
 Cinema Committee held its first meeting on October 5, 1929, with 
 Tan Yifan in the chair and 13 students in attendance, including Feng 
 Hefa and Lu Guoxiang. With a monthly allowance of $40, the commit- 
 tee set up an operation of 16 staff members in the following sections: 
 general affairs, 5 (Lu Guoxiang),; box office, 2; audit, 4 (headed by Feng 
 Hefa, who was also the liaison with the Lepc), discipline, 1 (when the 
 show was on, all staff would serve as pickets to maintain order); 
 education, 1; and advertising, 2. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 204 
 
 The admission price was set at 24 copper pennies for adults, the 
 same as for Laoda workers and children. The cinema managed to se- 
 cure a contract with the Star Movie Studio in Shanghai (then China’s 
 leading film producer), which charged a rental fee of $36 per show. It 
 also decided to adhere to the summer schedule of one show every 
 Saturday evening, starting October 19.44 
 
 Later on, the agriculture college on the Wusong campus also hosted 
 a public film show once every two weeks. Only a nominal fee was 
 charged for these public film shows, which always emphasized educa- 
 tional or public health features. These film shows were considered to 
 be so successful that in spring 1930 the Lerc proposed purchasing one 
 or two more movie projectors and a slide projector to expand the 
 service.45 
 
 The Mass Drama Company 
 
 Another outreach program that had gained a popular following was 
 the drama company established in October 1929. Originally titled the 
 New Drama Company, it was renamed Mass Drama Company in the 
 first meeting of the company on October 16, 1929. The largest in size 
 of all the LEpc programs, the company had a cast of over 30 actors and 
 actresses, plus a supporting staff of 33 (scriptwriters and playwrights, 
 5; stagehands, music, costumes, sets, and lighting, 21; administration 
 and publicity, 7). After the company was formed, it selected four plays 
 and hired a drama coach and a makeup instructor. The company met 
 twice a week for rehearsals and voice training. The scripts and play- 
 wright section also edited the Mass Drama monthly. Beginning as it 
 did from scratch, the company required considerable start-up funds. 
 Due to budget constraints, only $200 of the $500 originally earmarked 
 to establish the company was allotted by the Lepc,*° so a fund-raising 
 drive was held to meet the total expense of $423 for the first two 
 public performances. 
 
 The gala premiere was held on November 19, 1929, on the occasion 
 of the second anniversary celebration of the founding of Laoda. Two 
 short plays, Red Light and White Carnation, were selected, and a dress 
 rehearsal was conducted on November 17. This performance attracted 
 a full house of six hundred, including the drama companies from 
 Fudan University and Great China University in Shanghai. The per- 
 formance as well as the stage set and lighting won wide acclaim. 
 
 The second season included two performances, on January 5 and 6, 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 205 
 
 1930. A fund-raising campaign was held to solicit donations from 
 Laoda teachers and staff, and admission tickets were sold to help cover 
 the costs. More elaborate stage sets and costumes were made for this 
 second season. Students from the agriculture college and the Laoda 
 high school also joined the cast, making it a fairly full-fledged drama 
 company. The first performance consisted of three plays: Infanticide, 
 The Lucky Thief, and The Man in Black. The second performance 
 presented four plays: Let’s Change Husbands, The Unfinished Poem, 
 The Death of Rasputin, and Voice of the Wild Geese. Both perfor- 
 mances were well received. An internal report by the company at- 
 tributed its success to a strong esprit de corps, solid organization, and 
 good, professional guidance. Yet considerable funds above and beyond 
 the monthly allotment of $50 would be required to provide better 
 physical facilities and stage properties.47 
 
 The success of the drama company had caught the attention of the 
 GMD authorities. The published work log of the LEpc in May 1930 
 revealed that the company declined to participate in the May Thir- 
 tieth Movement commemorative activities sponsored by the local 
 GMD branch due to lack of time for preparation. The entry for May 26, 
 1930, reported that the Gmp Central Organization Department had 
 dispatched an investigator to inquire into the actual situation of the 
 drama company.*8 It seemed the Gmp kept more than a watchful eye 
 on popular student undertakings that might influence the grass roots. 
 
 The Mass Tea Garden 
 
 Another highly successful public service undertaking of the commit- 
 tee was the mass tea garden at Sitong, the site of Laoda’s primary 
 school in Wusong. The tea garden was managed by a regular attendant 
 and had a monthly budget of $30 to provide a tearoom where the local 
 people could gather to rest, read the newspaper, discuss public affairs, 
 and even attend an occasional lecture on current issues.49 
 According to the brief report of the tea garden’s four founders (who 
 were also the founders of the Sitong school for the masses), the idea of 
 this tea garden arose from their after-work (from the agriculture col- 
 lege and its primary school) leisure contact with the villagers. These 
 four Laoda activists felt that despite their proximity to the modern 
 metropolis of Shanghai, the general state of knowledge among the 
 local populace remained very much in the eighteenth century, with 
 less than to percent having received primary education. Still firmly 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 206 
 
 under the influence of feudalistic thoughts and superstitious prac- 
 tices, the villagers were ignorant of modern scientific developments 
 and had even less understanding of the process called revolution. Yet 
 these four Laoda observers detected both the villagers’ eagerness to 
 seek new knowledge and their obsessive fondness for tea drinking, to 
 the extent that they often walked several miles to the town of Baoshan 
 to drink tea. Thus the Laoda activists developed “the motive to take 
 advantage of such inclinations to actualize labor education.’59 
 
 The location of the teahouse in Sitong was quite strategic, as it was 
 close to the Sitong Bridge, the traffic hub of the approach to Baoshan. 
 Adjacent to several family dwellings, a mill house, and two shops were 
 several empty houses which the Laoda activists took to set up the tea 
 garden (with an evening school for the masses to be established on the 
 nearby Laoda primary-school premises). As soon as the LEpc adopted 
 their proposal and allotted a budget for the tea garden at Sitong, 
 preparations were under way to furnish it with chairs, tables, utensils, 
 lights, and musical instruments, and on the afternoon of October 5, 
 1929, the tea garden held its opening reception. 
 
 On this particular occasion tea was served free of charge, and this 
 attracted more than a hundred patrons by the evening. Besides music 
 from phonograph records for entertainment, two of the founders, 
 Zheng Zhigang and Zhu Fan, also made speeches which emphasized 
 the nonprofit nature of the tea garden (which charged only three 
 copper pennies for a pot of tea) as a communal gathering place for 
 healthy entertainment and assistance in letter writing in a congenial 
 setting during the after-dinner hours. Another founder, Guo Renguan, 
 then made a pitch for the evening school of the masses, which would 
 start on October 16; applications would be taken at the tea garden. 
 Thereafter, an average of seventy to eighty villagers enjoyed them- 
 selves in the mass tea garden on a daily basis.*! 
 
 A special occasion was the October to National Day reception 
 hosted by agriculture undergraduates to publicize their work and 
 enhance community relations. On that day an army of forty Laoda 
 students served as receptionists in the tea garden, which from 5:00 
 P.M. onward entertained a full house of some four hundred, who were 
 treated to tea as well as peanuts and melon seeds, all free of charge. In 
 addition to casual conversation, one of the patrons was invited to 
 explain the significance of October 10, and agriculture sophomore 
 Qin Hanzhang used his great skills in storytelling to elaborate on the 
 1911 revolution. According to the work log of the tea garden, the 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 207 
 
 following few days featured another story by Qin on Sun Zhongshan’s 
 imprisonment in London and three talks by Zhu Fan on Russian 
 aggression in Manchuria as well as on astrological phenomena. Mean- 
 while, new features such as Chinese musical instruments, a digest of 
 current affairs written on a blackboard, a poster section with various 
 slogans, and a reading room with books and periodicals were added. By 
 the end of October a formal set of written rules governing conduct in 
 the tea garden and reading room was promulgated, specifying its 
 service hours as from 6:00 to 9:00 P.M. daily.°2 
 
 It is worth noting the initial report from the founders on the early 
 difficulties they encountered in running the teahouse. There was 
 inadequate economic support, with a monthly allocation of only $20 
 from the LEPC, but initial setup and purchase costing more than $100. 
 Insufficient manpower was also a problem. The four founders were 
 full-time Laoda staff members who could only devote their after-work 
 hours to social service; more enthusiastic participation from Laoda 
 students was indispensable, yet so far there had been no positive 
 response. The most serious obstacle was the language barrier, which 
 could not be removed easily. It was hoped that through more contacts 
 with the local populace in the future the communication gap caused 
 by different dialects could be bridged.53 
 
 All these were problems common to most of the outreach mass 
 education programs sponsored by Laoda’s LEpc, but they had strong 
 implications for any systematic attempts at societal reform among 
 the grass roots in early-twentieth-century China. In spring 1930, ac- 
 knowledging the success of the mass tea garden, the LErc decided to 
 increase its monthly allocation to $30 and also to hire a full-time 
 attendant to take charge of daily operations.°4 
 
 The Lecture Corps 
 
 Initial student response to the establishment of the Labor University 
 Lecture Corps was very enthusiastic. At its first meeting on October 
 17, 1929, chaired by Tan Yifan and attended by all fifteen corps mem- 
 bers, the structure and activity agenda of the corps were decided. All 
 corps members were ex officio orators, and a secretary and a general 
 affairs coordinator operated under the corps’s director (a sociology 
 junior), who was in charge of management on a monthly budget of 
 $50. 
 
 They decided on a bifocal approach—one performance on Laoda 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 208 
 
 campus every Thursday evening at 7:00 p.M., and an off-campus pub- 
 lic presentation on Sunday morning once every fortnight, with corps 
 members divided into two teams taking turns. The on-campus perfor- 
 mance might take the form of a formal lecture, a seminar/sympo- 
 sium, a debate, or a speech competition, while the off-campus public 
 presentation could be a lecture or parade, a costumed speech, ora slide 
 show with commentary. To create publicity and enhance the effects of 
 off-campus presentations, banners, flags, trumpets, musical instru- 
 ments, and a record player were to be purchased. Members were 
 required to wear the Laoda uniform with university emblem on off- 
 campus tours. The entire corps met to discuss and decide on the topics 
 and contents of off-campus presentations one week in advance. The 
 results would be transcribed by the secretary into lecture outlines, 
 which would then be mimeographed for distribution to the members. 
 University secretary general Xiong Mengfei was invited to serve as 
 coach to the corps. A schedule for the premier presentations was also 
 set: October 24, 1929, on campus, and October 27, 1929, off campus.°® 
 
 Other than this initial reportage, no further accounts of the lecture 
 corps’s activities are available. The LEpc semiannual report in April 
 1930 listed the corps as one of the undertakings which “did not gain 
 any positive results from last year’s operation and now cease opera- 
 tion.”°° The demise of the Labor University Lecture Corps, while 
 representing a genuine setback to the LEpc’s outreach efforts, was only 
 an initial failure and was soon partially remedied by a new Labor 
 Education Lectures series described below. 
 
 The Mass Canteen 
 
 Another unsuccessful LEpc undertaking which was suspended only 
 after a few months of operation was the mass canteen. Originally, a 
 public canteen was established and run by the New Jiangwan Con- 
 sumers’ Cooperative. The co-op membership dispersed, however, and 
 there was no management, so the canteen was rented out to a few 
 workers who served as catering contractors. Soon after that, Laoda 
 bought the entire canteen, including utensils and furnishings. From 
 then onward, Laoda became the owner of the canteen, the actual 
 operation of which came under the purview of the LEPc. 
 
 In the September 1929 meeting of the LEPC, it was decided that this 
 mass canteen in Jiangwan should be reorganized because the caterers 
 did not run it with the provision of inexpensive food items for the 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 209 
 
 laboring masses as their main objective. As a result, the prices of the 
 menu were set so high as to be beyond the reach of ordinary workers 
 and peasants, who rarely came to take their meals at the canteen. 
 
 A Laoda report in autumn 1929 indicated that five Laoda students 
 had signed up for the canteen, which had a monthly budget of $10. In 
 its spring 1930 semiannual report, however, the LEpc found that seri- 
 ous problems in design and management still besieged the canteen. 
 Specifically, in addition to the exorbitant pricing mentioned above, 
 the caterers resorted to unfair practices, drove up the prices charged by 
 other caterers, and even demanded tips from canteen patrons. All such 
 malpractices had led to widespread dissatisfaction on the part of the 
 outside community. As it was beyond the capability of the committee 
 to directly operate the canteen to serve the real needs of the laboring 
 masses, the LEpc had no alternative but to close down the facility and 
 suspend its operation altogether.” 
 
 The ups and downs of these LEpc programs all had their own contrib- 
 uting factors and unique circumstances, but a general observation can 
 still be made here. On the one hand, the movie cinema, drama com- 
 pany, and tea garden represented the most successful undertakings of 
 the committee precisely because of their rather informal and audio- 
 visual entertainment approach. On the other hand, several other more 
 formal and perhaps more rigid educational programs attempted dur- 
 ing 1929 were deemed to be so ineffective that they were suspended by 
 the LEPc in the spring of 1930. These failed efforts included the eve- 
 ning school for the masses at Sitong, where, strangely, the tea garden 
 was an acknowledged success, the evening school for Laoda’s own 
 employees, and the lecture corps.°® Likewise, a museum for the 
 masses never materialized due to the lack of both an appropriate site 
 and the necessary funds.5? 
 
 The Labor Education Lectures 
 
 The Labor Education Promotion Committee also engaged in intellec- 
 tual activities that more directly addressed the university’s students. 
 Indeed, the assumptions, designs, approaches, and even the actual 
 implementation of Laoda’s community outreach programs had strong 
 links with its social surveys and social planning undertakings. Two 
 important components in this regard were the Expert Lecture Series 
 and the Labor Education Survey Corps. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 210 
 
 In the spring of 1930 the committee decided to initiate a series of 
 lectures by leading scholars and social service experts on labor educa- 
 tion, mass education, and the promotion of social services. This lec- 
 ture series was intended to help the students, whose participation in 
 outreach programs constituted a crucial part of their Laoda education. 
 It was hoped that these lectures would afford them a more solid 
 theoretical understanding and familiarize them with the empirical 
 patterns and operational modes of various types of social services and 
 institutions. Furthermore, the committee also hoped that the lectures 
 by outside experts would provide relevant advice to help solve the 
 many problems and difficulties it had encountered in running out- 
 reach programs and facilities. 
 
 In view of the importance attached to these expert lectures, the 
 committee proposed to allot a total of $600 for ten lectures ($30 as the 
 honorarium and another $30 to cover the transportation and reception 
 costs per lecture). The committee made a long list of suggested lecture 
 topics, and it planned to publish the rapporteur’s record of these lec- 
 tures in an anthology or as features in the Labor University Monthly. 
 These lecture topics were: 
 
 A. Labor Education 
 
 t. How can labor education be implemented? 
 
 2. What kinds of education are most needed by labor? 
 
 3. How can capitalists be made conscious of the fact that promot- 
 ing labor education for the workers is the same as developing 
 productivity? 
 
 4. What are the means to further labor-capital cooperation? 
 
 5. What are the necessary attributes of a good worker? 
 
 6. How can laborers’ living conditions be improved? 
 
 7. How can rural education be developed? 
 
 8. How can agricultural productivity be increased? 
 
 9. How should cooperatives be run? 
 
 o. How can agricultural workers be liberated? 
 
 11. How does one conduct a survey of the situation of rural peas- 
 
 antry? 
 
 12. How does one conduct a survey of the situation of factory 
 
 workers? 
 
 B. Mass Education 
 1. Difficulties and solutions in managing mass education. 
 2. Mass education in the period of political tutelage. 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 211 
 
 The attributes and qualifications of mass education workers. 
 Effective methods in mass education. 
 
 How should a mass education institute be operated? 
 
 The uniqueness of mass education. 
 
 Approaches to mass education. 
 
 The necessary facilities of a mass education institute. 
 
 How can the masses be trained and organized? 
 
 to. How can local self-government be actualized? 
 
 11. How does one conduct social surveys? 
 
 Oe. a Oe eter a 
 
 C. Promotion of Social Enterprise 
 1. How should public health activities be run? 
 2.. How should recreational activities be run? 
 3. How does one operate employment agencies? 
 4. How does one organize the loose masses into powerful organi- 
 zations? 
 How does one run a “new village’? 
 . How does one “laborize” ordinary schools? 
 7. How does one apply superior academic theories and methodol- 
 ogies to industries? 
 8. How can labor education be popularized nationwide? 
 
 loa 
 
 It is possible to detect in the list of topics the intermingling of 
 Guomindang and anarchist concerns that shaped Labor University. 
 The concerns with labor education, “new villages,” and liberation of 
 agricultural workers were all of anarchist derivation. The term “politi- 
 cal tutelage” was an acknowledgment of the Guomindang formula for 
 political and constitutional development under one-party dictator- 
 ship. The emphasis on labor organization and training, and the con- 
 cern for labor-capital cooperation, on the other hand, pointed to a 
 common area of agreement between anarchists and the Guomindang 
 that initially had made possible the founding of the university. 
 
 The Labor Education Surveys 
 
 The Lepc entrusted Laoda students with the important multiple tasks 
 of carrying out extensive surveys of general social conditions, labor 
 education, and rural and factory conditions in Shanghai. A very large 
 subsidy of $600 was allotted to these surveys in the first LEPC meeting 
 on September 25, 1929.°! Due to the lack of student participation, the 
 rural survey was not conducted during the September 1929—March 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 212 
 
 1930 period. Thirty-five students signed up for the social survey, and 
 another thirty-four enlisted in the factory survey in early October 
 1929, but since projects of this scope required faculty advisers, and no 
 faculty member was available, the projects had to be postponed.®2 
 
 Originally, meetings for the social and factory survey committees 
 were scheduled for October 20 and 21 to lay down the structure and 
 plan the agenda. However, since the academic course on social survey- 
 ing for Laoda undergraduates was still being taught, and since neither 
 the budgeted funds nor survey instructors and advisers from Laoda’s 
 own factory were available, these two meetings were aborted. At the 
 second LErc meeting, on October 22, Laoda administrators and fac- 
 ulty reaffirmed the importance and necessity of conducting these 
 surveys, and after acknowledging the problems of funding and person- 
 nel, they decided to proceed with the surveys, but on a reduced scale 
 and scope. With the assistance of Fan Dingjiu (teacher of the Laoda 
 social survey course), the Lerc explored the possibility of inviting the 
 director of the social survey department in the graduate school of 
 Central University in Nanjing and the chairman of the sociology 
 department at Shanghai Baptist College to serve as tutors or advisers 
 for the survey.°3 
 
 After all these efforts, the Laoda Social Survey Corps met on No- 
 vember 28, 1919, with Fan Dingjiu in the chair and forty others in 
 attendance. According to Tan Yifan’s report, the proposed social sur- 
 vey was welcomed and approved by the Shanghai municipal Bureau of 
 Social Affairs. Fan Dingjiu, who was entrusted with drafting the sur- 
 vey proposal, pointed out that the significance of the social survey was 
 to establish the factual basis of social conditions in order to lay the 
 foundation for future reform. The structure and personnel of the corps 
 were also finalized. 
 
 Corps members elected Lu Guoxiang director of the corps to exer- 
 cise overall leadership. Under him came the four elected chiefs of 
 the divisions of general affairs (sections on accounting, liaison, mis- 
 cellaneous affairs), publicity (sections on slogan, speech, and leaf- 
 lets), survey (sections on cartography and maps, area demarcation, 
 survey teams assignment, survey forms, and photography), and com- 
 pilation and tabulation (sections on compilation, tabulation, charts 
 and graphs, and statistics and reports). Five Laoda faculty and staff 
 members served as tutors to the survey: Zheng Ruogu, Fan Dingjiu, 
 Tan Yifan, Xiong Mengfei, and Cai Yucong, a Fudan University sociol- 
 ogy graduate who worked in Laoda’s library. 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 213 
 
 The scope of the survey was the living conditions of the masses in 
 Jiangwan.°* However, the report of this meeting, published in the 
 Labor University Weekly (vol. 2, no. 33, December 14, 1929), was the 
 last official reportage on the social survey corps in Labor University 
 publications, and the actual outcome of the survey is not known, 
 except that according to an account on student life written by Chen 
 Biao in spring 1930, social science majors used their after-class leisure 
 time to visit local workers’ families to conduct this survey and ex- 
 tremely good information was obtained on their level of education and 
 economic situation. This account also said that the survey on labor 
 unions had been completed and a report of more than seventy thou- 
 sand characters had been compiled. Another report on LEPC activities 
 in September 1929 pointed out that one of the major obstacles en- 
 countered by students in the survey work in rural areas was the power 
 and influence exercised by “feudalistic” elements in agrarian commu- 
 nities that were opposed to reforms.°° This could be the reason a full- 
 scale village survey did not materialize. 
 
 The same issue of the Labor University Weekly also reprinted the 
 organizational charter and work agenda of a Labor Education Survey 
 Corps under the LEpc. If fully implemented, the study would require a 
 dozen or more student surveyors to carry out a survey of labor educa- 
 tion institutions in the three cities of Shanghai, Nanjing, and Wuxi. 
 The content of the survey would include data on students and school 
 life, the institution’s teaching methods (purpose and objective), cur- 
 riculum, facilities, funding, administration, and teachers, as well as 
 local labor conditions (economic, family, living, and occupational).°¢ 
 
 On a reduced scale, this Labor Education Survey Corps managed in 
 the spring semester of 1930 to become the most active and successful 
 survey operation under LEPC sponsorship. At that time the corps was 
 composed of six Laoda education majors—two in charge of general 
 affairs, two in survey, and two in compilation. The leader of this corps 
 was Chen Biao, one of the star students in the Department of Educa- 
 tion who had published quite extensively on labor education and also 
 had served as a Chinese language instructor in the school for the 
 masses.°” Zheng Ruogu and Tan Yifan served as faculty advisers. The 
 objective of this corps was to investigate the actual development of 
 labor education and the living conditions of workers in order to pro- 
 vide a real-life reference to the promotion of labor education, as well 
 as to gather data for the compilation of Chinese Labor Education 
 Yearbook. Various questionnaire forms were devised and printed for 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 214 
 
 visits to labor schools and schools for laborers’ children established by 
 public bodies and private enterprises. The thirty labor schools tar- 
 geted for the survey were divided into three geographic districts, each 
 district of ten schools to be covered by a team of two surveyors. The 
 actual survey of these three districts of Shanghai took two weeks. A 
 press release on this Shanghai survey was published in the local news- 
 papers.°8 Later on, the survey corps decided to enlarge the scope of the 
 local survey to investigate several more labor schools in Shanghai.°? 
 
 The corps also made a field trip to Wuxi during the 1930 Lunar New 
 Year holidays. This Wuxi survey covered the five labor primary schools 
 operated by the Gmp’s Labor Unions Reorganization Committee. 
 They also visited two other labor primary schools, one female voca- 
 tional school, and an evening school attached to a textile mill, as 
 well as silk filatures and weaving plants. Visits to labor neighbor- 
 hoods were also made to observe firsthand the living conditions and 
 family situations of the workers and their needs for education. A large 
 amount of relevant material was collected and tabulated according to 
 the following subject headings: 
 
 A. Founding purpose and educational direction 
 B. Source of funding and actual budget control 
 C. Size and origin of the student body 
 D. Qualifications and terms of appointment of the teacher 
 E. Facilities and sanitary condition of the school 
 F. Curriculum: 
 1. Literacy lessons 
 2. Civic lessons 
 3. Economics lessons 
 4. Curriculum design and control 
 5. Student data 
 6. Daily life and habits of the students 
 7. Age and geographic origin of the students 
 8. Family and economic situation of the students 
 g. Reasons behind students’ absence and withdrawal from school”® 
 
 From these tabulations the survey corps prepared graphs and charts 
 for public display as part of the Labor University Third Anniversary 
 Open Day Exhibition. More detailed accounts of the survey and its 
 findings were also written by members of the corps, both for the 
 records of the Labor Education Promotion Committee and for publica- 
 tion in Laoda journals. The Labor Education Survey Corps also dis- 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 215 
 
 patched complementary issues of Labor University Weekly and Labor 
 University Monthly to local schools elsewhere in China to establish 
 “spiritual and academic contacts” at the institutional level and to 
 promote labor education.’! 
 
 Conducting social surveys and making on-site visits formed a vital 
 and even central component of both the formal academic training and 
 extracurricular social experiences of Laoda students. These activities 
 were not limited to the social sciences students. Students in Laoda’s 
 agriculture college established an Agricultural Survey Committee 
 whose membership was composed of representatives from the faculty 
 and three student-organized societies (for horticulture, agrochemis- 
 try, and agriculture). Its main objective was to carry out a survey on 
 the rural economy and conditions of the peasantry.’2 The actual in- 
 volvement of the LEppD in Laoda’s own constituencies in Jiangwan 
 and Wusong extended beyond the pedagogical, cultural, and recrea- 
 tional programs and research surveys mentioned above; the commit- 
 tee also actively sponsored public health and production-related un- 
 dertakings. For instance, in May 1930 the Lepp took the lead in 
 mobilizing local government and the local Gmp branch to mount a 
 public anti-snoutmoth campaign in Baoshan County.’ 
 
 Indeed, the entire Laoda community—students, teachers, and ad- 
 ministrators—took these empirical investigative and firsthand obser- 
 vational exercises very seriously. Not only did the university provide 
 financial support and administrative assistance for the students’ sur- 
 veys and visits, but formal academic credits were given for such 
 organized investigative activities. For instance, the published work 
 log of the social sciences college’s Student Guidance Office carried an 
 entry for April 1, 1930, stating that Chen Biao and five other students 
 went out to conduct a survey on labor education from March 31 to 
 April 2, and the Academic Affairs Office was notified that their ab- 
 sence from their Laoda classes for this period should be treated as 
 attendance.’”4 
 
 As a matter of fact, field trips were not only regular and standard 
 features in Laoda social sciences courses, they also became an impor- 
 tant area of collaboration with other universities in Shanghai. For ex- 
 ample, on April 30, 1930, five Laoda students in the course on primary 
 education, joined by more than thirty education majors from China 
 Academy in Wusong, made a visit to two primary schools and a 
 kindergarten in Shanghai. This full-day visit was led by education pro- 
 fessor Xiong Zirong, who taught at both Laoda and China Academy at 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 216 
 
 that time. At about the same time, the entire student body (thirty- 
 three students) of Laoda’s education department under the leadership 
 of the department chairman, Zhang Yousan, and Professor Zheng 
 Ruogu made a day trip to the Baoshan Normal College in Wusong. 
 More than a dozen education majors from Fudan University also took 
 part in this visit.”° (Even twelve seniors from Laoda’s high school 
 made a social survey field trip to Suzhou in early April 1930. They 
 examined regular schools, labor education facilities, rickshaw facto- 
 ries, labor unions, and industrial disputes.}7° 
 
 Labor Education and Social Service at Other Shanghai Campuses 
 
 The mass education undertakings of Laoda students were part of a 
 wider concern on the part of post—May Fourth Chinese for societal 
 regeneration through reformist outreach activities. In Shanghai, the 
 YMCA/YWCA and some of the missionary universities had pioneered 
 labor education and communal welfare services. 
 
 During the late Qing and early Republican periods, the ymca/ 
 Ywcas were influential reformist, social service, and educational or- 
 ganizations. They ran a number of day and evening schools, literacy 
 and technical training classes, workers’ spare-time learning programs, 
 model labor dormitories, and other public services in many Chinese 
 cities. Labor problems formed a major focus in their monthly journals 
 and special reports in the 19 10s—30s.’” While international and Chris- 
 tian in nature, the YMcCA/yYwCA movement in China had been effec- 
 tively oriented toward secular social service with strong emphasis on 
 indigenous personnel and programs designed for local needs. In fact, 
 the YMcA/ywca represented a rising tide of liberal theology and utili- 
 tarian, progressive Christianity in the West—the new type of “social 
 gospel” aiming at the ideal of “gospel for the whole man,” with 
 Christians performing actual service to achieve greater social justice. 
 
 This emphasis on gradualist social reformism through the promo- 
 tion of industrial welfare, labor education, and mass education en- 
 deared the ymcA/ywca to many socially awakened and activist Chi- 
 nese students of the May Fourth era. Part of its early success, in terms 
 of increases in membership and prestige, stemmed from the ymca/ 
 ywca’s ability to capture the sentiments of Chinese students during 
 the 1910s and early 1920s when there was an outburst of social con- 
 cern and civic activism on campuses across urban China. Indeed, 
 recognizing high-school pupils and university undergraduates as the 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 217 
 
 most strategic elements among its constituency in Chinese society, 
 the yMcA/ywca provided an institutional framework with a nation- 
 wide or even international network through which the aspirations 
 and energy of the students could be channeled into socially con- 
 structive undertakings.’8 At this level of moral and functional orien- 
 tation toward social mission and concern for the cultivation and 
 salvation of the “whole man,” the movement’s outlook paralleled 
 Laoda’s own secular reform objectives and societal commitments. 
 
 The yMcA/ywca’s most significant contribution to improving Chi- 
 nese labor conditions lay mainly in the pioneering nature of its practi- 
 cal undertakings. As early as 1906, the ywca in Shanghai had already 
 carried on work with the local female and child textile workers.’? 
 Later on, during the r910s and 1920s, the yMcA/ywWCaA spearheaded 
 the development of labor education, legislation, and housing in 
 Shanghai and elsewhere in China. These activities were to provide a 
 model for partisans of diverse ideological persuasion who either re- 
 garded social salvation as an integral, even necessary part of national 
 salvation and state building, or looked to social programs akin to 
 those under the yMCA/ywca’s auspices as the means to mobilize 
 students and attract workers to their revolutionary cause. 
 
 The program that enjoyed the greatest success and had the closest 
 similarity to Laoda’s outreach activities was in the field of labor edu- 
 cation. The yMcA/ywca’s involvement in Chinese labor education 
 could trace its origins to the international yMca-sponsored education 
 program staffed by overseas Chinese students for the benefit of the 
 Chinese workers serving in France during the First World War.8° One 
 of the Chinese students who went to France in this ymca labor educa- 
 tion program was Yan Yangchu (James Y. C. Yen), educated at Yale and 
 Princeton and the preeminent Chinese figure in mass education. Yan 
 returned to China in 1921 to serve as the public education secretary of 
 the ymca National Committee and developed the popular textbook 
 People’s Thousand Character Reader, which was widely used in mass 
 education classes throughout China. In 1923 Yan founded the Na- 
 tional Association of the Mass Education Movement in Beijing to 
 carry out literacy campaigns and related continuing education pro- 
 grams for the masses. This association remained active under Yan’s 
 leadership until it was dissolved by the new PRC regime in 1950. 
 In 1926 Yan started a rural education and reconstruction program 
 in Dingxian, Hebei, to experiment with the concept of a model vil- 
 lage to improve peasant conditions through literacy, hygiene, self- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 218 
 
 government, and skills for livelihood. This was the forerunner of 
 similar rural reconstruction schemes elsewhere in China.8! 
 
 However, the oldest and largest continuing education school for 
 workers in a major Chinese city was the Yangtsepoo Social Center 
 established by the ywca in 1917. This center also housed the first day 
 school for children of labor families.82 Of particular comparative in- 
 terest from Laoda’s perspective was the fact that the Yangtsepoo Cen- 
 ter represented the joint involvement of a municipal ywca, the YMca/ 
 YWCA on a college campus, and the social science department of a 
 Protestant missionary college—Shanghai Baptist College—in a long- 
 term community outreach project. 
 
 Shanghai Baptist College and Seminary was established in 1906 by 
 American missionaries on a 360-acre campus overlooking Shanghai 
 Harbor in Yangtsepoo, an industrial neighborhood inside the Interna- 
 tional Settlement of Shanghai. Patterned after small American de- 
 nominational liberal arts colleges, Shanghai Baptist had a landscaped 
 residential campus of neo-Geothic buildings and first-class facilities 
 worth some $1.5 million, and ran an American-style curriculum with 
 particularly strong education and social sciences departments. Such 
 academic strength and specialization were typical of many of the 
 Protestant missionary universities in modern China.8? The most out- 
 standing academic feature of Shanghai Baptist College was the great 
 emphasis on social survey and social service as important compo- 
 nents in its (Brown University—designed) sociology curriculum, 
 which claimed to be the first in China. Shanghai Baptist students were 
 organized into social survey groups to investigate various charitable 
 bodies and welfare institutions in Shanghai. Their avowed objective 
 was “to discover social forces that are operating in any city or commu- 
 nity which give peculiar characteristics to that particular place, and to 
 arouse public responsibility for securing a betterment of conditions 
 and finding some way to meet the various needs.’’84 
 
 In fact, the campus location afforded physical proximity between 
 Shanghai Baptist students and local workers, thus facilitating the 
 operation of a very important experiment in labor education, religious 
 work, and community service at the Yangtsepoo Center. Knownas the 
 East Shanghai Commune (Hudong gongshe), the center was estab- 
 lished by Daniel H. Kulp, chair of Shanghai Baptist’s sociology depart- 
 ment, with the support of several Shanghai business and educational 
 leaders. Its objectives were, first, as a social service center to improve 
 the conditions of local workers and to minister to “all the life interests 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 219 
 
 of all the community”; and, second, to serve as a laboratory for the 
 undergraduates who would, through teaching and conducting social 
 surveys at the center, catch the mission and vision of the center and 
 spread it throughout China when they graduated.85 
 
 Under the supervision of an executive committee comprising both 
 Chinese and Western professors (chaired by H. D. Lamson, an associ- 
 ate professor of sociology in 1928), the center’s director was a Chinese 
 sociology teacher at Shanghai Baptist College. He had a staff of over 
 two dozen, nearly half of them paid personnel, the rest part-time paid 
 staff or volunteers. By the early 1920s the center had developed into a 
 moderate-sized social enterprise with an annual budget of $12,000. 
 Public contributions were its main source of income, and fund-raising 
 campaigns were organized from time to time; one in 1924 collected 
 almost $5,000 from over 1,600 donors.8¢ 
 
 Education was one of the center’s principal tasks. It operated Shang- 
 hai’s first part-time school for workers and a day school for workers’ 
 children. The part-time adult labor schools were often held inside 
 the factories, with the consent (and sometimes financial support) of 
 the management. Apprentices and office clerks often attended these 
 classes, and the subjects taught were Chinese, English, and arithmetic, 
 together with some technical knowledge relevant to the workers’ em- 
 ployment. During the 1920s, total enrollment in the evening classes 
 reached 400 per term. The children’s day school ran a full nine-year 
 program, and some 250 boys and girls enrolled each term. Besides 
 literacy, their curriculum stressed such practical skills as account- 
 ing and gardening. The students also ran their own cooperative store 
 and student organization, thus receiving training in administrative 
 skills.87 
 
 The Yangtsepoo Center conducted a host of other educational pro- 
 grams with flexibility and creativeness to meet local needs: an evening 
 school for female laborers was started with the Shanghai ywca, a day- 
 care center for young children of laborers, and textile classes for textile 
 mill employees who desired further studies. The staff of the center 
 adapted regular textbooks and reading materials to fit the worker- 
 enrollees’ levels and outlooks in these special classes. In addition, 
 there were public health campaigns, science lectures, speeches by 
 prominent figures on character building and citizenship, and a public 
 library to serve the community. The social-recreational programs at 
 the center included the familiar range of playground, movies, music 
 and drama clubs, and sports activities, including ball-game teams.88 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 220 
 
 The center also operated a labor clinic and a dispensary. The clinic 
 admitted only workers whose factories financially supported the cen- 
 ter. Even with such restrictions the clinic drew a growing body of 
 patients which numbered some 320 in March 1920 and more than 
 doubled a year later. The dispensary dispatched a nurse to make visits 
 into the local community. These health services helped to gain popu- 
 lar acceptance of the center and its programs among the plants in the 
 Yangtsepoo district.8? 
 
 Another practical and rather unique feature of the center was an 
 employment bureau. Its jobs referral function was facilitated through 
 networking with clerks and foremen of various factories whose con- 
 tacts with the center were often established via the labor schools.9° 
 Finally, reflecting the evangelical concern for the moral and spiritual 
 well-being of the workers, a Sunday school was also conducted by the 
 center, serving some eighty souls each term.?! 
 
 The Yangtsepoo Social Center provided a diverse and multifaceted 
 program of labor education and social services to the local community. 
 The majority of the volunteers for the center’s program coordinators, 
 class instructors, and activities leaders were Shanghai Baptist under- 
 graduates, especially those active in the college YymMcA/ywca. Founded 
 in 1909, the college ymca for male faculty and students had among its 
 regular tasks the running of an evening school for male college em- 
 ployees, a village school, as well as lecture tours and slide shows in 
 nearby villages and factories.92 
 
 The yMcA evening school for college employees met Monday 
 through Friday from 8:00 to 9:00 p.M. During 1925-26, eighteen male 
 employees enrolled in the first semester and twenty-six in the second 
 semester, with more than twenty Shanghai Baptist undergraduate 
 volunteers serving as teachers and staff. Besides lessons in Chinese 
 and English language, training in citizenship, hygiene, and morality 
 were part of the instruction. Entertaining ball games and slide shows 
 were often held to develop civic awareness and cooperative spirit in 
 addition to general knowledge.?? 
 
 Female faculty and undergraduates at Shanghai Baptist had their 
 own college ywca with a membership of sixty in 1926. Its social 
 service department conducted a women’s night school for “campus 
 maid-servants.” This college ywca also provided volunteer teachers 
 for the classes at Yangtsepoo Center and Sunday school teachers for a 
 voluntary primary school on campus and two village schools.?4 
 
 One of the village schools was located in Jiangwan under the man- 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 221 
 
 agement of the college’s Christian Civil Society. This society, founded 
 in 1919 by eleven Christian undergraduates in the class of 1923, 
 aimed at “social service to promote civil knowledge” according to the 
 spirit of Christianity.9° Its proudest achievement in mass education 
 was the Shen Ka Hong School in Jiangwan established in 1921 under 
 the guidance of Professor J. C. Dealy (a visiting sociology professor 
 from Brown University during 1921-22 who was instrumental in 
 designing the sociology curriculum and setting up the social survey 
 group at Shanghai Baptist). This primary school operated from a cam- 
 pus whose buildings and land were donated by a wealthy member of 
 the local gentry. From a rather small initial enrollment of thirteen 
 pupils, total enrollment reached eighty in 1925-26. It operated on a 
 modern coeducational basis with a new-style (i.e., six grades) curricu- 
 lum. While it was often hailed as the model primary school for a 
 suburb or village, the Shen Ka Hong School could not be sustained 
 financially due to the lack of endowment funds. In September 1925 
 the Baptist church in eastern Shanghai had to assume responsibility 
 for its finances while the Christian Civil Society took charge of actual 
 Management as a joint social enterprise.?© Probably due to the success 
 of the village school and the rapport with the local community, Shang- 
 hai Baptist College used Shen Ka Hong (Shenjiaxing) Township in 
 Jiangwan as the principal locale for its social survey activities.?” 
 The chairman of the Christian Civil Society, a male undergraduate 
 named Gu Bingyuan (Koo Ping Yuen, P. Y. Gu) was concurrently 
 chairman of the college’s Daily Vacation Bible School volunteers and 
 the Shanghai district superintendent of the summertime Daily Vaca- 
 tion Bible Schools, a movement first introduced into China in 1917. 
 Shanghai Baptist College was the center of this movement in greater 
 Shanghai with a field of work extending to Jiangwan, Pootung (Pu- 
 dong, where the Shanghai ymca had its Pootung Model Village hous- 
 ing and social center), and four other Shanghai suburbs. Under Gu’s 
 jurisdiction there were 42 Bible schools with 250 volunteer teach- 
 ers and 3,000 children enrolled in the entire district. According to 
 Gu, the Bible school volunteers dedicated themselves to “help make 
 China a stronger and literate nation.’”98 The seven Daily Vacation 
 Bible Schools operated by Shanghai Baptist College through the Vil- 
 lage Work Committee of its undergraduates had a total enrollment of 
 644 pupils in 1925-26. Generally, the daily program at these summer 
 schools consisted of an opening exercise; music; languages; hand- 
 work; story and Bible verse; games; talks about habits, health, patrio- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 222 
 
 tism, and civics; and a closing exercise, but each school was free to 
 arrange its own schedule to suit local conditions.?? 
 
 After his graduation from Shanghai Baptist College, Gu worked in 
 the Shanghai municipal Social Affairs Bureau with a particular focus 
 on labor affairs. In 1932, 1935, and 1937, he compiled and published 
 three documentary collections of Chinese labor legislation covering 
 labor organizations, factory management, industrial disputes, labor 
 welfare, minimum wage, labor contracts, and internal labor union 
 documents. !0° 
 
 The Village Work Committee at Shanghai Baptist also conducted a 
 night school during the summer on a novel teacher rotation scheme. 
 Under this scheme, every week one responsible teacher took charge of 
 the school and had to find one or two of his own friends to help him 
 teach. Those who were involved in it considered the result to be 
 favorable. In addition, the committee also held four Sunday schools 
 during the summer with an average attendance of eighty each Sunday 
 in 1925.10 
 
 As outlined above, many students at Shanghai Baptist College, with 
 or without yMcA/ywca links, had been active participants in an im- 
 pressive range of mass education and social service programs, many of 
 which they pioneered. In some sense, some of Laoda’s outreach under- 
 takings in Jiangwan and Wusong followed in the footsteps of programs 
 initiated by Shanghai Baptist College teachers and students. However, 
 there were sharp contrasts between them as a result of the varied 
 ideological orientations and social origins of the two institutions and 
 their students—the critical and major difference being between 
 Laoda’s secular outreach activities as a manifestation of grass-roots 
 social reformation based on laborized education, and Shanghai Bap- 
 tist’s “social gospel” salvation through mass education with a clear 
 religious overtone. 
 
 As a private institution receiving little financial support from 
 church bodies, Shanghai Baptist College had to charge high tuition 
 fees and room and board rates. This meant that most of its four 
 hundred students came from well-to-do merchant and scholar fam- 
 ilies. As they openly admitted in the school’s 1926 yearbook, Shang- 
 hai Baptist undergraduates lived a leisurely and comfortable life with 
 a noticeable lack of a serious intellectual atmosphere on campus and 
 an acute absence of scholarly research achievements. As a matter of 
 fact, the highly westernized life-style on campus and the use of En- 
 glish as the major medium of academic instruction (in part due to a 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 223 
 
 preponderance of Westerners on its faculty) created a serious, self- 
 acknowledged problem of “westernization” among Shanghai Baptist 
 students. !02 
 
 This raises a question about the effectiveness of the outreach pro- 
 grams of Shanghai Baptist students, who came from social, economic, 
 and cultural realities that differed markedly from those of the work- 
 ing-class elements they sought to educate and awaken. Eight of the 
 thirty-seven graduating seniors of 1925 were active YMCA/YwCaA lead- 
 ers at Shanghai Baptist College. They were vibrant “campus stars,” 
 active in many fields, popular among their peers, truly talented, and 
 gifted in literary creation. In other words, the YmcA/yYwCA movement 
 at Shanghai Baptist was furnished with leaders who were the cream of 
 the crop among the university’s students. !93 While these able students 
 were no doubt serious in their efforts to alleviate the manifestations of 
 social injustice and exploitation among their laboring constituency, 
 their own class backgrounds would seem to have limited the pos- 
 sibility of any serious identification with laborers, as well as their 
 ability to distinguish the plight of individual laborers from that of 
 laborers as a class; in other words, the symptoms of injustice and ex- 
 ploitation versus the social structural conditions that produced them. 
 Shanghai Baptist students and faculty working at their social labora- 
 tories—the Yangtsepoo Center or the evening and summer schools— 
 do not seem to have been conscious of this distinction.!°4 Indeed, a 
 League of Nations Education Commission report on the education of 
 laborers at such ymMcA/ywCa social centers observed: “It should be 
 given a more practical turn and brought into closer contact with 
 everyday life. It is now more an intellectual pastime or recreation 
 rather than a factor in the transformation of social life.” 195 Whether or 
 not “pastime or recreation” is a fair description of Shanghai Baptist 
 students involved in the YMCA/YWCA activities with labor, it may be 
 suggested nevertheless that it was for these campus stars only one 
 among the diverse extracurricular activities that distinguished them. 
 
 A more secular, nonmissionary, and culturally more indigenous 
 approach to community service and mass education was that taken by 
 the students of Great China University. In autumn 1925 Great China’s 
 Student Union set up an evening school for the masses with the 
 slogan “work should not preclude study.” The evening school met two 
 hours a night, five days a week. Not only was there no tuition charge 
 but all books and notes were provided to the pupils free of charge and 
 the curriculum emphasized the application of skills and literacy train- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 224 
 
 ing to everyday use. There was also a special class for English language 
 teaching. The enrollment in the evening school ranged from over one 
 hundred to some three hundred during the 1925—29 period. In Sep- 
 tember 1932, in response to the intensifying national crisis and the 
 growing intellectual concern for social rehabilitation at the grass 
 roots, Great China University started preparations for a Great China 
 Commune (Daxia gongshe). As the title implied, the Great China 
 University administration probably had in mind an institutionalized 
 social service undertaking similar to the Shanghai Baptist College’s 
 East Shanghai Commune. In March 1933 the mass school of the Great 
 China Commune began instruction.!°% 
 
 Six months later the commune was expanded into a fuller-scale 
 Great China Mass Education Experiment District (Daxia minzhong 
 jiaoyu shiyan qu). Located in a Shanghai suburb northwest of Great 
 China’s campus on Zhongshan Road in the Fanwangdu neighborhood, 
 this Mass Education Experiment District covered a geographic area of 
 some 4,000 acres of villages and farms with a total population of over 
 2,100 in some 300 households. The great majority (go percent) were 
 engaged in agriculture, although some young female members of this 
 community were employed by the textile mills in the city. The stated 
 objectives of Great China University in establishing this district for 
 educational experiment by the faculty and students of its College of 
 Education were twofold: “(1) to afford a real-life opportunity for stu- 
 dents to practice the methods of conducting mass education, and (2) to 
 experiment with various educational methods in order to increase the 
 knowledge of the masses, enrich their livelihood, and complement 
 the efforts of local self-administration so as to complete the stage of 
 political tutelage.” 197 
 
 The district operated the following facilities in its three divisions: 
 (1) a Cooperative Education Society, which ran a credit co-op, a savings 
 club, a consumer co-op, an evening school, plus a road construction 
 project (three miles) for the district community; (2) a Rural Self- 
 Administration Association, which was established in spring 1934 to 
 conduct a school for the masses (with a class for children and another 
 for adults), a mass reading room, a mass tea garden, a mobile edu- 
 cation library, plus a road construction project (seven miles); and 
 (3) a Workers’ School, which consisted of four daytime and nighttime 
 classes for adults and one daytime class for children, with a total 
 enrollment of 180 in 1934. The school also had its own student union, 
 student co-op, and a New Life Group to promote the New Life Move- 
 
Labor Education and Outreach Activities 225 
 
 ment just started by the Nanjing regime. In March 1934 this Great 
 China Mass Education Experiment District collaborated with the 
 West Shanghai Twenty-two Society to establish the Fanwangdu Popu- 
 lar Education Experiment Zone in west Shanghai. It was reported that 
 construction of new plants for the primary school of this district 
 began in 1934 and a “Mass Athletic Game” was held by the district in 
 October 1934.108 
 
 In terms of the range of its programs and some of its special facilities 
 (such as the mass tea garden), Great China’s mass education efforts 
 had many features similar to Laoda’s extensive outreach activities. 
 Their common secular, nationalistic orientation and the emphasis on 
 relevance to the needs of the rural community (in contrast to the 
 YMCA/YwCA’s more urban approach) is obvious. In fact, the slogan of 
 Great China University in spring 1934 was “rural rehabilitation as the 
 foundation for the revival of the nation’s education.”!°9 Due to the 
 interlocking ties between Laoda and Great China’s faculty, especially 
 in the social sciences, it is possible that Laoda’s outreach experience 
 had some influence on Great China’s undertaking after 1932. By then, 
 urban mass education programs and rural rehabilitation projects had 
 become fairly widespread and socially respected intellectual under- 
 takings; they involved many of China’s eminent intellectual figures, 
 academic organizations, and community leaders, and had support 
 from local authorities and international agencies.!1° 
 
 Shanghai Baptist and Great China universities’ experiments with 
 the education of laborers (and related services) were not the only 
 efforts of this type by Chinese or foreign reformers in the 1920s and 
 19308. They are sufficient to show, however, that while Labor Univer- 
 sity students’ mass outreach programs were not unique, they were 
 distinguished by the students themselves, whose own education was 
 informed by a radical appreciation of the fundamental place in society 
 of both laborers as a class and labor as indispensable social activity. 
 What difference this might have made in the long run, had Labor 
 University continued to exist after 1932, is difficult to say. Labor 
 University’s social programs shared with these other social reform 
 efforts the goal of social improvement without violent social conflict, 
 a point over which there was agreement between its anarchist found- 
 ers and its Guomindang sponsors. Thanks to their anarchist inspi- 
 ration, however, at least initially Labor University social programs 
 sought not merely to alleviate the suffering of laborers either out 
 of charity, a sense of social responsibility, or just to keep them 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 226 
 
 from turning to communism, but to achieve social equality by level- 
 ing class differences: Laoda students who sought to educate laborers 
 through outreach activities were expected themselves to undergo a 
 personal transformation through the practice of labor. Quick achieve- 
 ment of that goal may have been little more than a pipe dream. There 
 is no reason, however, to deny on those grounds that it had much to 
 contribute to overcoming the alienation of intellectuals from labor- 
 ers, or of mental from manual activity, which might have gone a long 
 way toward resolving some of China’s fundamental social problems. 
 
8 Politics, 
 Finances, 
 and the 
 
 Demise of 
 Laoda 
 
 Because of its poor public image of out-of-proportion budgetary ex- 
 penses for relatively low academic standards, Labor University came 
 under tremendous outside pressure to justify its existence and con- 
 tinued operation. Prospects for Labor University’s long-term growth 
 and development became even more unfavorable when the national 
 government decided to abolish the French-style University Districts 
 system and to replace the University Council with a centralizing 
 Ministry of Education in late 1928. The subsequent clashes between 
 the leading educators within the Gmp during 1929—30 gravely eroded 
 the official support previously enjoyed by Labor University. The uni- 
 versity further suffered from a leadership crisis following the forced 
 resignation of its founding president in September 1930. By then, 
 continued waves of student unrest against administrative mismanage- 
 ment had already given the Ministry of Education a convenient pretext 
 to “reorganize” Laoda and suspend its recruitment of new students in 
 the summer of 1930. Ina real sense, the fate of the university had been 
 sealed in mid-1930, barely three years after its inauguration. Thus the 
 Japanese bombardment of Shanghai in early 1932 only put the finish- 
 ing touch to the almost inevitable doom of Labor University. All these 
 developments that ultimately undermined the survival of Labor Uni- 
 versity were in one way or another interrelated, as if it were trapped in 
 a web of partisan conflicts, personality clashes, institutional rivalry, 
 political intrigues, financial irregularities, and public scandal. A brief 
 delineation of their cumulative effects may be useful here in providing 
 insights into the reasons for Laoda’s eventual demise. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 228 
 
 Failure of the University Council System 
 
 From its start in July 1927, the University Council system was criti- 
 cized for several reasons: it accented scholarship and university edu- 
 cation at the expense of basic education at lower levels; it created 
 administrative problems; it was run by an irresponsible clique of 
 educators; and it resulted in unfair and unequal resource allocation. ! 
 Because the effective jurisdiction of the Nanjing regime was limited, 
 only three university districts were established: in Beijing, Jiangsu, 
 and Zhejiang. However, unexpected problems broke out in the actual 
 implementation of this new system in Beijing which not only called 
 into question its practicability but also seriously strained, if not to- 
 tally ruptured, the thirty-year intimate and fruitful collaboration be- 
 tween Cai Yuanpei and Li Shizeng in politics and education. 
 
 The University Council was first established in July 1927 with Cai 
 as the chairman. In mid-August 1928, Li Shizeng was appointed the 
 head of the newly created Beijing University District after the Na- 
 tionalist forces extended their control to north China in June 1928. 
 Meanwhile, Cai also petitioned the national government on June 7, 
 1928, to permit Beijing University (Beida, whose presidency Cai still 
 nominally held) to restore its original title and autonomous status as 
 “Beijing University” from that of “Capital University” (/ingshi daxue- 
 xiao), which had been imposed by the warlord Zhang Zuolin’s Beijing 
 regime in a reorganization of local tertiary institutions in June 1927.2 
 
 However, in asserting his control over the Beijing university dis- 
 trict, Li intended to have the former Beida renamed “Zhonghua 
 (China) University” instead. Li had his trusted protégé Yi Peiji propose 
 this name change at the June 9, 1928, meeting of the National Govern- 
 ment Presidium, which approved the change. At the same time the 
 Presidium also reconfirmed Cai’s appointment (as Beida’s president) 
 to become the president of “Zhonghua University”; but pending Cai’s 
 actual assumption of his duties there, Li was empowered to act on his 
 behalf. 
 
 Such moves by Li and Yi were firmly opposed by Cai, who refused to 
 accept the appointment as “Zhonghua University” president. In this 
 cause Cai was fully supported by Beida’s students, teachers, staff, and 
 alumni. The determined and very vocal resistance of Beida elements 
 forced Li to modify his original plan. Instead, Beida was renamed 
 “Peiping University” (Beiping daxue) by the Nanjing regime in mid- 
 August 1928 with Li as its president. But this modified approach still 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 229 
 
 failed to placate the diehard opposition of the aroused Beida elements, 
 who staunchly resisted Li’s repeated attempts to take over the admin- 
 istration at “Peiping University” during November—December 1929. 
 Li finally capitulated in the face of such bitter opposition. On August 
 7, 1929, exactly fourteen months to the day after Cai had made his 
 petition, the national government formally permitted Beida to restore 
 its original name of Beijing University and to maintain its distinct 
 status, independent of Li Shizeng’s Peiping University, which was a 
 conglomeration of assorted colleges in Beijing. On September 16, 
 1929, Cai was reappointed president of the fully restored Beida.3 
 
 While Cai and Li found themselves bitterly entangled on opposing 
 sides of this Beida/Zhonghua/Beiping University controversy, sup- 
 port for the University Council system eroded rapidly among the Gmp 
 leaders in Nanjing. In mid-August 1928 the GMp Central Executive 
 Committee adopted a new organizational plan for the national gov- 
 ernment which stipulated a Ministry of Education under the Execu- 
 tive Council as the highest national organ for educational administra- 
 tion. This news was greeted by most educators and academics as a 
 welcome improvement over the chaos, incompetence, and admin- 
 istrative conflicts brought about by the University Council system, as 
 vividly illustrated in the ongoing fiasco over Beida. 
 
 Cai himself did not actively resist the inevitable abolition of the 
 University Council system. In fact, when the proposal for establishing 
 a Beijing University District to take charge of education in the newly 
 liberated north China region was put to discussion at the University 
 Council meeting on August 16, 1928, Cai firmly opposed it. He found 
 Li Shizeng’s concept of a university district to be set up in Beijing seri- 
 ously defective and a deviation from Li’s own original plan. This fur- 
 ther strained Cai’s already impaired relationship with Li and substan- 
 tially dampened Cai’s enthusiasm to promote the University Council 
 system. Indeed, after Li’s proposal was adopted by the national govern- 
 ment with the support of Jiang Jieshi, Cai, on the next day (August 17, 
 1928), resigned all his government posts except the presidency of 
 Academia Sinica, the newly founded national research organ. Cai’s 
 multiple resignations were accepted by the government on October 3, 
 1928. Three weeks later, on October 23, 1928, the University Council 
 was Officially abolished and a new Ministry of Education took over, 
 with Jiang Menglin, Columbia University—educated Beida professor 
 and protégé of Cai, as the minister of education. One of Jiang’s top- 
 priority tasks was to dismantle the entire University Council system. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 230 
 
 By the end of August 1929, all three university districts had ceased to 
 exist and their functions had been taken over by the provincial educa- 
 tion departments in Hebei, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang.4 
 
 The failure of the University Council system was undoubtedly a 
 serious setback to Cai’s ideal of wholesale reform to make education 
 free from political influence and state-party control. In the words of a 
 historian, the significance of the abolition of the University Council 
 meant that the Gmp leadership “had shifted their educational policy 
 from collaboration with educators to control over them.” Hence, from 
 1929 onward, education became the instrument of the Gmp indoctri- 
 nators, and “neither the Gmp nor the educational community re- 
 covered from the consequences of that act.’’® 
 
 These events were disastrous for Laoda, and they also nearly de- 
 stroyed the harmony and unity of the anarchist elder statesmen with- 
 in the GMb, which had once provided powerful patronage and effective 
 governmental support for the establishment and continued survival of 
 Labor University. In other words, the Cai-Li estrangement during 
 1928—30 deprived Labor University of its more ardent political patrons 
 and financial underwriters. It also triggered a highly destructive con- 
 frontation between Jiang Menglin’s Ministry of Education and Yi 
 Peiji’s Labor University. But this was only the beginning of Laoda’s 
 misfortunes. 
 
 Pressure from the Ministry of Education 
 
 As Li Shizeng’s protégé and relative (Li’s nephew, Li Zongtong, was 
 Yi’s son-in-law), Yi Peiji was both a culprit and a victim in this Li-Cai 
 estrangement. As the one who formally proposed changing Beida’s 
 name to “Zhonghua University” in June 1928, Yi provoked the wrath 
 and hatred of Beida elements, whose influence in China’s academic 
 and educational circles could not be underestimated. This eventually 
 cost Yi dearly in the battle to save his own political career and the 
 threatened Labor University. Indeed, the abolition of the University 
 Council and the restoration of the Ministry of Education meant that 
 Labor University, as the only new national university created by the 
 council, became an “administrative orphan.” 
 
 From then on, Labor University under Yi could not count on receiv- 
 ing continued unrestricted support from the national government in 
 administrative considerations, budget allocations, and other material 
 resources. Worse still, the new Ministry of Education under Jiang 
 Menglin was dominated by Beida elements, many of them American- 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 231 
 
 educated disciples of John Dewey, who exerted great influence in 
 China in the early 1920s. Besides their personal animosity toward Yi 
 and his mentor Li Shizeng stemming from the Beida/Zhonghua affair, 
 these American-trained educational administrators did not share the 
 French-educated anarchists’ enthusiasm for the unconventional ap- 
 proach to tertiary education seen in the programs at Laoda. They also 
 lacked the anarchists’ commitment to manual labor as part of regular 
 academic training and student life. This was a fundamental difference 
 in educational philosophies and policies, and far more serious than 
 simple rivalry between preference for the U.S. or French system of 
 higher education. The mounting tension between the two approaches 
 intensified when these “confirmed Deweyites seized control of com- 
 manding positions at the major normal universities as well as at Beida 
 and other nationally important institutions.’”° 
 
 There was also the long-standing personal feud between Yi Peiji and 
 Jiang Menglin, which dated back to 1924 in Beijing. In November 
 1924, on the recommendation of Li Shizeng, Yi was appointed minis- 
 ter of education in the Beijing regime, but he resigned along with the 
 entire cabinet after only two weeks due to a power realignment among 
 the warlords. Yi again became minister of education in December 
 1925 and served until March 1926. During the same period Yi was also 
 chancellor of Beijing Normal University (Beishida). Jiang, as a leader 
 in north China education circles, opposed Yi’s ministerial appoint- 
 ment in 1924 on the ground that Yi was not familiar with the situa- 
 tion; he also criticized Yi for recruiting and promoting personnel 
 of Hunanese origin. And when Yi headed Beishida, the traditional 
 rivalry with Beida, which was headed by Jiang, intensified. These 
 events added to the antagonism of Beida elements toward Yi and 
 Laoda.’ 
 
 To those sitting in the Ministry of Education in Nanjing, there were 
 simply too many aspects of Laoda’s internal administration, academic 
 structure, curriculum design, and even physical facilities that either 
 failed to conform to official regulations and conventional norms or 
 were below the common standards of other national universities in 
 China. In May 1930 the national government instructed the Ministry 
 of Education to conduct an official investigation of Laoda. After the 
 visit of several inspectors (from the ministry and from the Bureau of 
 Education of Shanghai Municipality) and engineering experts on May 
 7, the ministry issued a formal report in early June 1930 calling for a 
 wholesale reorganization of Laoda. 
 
 This report severely criticized the substandard curriculum and fa- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 232 
 
 cilities as well as the mismanagement of the academic programs and 
 the model factories of Labor University. It recommended a systematic 
 overhaul of the entire operation and stipulated that Laoda should not 
 be permitted to enroll new students until the reorganization was 
 completed. The report also pointed out the fatal flaw of Laoda: “Basi- 
 cally ‘labor’ was unrelated to ‘university’ because Laoda admitted 
 students who did not participate in manual labor while its factories 
 employed workers who were not students. This was indeed the direct 
 opposite of its professed objectives. No wonder it had accomplished 
 little but attracted widespread disrepute. Therefore, without thor- 
 ough changes Laoda could not fulfill the government's objective of 
 nurturing laboring talents.’”® 
 
 The Laoda administration continued to ignore the ministry’s order 
 to suspend new student admissions and insisted on going ahead with 
 plans announced on May 26, 1930, to recruit three hundred freshmen 
 (one hundred for each of the colleges), with matriculation examina- 
 tions to be held in Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Shanghai on July 
 25 for preliminary tests, and on August 20 for final tests. As reported 
 in Shen Bao, President Yi tried to reach a compromise with the 
 ministry to temporarily permit new student admissions that had been 
 under way at the time of the order.? In response to Laoda’s non- 
 compliance, Nanjing authorities resorted to very stern measures. On 
 June 11, 1930, the ministry officially prohibited Labor University 
 from recruiting any freshmen for admission into its undergraduate 
 courses for the coming academic year starting in September. In order 
 to make good this official ban, the ministry ordered Beijing, Wuhan, 
 and Zhongshan universities to suspend immediately the matricula- 
 tion exercises they held on behalf of Labor University for prospective 
 freshmen. The Shanghai municipal government’s Bureau of Educa- 
 tion was also instructed to ban any Laoda freshman recruitment ad- 
 vertisements from appearing in local newspapers. The crackdown 
 from Nanjing was indeed swift and total.!° 
 
 These official pressures provoked immediate and very strong re- 
 actions from Laoda. On the same day, June 11, a delegation of five 
 Laoda professors and department chairmen (Gong Xiangming, Zheng 
 Ruogu, Zhang Yousan, Xia Kangnong, and Huang Shupei) represent- 
 ing the teachers and staff arrived in Nanjing from Shanghai to petition 
 the central authorities. Laoda’s petition argued four points. 
 
 First, as the highest governmental organ in education administra- 
 tion, the Education Ministry had the responsibility to supervise and 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 233 
 
 advise schools at all levels throughout China. Since Labor University 
 was an institution of a special and different nature, the ministry ought 
 to be particularly supportive in its guidance in order to lay the founda- 
 tion for labor education in China. However, advice for improvement 
 from the ministry had so far been lacking. Now, as the university was 
 fully engaged in student recruitment and future development, the 
 sudden order to suspend admissions pending reorganization indeed 
 smacked of past negligence and subsequent overreaction. 
 
 Second, Labor University was originally composed of the Colleges 
 of Agriculture and Engineering. With the approval of the ministry, a 
 College of Social Sciences was added later. However, according to the 
 University Organization Act, the title of the social sciences college 
 soon became a problem. The president of Labor University had repeat- 
 edly consulted the minister of education to change the name in order 
 to comply with the act. So far a solution had not been agreed upon, but 
 this was the only problem. The ministry was insincere in issuing an 
 immediate order to suspend new student admissions to the entire 
 university. 
 
 Third, the ministry’s inspection of Labor University on May 6—7 
 was conducted by persons totally unfamiliar with labor education. 
 Their actual visits to the campus on two half-days really amounted to 
 only a few hours of observation. Yet based only on such limited 
 exposure they had prepared a report to the government. The contents 
 of this report were not closely scrutinized or verified with available 
 evidence and documentation, but it was presented to the Executive 
 Council nevertheless as the basis for official sanctions. 
 
 Fourth, ever since the central authorities appointed Cai Yuanpei 
 and Li Shizeng in May 1927 to establish Labor University, Laoda had 
 adopted the following operational objectives: to seek knowledge from 
 actual practice, equal emphasis on academic theories and technical 
 skills, to actualize productive work, manifestation of laboring spirit, 
 developing laboring habits, researching labor problems, and to pro- 
 mote and popularize labor culture. Laoda’s efforts in gradually imple- 
 menting these objectives had already gained considerable success 
 during the past three years. Thus it was utterly unfair to be wrongly 
 accused of mismanagement and failure.!! 
 
 Two days later, on June 13, a general meeting of Laoda faculty and 
 staff was held on campus and attended by 158 (out of a total of 171) 
 Laoda employees. The meeting resolved to (1) issue public statements 
 to oppose the ministry’s unreasonable ban on admissions, (2) urge the 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 234 
 
 university authorities to continue recruitment, (3) enlist the assis- 
 tance and support of the eleven members of the Labor University 
 Preparation Committee (which included Cai Yuanpei, Li Shizeng, 
 Zhang Jingjiang, and others), (4) cable the Laoda representatives in 
 Nanjing to actively pursue the petition, (5) issue a bulletin once every 
 three days to publicize university affairs and to promote labor educa- 
 tion, and (6) organize a committee of teachers and staff to implement 
 the resolutions and to represent them in handling this crisis.12 A week 
 later, Laoda’s official rebuttal to the Education Ministry’s report was 
 printed and distributed to all undergraduates by the Student Guidance 
 Office.13 
 
 Even the Gmp Seventh District branch lent its support to the Laoda 
 cause. On July 9 the branch party headquarters dispatched a wire to 
 the party central in Nanjing demanding that the Ministry of Educa- 
 tion be ordered to protect labor education and withdraw its ban on 
 Laoda admissions. It argued that 
 
 the purpose behind the founding of Labor University is to actual- 
 ize Dr. Sun Zhongshan’s plan for China’s development and to 
 fulfill his labor-peasant policy on “developing education for labor- 
 ers” and “experimental education for laborers.” As such Labor 
 University is the highest national organ in labor education, where 
 our party’s practical talents and manpower for reconstruction 
 will come from. Since its founding, Laoda has gone through con- 
 siderable difficulties to achieve its present stage of operation and 
 its students are working hard for further advancement in curricu- 
 lum and facilities. Yet the official investigators are ignorant of 
 these crucial facts but instead have used such difficulties to con- 
 demn Laoda. It is most unfortunate for the future of labor educa- 
 tion in China, because the ban on Laoda recruitment will cut off 
 the lifeline of labor education. Even if it were necessary to reorga- 
 nize Laoda, that should not affect the admission of new students. 
 It is indeed most regrettable that the Ministry of Education re- 
 sorted to “pending reorganization” as the pretext to suspend stu- 
 dent recruitment in order to terminate the life of labor educa- 
 tion! !4 
 
 Despite such strong protests from Laoda’s teachers, students, and 
 staff, the ministry stood firm on its harsh decisions and Laoda’s new 
 student recruitment process in the summer of 1930 had to be aborted. 
 As the ministry was also to ban the 1931 admissions exercise, the 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 235 
 
 freshmen who entered Laoda in September 1929 in fact constituted 
 the last class of its dwindling student population on campus. 
 
 In retrospect, Yi Peiji and some of his Laoda colleagues should have 
 sensed the imminent and inevitable arrival of the gathering storm 
 which would engulf the entire Laoda community, wash Yi away, and 
 hasten the demise of Labor University. In what later turned out to be 
 his swan song at Laoda, Yi delivered the keynote speech at the August 
 30, 1930, inauguration ceremony for the 1930-31 academic year. In 
 his address to the more than one thousand Laoda students, faculty, 
 and staff assembled in the newly built auditorium on campus, Yi first 
 recalled the university’s “constant struggle for survival amidst ex- 
 treme hardship.” He then offered an optimistic but, as events would 
 soon indicate, most ironic observation: 
 
 At present, although the waves and the wind have calmed down, 
 only the status quo can be maintained here. We must await fur- 
 ther discussion next year with the government and the elites who 
 are concerned with labor education to seek further expansion. 
 I hope all our students under such most exacerbating circum- 
 stances will struggle vigorously for academic advancement, for 
 industrious production, and for physical endurance to develop 
 the laboring spirit in order to gain the faith and respect of the 
 education authorities and society at large. I earnestly urge you not 
 to be pessimistic, and unite to march forward! !5 
 
 Following this moving valedictory from their founding president, 
 the audience was presented with another five reports and speeches by 
 Laoda administrators and professors, all of whom echoed Yi’s strong 
 sentiments. Professor Zhu Tongjiu, the university registrar, reviewing 
 Laoda’s continuous academic development and remarkable expansion 
 during the past three years, lamented the fact that “while we are still 
 in this exciting ongoing process, the education authorities unexpec- 
 tedly dealt us destructive blows,” but he concluded with optimism: 
 “the history of our university during the past three years is a history of 
 struggle, and in the future, I am sure our president, professors, and 
 students will continue to struggle vigorously!’”!¢ 
 
 Likewise, Department of Education chairman Zhang Yousan tried 
 to boost morale by stating, “It is indeed a splendid occasion that 
 against great adversity in such precarious times, students of our uni- 
 versity can congregate in this newly built auditorium. The new spirit 
 and the new enterprise of our university all emerged through haz- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 236 
 
 ardous and painful struggles. Last semester, the Ministry of Education 
 gave us a new stimulus. I hope that all our students can use this 
 stimulus to advantage.”'” Yi Gengfu, the instructor of the Party Doc- 
 trines course, followed with another exhortation: “Laoda students 
 possess a meritorious spirit. The university indeed has its unique 
 distinction but must not be self-satisfied nor self-complacent. What 
 we have today are the results of our struggles.’”18 
 
 Gong Xiangming, chairman of the sociology department, implored 
 the students to do their utmost for Laoda and for the future of labor 
 education in China: 
 
 We must continue our efforts to save the university. Labor 
 University was born and developed through hazardous struggles, 
 from now on we must embrace the spirit of total sacrifice, great 
 endurance, and utmost determination. Only then can our univer- 
 sity actualize its ideals. 
 
 Furthermore, we must be united among ourselves in order to 
 fight against unfavorable circumstances and avoid being demol- 
 ished by a few people. 
 
 Therefore, I also have two hopes. First, this ceremony here 
 today indeed can embolden our laboring spirit to achieve the 
 objectives we so cherish in our hearts. 
 
 Second, labor education in China definitely cannot be over- 
 thrown. Labor enterprises are all necessary. If China is to rise and 
 prosper, it must rely on labor education; if the masses are to rise 
 and prosper, there can be no other way but to develop and expand 
 labor education. !9 
 
 Unfortunately, as if this rhetoric had fallen on deaf ears, Nanjing was 
 to deal another crushing blow to Laoda in less than a month. 
 
 The Crisis for Survival, 1930 
 
 As if to add insult to injury, the national government on September 18, 
 1930, approved the Education Ministry’s proposal that senior govern- 
 ment officials should not concurrently hold the presidency of any 
 national university. Soon after the new ruling was promulgated, Yi 
 Peiji (who was then minister of agriculture and mines) was formally 
 removed from the presidency of Labor University on September 24, 
 1930, only days after the 1930 fall semester classes began on Septem- 
 ber 8, under a direct order from the national government. Yi was not 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 237 
 
 even accorded the official courtesy of being permitted to “resign vol- 
 untarily” as Sun Ke (minister of railways and the son of Sun Zhong- 
 shan) had been allowed to resign from the presidency of Communica- 
 tions University a few days earlier. Incidentally, Minister of Education 
 Jiang Menglin himself also concurrently served as president of Na- 
 tional Zhejiang University in Hangzhou from October 1928 until July 
 1930.20 
 
 More than simply an official affront and political disgrace for Yi, his 
 removal also turned the administration of Laoda into a nightmare. 
 After Yi’s departure from Laoda the national government did not 
 name a successor to the university presidency until December 2, 
 1930, thus creating a power vacuum on campus.?! The search for Yi’s 
 replacement triggered a series of faculty-staff maneuvers and public 
 protests, as well as student unrest and vocal criticisms against univer- 
 sity mismanagement throughout autumn 1930, when Laoda was tem- 
 porarily managed by a university senate infested with faculty fac- 
 tions. 
 
 At the first senate meeting of twenty-nine faculty and staff mem- 
 bers held in the afternoon of the very day that Yi officially stepped 
 down, an administrator made a report on his behalf that stressed the 
 following points: 
 
 In Laoda’s past three years every day has been a hazardous strug- 
 gle. The president, despite personal sacrifices, has struggled to- 
 gether with all our colleagues. Now, as the national government 
 has issued its order on full-time university administrators, he of 
 course needs to obey and leave the presidency. 
 
 In order to maintain university operations, President Yi is mak- 
 ing special efforts to settle all the university business that he has 
 managed. Faculty and staff salaries for the months of August and 
 September will be paid in full immediately. 
 
 As the founder of our university, President Yi will continue 
 to contribute his personal efforts to protect the university. He 
 wishes that those who are still in the university will vigorously 
 promote labor education and continue the common struggle.22 
 
 Following this report, the senate resolved to issue a public state- 
 ment (drafted by Yi Gengfu) which, besides expressing gratitude for Yi 
 Peiji’s contributions to Laoda and regretting his sudden removal, also 
 laid down seven criteria for selecting the next university president. 
 The candidate should: 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 238 
 
 1. have considerable achievement in university administration; 
 
 2. have an understanding of and the dedication to strive for the de- 
 velopment of labor education; 
 
 3. have an outstanding academic record as well as high personal char- 
 acter and integrity; 
 
 4. be able to devote full time to the task without any outside commit- 
 ment; 
 
 5. have party (GMb) experience and revolutionary spirit; 
 
 6. preserve and further expand upon the existing foundation of the 
 university; 
 
 7. have global vision. 
 
 The statement further reaffirmed the faculty’s determination to 
 maintain the status of Laoda as “a special university” because “Laoda 
 has shouldered a crucial national educational responsibility by pro- 
 viding free education to industrious youth in poverty who perform 
 manual labor while engaging in advanced academic studies in order to 
 become the special talents needed in the Chinese revolution—who 
 have great learning and yet are able to work with the laboring masses.” 
 The statement ended with a declaration that “the senate will sternly 
 oppose all attempts from the outside to destroy the university, and 
 will not compromise or yield in this resolute struggle.”23 This set the 
 tone for the faculty and staff’s maneuvering vis a vis the Ministry of 
 Education in the fall of 1930. 
 
 This first meeting also appointed a temporary executive committee 
 of five members to take charge of actual university administration for 
 the senate. The second meeting of the senate, held on October 11, 
 took little action except to ask the government for an early appoint- 
 ment of the new president.?4 But in the third senate meeting four days 
 later it was resolved to oppose the Education Ministry’s proposed 
 treatment of Laoda—not to appoint a successor president but instead 
 to directly take over the management of the university. The meeting 
 also reorganized a temporary executive committee. Its new member- 
 ship included Cheng Ganyun and Peng Xiang as ex officio members, 
 and Dean of Agriculture Li Lianggong, the chair of sociology Gong 
 Xianming, and physics professor Li Wanying as elected members. It 
 also cabled the Education Ministry for urgently needed budget pay- 
 ments.2° By then, the three major concerns of the Laoda faculty and 
 staff had become unmistakably clear to all: the new presidential 
 appointment, the problem of finances for Laoda’s continued opera- 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 239 
 
 tion, and the management of the university in this period of uncer- 
 tainty. 
 
 The Laoda faculty and staff were most disturbed and alarmed by the 
 Education Ministry’s change of heart and tightening rein. In mid- 
 October the minister decided to conduct an investigation and audit of 
 Laoda’s administration before recommending the appointment of a 
 new president. Yet after the three official investigator-auditors had 
 arrived on the Laoda campus and arranged for the records to be exam- 
 ined, the ministry suddenly cabled different instructions and ordered 
 these three officials to become “takeover commissioners” to control 
 Laoda’s operations directly.2° 
 
 At the fourth senate meeting, held on October 21, chaired by Peng 
 Xiang, and attended by twenty-nine faculty and staff, resolutions were 
 passed to cable requests to the national government and Executive 
 Council to expedite the appointment of Laoda’s president, and, more 
 important, to cable the Education Ministry urging it to rescind the 
 new order on the direct takeover of Laoda and readopt its original 
 proposal for an investigation and audit instead. Another cable was 
 sent to Jiang Jieshi, then chairman of the national government, to 
 report the university’s stance with regard to the investigation-audit 
 officials. The senate also posted an announcement to the students 
 informing them of the above actions and urging them to “remain calm 
 in their studies and not believe in outside rumors,” because the senate 
 was assuming full responsibility for university management until the 
 arrival of a new president.?7 
 
 Following all these public protests and behind-the-scenes political 
 maneuvering, Laoda was given a reprieve, with only the investigation 
 and audit to handle. In fact, partisans for Laoda’s cause took revenge 
 on what they perceived to be the mastermind responsible for Laoda’s 
 crisis of survival—Minister of Education Jiang Menglin. Under severe 
 public criticism and heavy pressure from the Gmp elders over the 
 Laoda affair and the student unrest at Central University in Nanjing 
 following the change of its president, Jiang resigned his ministerial 
 portfolio in late October 1930 to return to the chancellorship at Beida. 
 The Chinese education scene was so complicated that a suitable 
 successor was difficult to locate. Hence Jiang Jieshi, chairman of the 
 national government and premier of the Executive Council, had to 
 take over in November 1930 to serve concurrently as the minister of 
 education. Jiang appointed a French-educated scientist, Li Shuhua, as 
 vice minister to take actual charge. Li was a close confidant of Li 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 240 
 
 Shizeng and harbored no grudge against Yi Peiji or Labor University. 
 Soon, Laoda was spared a worse fate and was able to prolong its 
 operations with the appointment of a new president on December 2, 
 1930. Thus it seemed that Laoda was saved by the timely departure 
 from Nanjing of its archenemy Jiang Menglin, who reportedly com- 
 plained to Jiang Jieshi in the fall of 1930 that “Laoda was an asylum for 
 communism, just like Xiaozhuang” (a normal school that was closed 
 down by the Gmp authorities on April 12, 1930, on suspicion of being 
 “reactionary”).28 
 
 The university’s survival crisis brought to a head the factional strife 
 among Laoda faculty and staff, claiming many casualties. At the fifth 
 senate meeting, on October 24, 1930, with twenty-one faculty and 
 staff in attendance, the two major decisions made both involved per- 
 sonnel. The senate accepted the resignation of Li Lianggong, dean of 
 agriculture, from the temporary executive committee and voted in 
 Chen Guorong, chairman of the Department of Agriculture, as his 
 replacement. It also approved Director of General Affairs Cheng Gan- 
 yun’s resignation from his concurrent post as dean of engineering and 
 asked the engineering college faculty to nominate one of the depart- 
 ment chairmen as acting dean.2? By this time, Dean Li had become 
 deeply embroiled in various serious disputes with other faculty mem- 
 bers and administrators. According to a Shanghai newspaper which 
 printed Li's open letter to Laoda faculty and staff and the rebuttal from 
 seventeen agriculture college department chairmen and professors, Li 
 allegedly had harbored the ambition to become Laoda’s chief admin- 
 istrator in the interim, and then vice president of Laoda under a 
 nominal president. To further his scheme, Li, on the one hand, tried to 
 squeeze out faculty members who opposed him, especially those in 
 the agriculture college—in particular Cheng Guorong, who replaced 
 him on the temporary executive committee. On the other hand, Li 
 also courted the support of other faculty and staff members while at 
 the same time attempting to manipulate the students into protest 
 actions against those currently in the senate. The exposé in the press 
 (which was also excerpted in Education Journal, thus making public 
 these full-scale professional scandals) and the resulting public pres- 
 sure helped defeat Li’s ambitions. The sharp rebuttals from some 
 of his colleagues and the sarcastic criticism aired by students also 
 ushered in the end of Li’s prospects at Laoda.?° In the spring of 1931 he 
 was succeeded as dean by Zhang Nong, director of the university farm 
 and one of those attacked by Li. 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 241 
 
 Laoda students responded to the survival crisis with a mobilization 
 of protests and demands that paralleled the actions of their teachers. 
 But on several crucial issues they adopted an independent stance, and 
 they were not uncritical of the administrative structure and personnel 
 on campus. The undergraduates first learned of Yi Peiji’s removal at 
 the third weekly assembly of the fall semester on September 22, 1930. 
 At the engineering—social sciences joint assembly, Cheng Ganyun 
 remarked that while President Yi had left office, he would still be 
 protective of Laoda, so students should study as usual in order to 
 fulfill the missions of the university.3! Similar sentiments were ex- 
 pressed by Li Lianggong and Zhang Nong in the agriculture college 
 assembly. Li’s report carried a note of urgency. Noting that faculty and 
 staff, just like the students, had “read about last week’s decision in the 
 newspapers,” he pointed to the selection of a new president as a 
 critical issue upon which might hinge the continued existence of the 
 university.32 Zhang Nong also emphasized the importance of an ap- 
 propriate appointment, but he seemed to welcome change, “so long as 
 there is progress.” While he expressed the hope that “the next presi- 
 dent can appreciate the special mission of our university, and promote 
 labor education vigorously,” his main concerns were that the new 
 president work with faculty, staff, and students, raise both the quality 
 and the quantity of faculty and students, and, above all, resolve the 
 problem of funding, which was the greatest obstacle to further de- 
 velopment.33 
 
 Despite the faculty and staff’s public messages to the students 
 counseling calm, the shadow cast by Yi’s removal and the uncertain 
 future took their tolls on campus life. For instance, at the engineer- 
 ing—social sciences joint assembly on October 6, Dean of Student 
 Affairs Zhou Bangshi informed the audience that due to lack of prepa- 
 ration the Laoda third anniversary celebration originally scheduled for 
 October to (the same date as the Republic’s National Day) had to be 
 postponed, and on October 10 the Laoda community would observe 
 only National Day. This announcement, which came right after Zhou 
 had urged the students to remain calm over Yi’s departure, was highly 
 indicative of the futility of any “studies as usual” pretense in this 
 crisis situation.34 
 
 Indeed, student activists lost no time organizing and mobilizing to 
 exert pressure on both the Nanjing authorities and the Laoda estab- 
 lishment. Their first major salvo came at the Student Union’s general 
 meeting on October 2, 1930. The forty-six student representatives 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 242 
 
 present focused their discussions on the abstract criteria for the ap- 
 pointment of the new university president without suggesting any 
 particular candidate for the post. They also resolved to issue a mani- 
 festo that would emphasize (1) the importance of labor education; 
 (2) the past and present conditions in Laoda; (3) the urgent need for 
 appointing a new university president; (4) criteria for the selection of 
 the new president; and (5) their expectations on the new president, 
 which included the following points: (a) he must not change the title 
 and reduce the scope of Labor University, (b) an immediate announce- 
 ment of Laoda’s future development plans should be made, (c) there 
 must be open accountability of finance, and (d) preparations for re- 
 cruiting new students in January 1931 must be made.*5 
 
 This meeting also formed a special committee on presidential mat- 
 ters consisting of four students representing the three colleges and the 
 high school. Also appointed were four coordinators to conduct elec- 
 tions for twelve student delegates to the university-wide student con- 
 gress from the student body in the three colleges and the high school. 
 These moves aimed at institutionalizing internal solidarity and facili- 
 tating intercollegiate cooperation in order to ensure the representa- 
 tiveness and popular legitimacy of student opinions on important 
 university issues. Not deterred by the succession crisis at the top, 
 Laoda students also used the occasion to demand improvement of 
 everyday “bread and butter” issues. A host of requests were addressed 
 to the university administration, including continuation of the sub- 
 sidy to the Student Union, the issuance of woollen winter uniforms, 
 an increase of the monthly meal stipend to $7.50, an expansion of 
 library reading rooms, and the distribution of library holdings lists to 
 students.3° 
 
 The newly elected delegates and the Student Union leadership held 
 the first ad hoc meeting of the university-wide student congress on 
 October 9. They resolved to cable the Education Ministry requesting 
 the appointment of a successor president within one week. They also 
 decided to oppose the purported ministry policy of the appointment of 
 new deans prior to the appointment of a new president for Laoda.37 
 
 On October 15 the congress met for the second time and decided not 
 to express any formal opinion regarding the investigator-auditors dis- 
 patched from the Education Ministry. More important, the congress 
 set down the following twelve objectives as the basis for the students’ 
 dealings with those in charge of university affairs: (1) open account- 
 ability for finances, (2) increase in regular allotment and temporary 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 243 
 
 supplements, (3) economic autonomy of the colleges and divisions, 
 (4) merit as the basis for the appointment of staff and faculty, (5) no 
 change in the title of Labor University, (6) no reduction in the scale 
 and scope of the university, (7) improvement of student provisions, 
 (8) the appointment of more full-time professors, (9) retention of 
 outstanding professors, (10) announcement of further development 
 plans, (11) preparations for new student recruitment during the winter 
 holidays, and (12) new formulation of labor education.3® 
 
 These demands reveal that Laoda students had harbored consid- 
 erable grievances and dissatisfaction with existing budgetary con- 
 straints and personnel practices which any effective overhaul and 
 consolidation efforts must address. The succession crisis and govern- 
 ment investigation and/or takeover attempt provided Laoda students 
 with a golden opportunity to seek both improvement in their own lot 
 as well as a more fundamental reformation of the entire Laoda system. 
 
 At the second regular meeting of the social sciences college stu- 
 dents’ association on October 13, its executive committee expressed 
 grave concern for the Education Ministry’s proposed change of the 
 social sciences college into a college of science and decided to call a 
 general meeting of all social sciences majors to finalize their posi- 
 tion.?? 
 
 The next evening, the agriculture college students’ association 
 adopted a neutral position: they would neither oppose nor agree with 
 the Ministry of Education’s takeover order. The group also decided to 
 hold a formal meeting with the ministry officials implementing the 
 takeover in order to learn the official guidelines on posttakeover re- 
 organization. The meeting also approved the following points as the 
 bottom line for Laoda’s continued existence: (1) open accountability 
 of finances, (2) no reduction in university budget allocation, (3) budget 
 autonomy of the three colleges, (4) early establishment of a university- 
 wide academic standard, (5) merit as the basis for the appointment of 
 staff and faculty, and (6) no alteration in the provisions for students.4° 
 
 It was clear that many agriculture undergraduates regarded the 
 ministry’s involvement in the actual management of Laoda as a bless- 
 ing in disguise. The schemes and plots involving their deans, depart- 
 ment chairmen, professors, and even some students in the aftermath 
 of Yi Peiji’s departure dramatized for the students the necessity of 
 radical surgery to save the college and even the entire university from 
 being consumed by internal hemorrhage. As such, the ultimate stance 
 of the students during this survival crisis was markedly different from 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 244 
 
 that of the professors and administrators on the same campus. The 
 only confluence of agenda between these two Laoda constituencies 
 was, ironically, on a matter more oriented to the past than the future— 
 that is, the Student Union general meeting’s decision on October 2 to 
 join with faculty and staff in organizing a farewell reception for the 
 departed president.4! 
 
 On October 30, 1930, a general meeting of the entire student body of 
 the social sciences and engineering colleges was held on the main 
 campus. After meeting continuously for seven hours, the students 
 decided to accept the reasonable settlement proposed by the govern- 
 ment as long as the demands of the students were met, and to oppose 
 the present university senate because it did not conform to the Uni- 
 versity Organization Act, it was manipulated by a few administrators, 
 it repressed student opinions, it improperly used students’ names for 
 external release, and also because the administrators it appointed 
 failed to live up to public expectations and could no longer properly 
 manage university affairs. The general meeting suggested the follow- 
 ing four solutions: (1) request the Ministry of Education to run the 
 university administration, (2) issue a public proclamation to clarify 
 the situation, (3) dispatch a representative to report on the situation at 
 Laoda, and (4) consult the opinions of students in the agriculture 
 college and the higher schools. This meeting also decided to expel 
 from the university two members of the administration (the chief 
 secretary, Peng Xiang, and the director of general affairs, Zheng Gan- 
 yun). The students also dispatched representatives to the central au- 
 thorities in Nanjing charged with expressing their opposition to the 
 university senate and their support of the government’s decision to 
 reform university administration.42 
 
 Student ferment subsided shortly thereafter. In a special announce- 
 ment in the November 10, 1930, Labor University Weekly, one of the 
 four members of the students’ presidential succession committee 
 stated that since the other three members had resigned for various 
 reasons, the committee in practice had no further business to attend 
 to. He also tendered his own resignation.43 
 
 The presidential succession crisis revealed fierce factional struggles 
 among administrators, teachers, and staff at Laoda. Even some stu- 
 dents were involved in the faculty-staff factional conflicts. In a sense 
 the dismissal of Yi Peiji turned the external battle between the Minis- 
 try of Education and Labor University into a domestic struggle for 
 power among Laoda elements. The crisis eroded internal solidarity 
 and any sense of community at Laoda.*4 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 245 
 
 Internal Crisis in Laoda, 1931 
 
 Eventually Yi was succeeded by Wang Jingqi, who arrived on campus 
 to take office as the second and last president of Labor University on 
 December 18, 1930. Wang, a French-educated diplomat, was formerly 
 China’s minister to Belgium, and later, after his presidency at Labor 
 University, became minister to Sweden and Poland. Both Yi and Wang 
 were prominent political figures close to Li Shizeng, revealing in very 
 clear terms the anarchist influence and French connection in the 
 founding and administration of Labor University. However, although 
 he cherished the example of Charleroi Labor University in Belgium, 
 Wang was far from being a decisive leader and competent administra- 
 tor at Laoda.4® 
 
 At the beginning of his tenure Wang undertook the reorganization 
 and streamlining of Laoda’s academic structure, administrative hier- 
 archy, and management practices according to the University Organi- 
 zation Act promulgated by the national government. Adhering to the 
 standards and norms laid down by Nanjing, a series of new rules and 
 regulations governing administrative affairs, academic activities, out- 
 reach programs, student discipline, and campus life, as well as the 
 operation of various other university organs, were established under 
 Wang’s direction. The new president also conducted a host of meet- 
 ings with the senate, college associations, factory management, and 
 so on, for fact finding and consolidation of existing programs. A new 
 slate of college deans, department chairmen, factory director, and 
 unit/committee heads was appointed by Wang in spring 1931.46 Wang 
 even adopted a new university anthem, “The Song of Overseas Chi- 
 nese Workers” (Qiaogong ge), which he had composed while stationed 
 in Paris during 1919 as a diplomat.47 
 
 Wang’s tenure as president was to be short-lived. Despite his consci- 
 entious efforts, he was unable to resolve Laoda’s problems, which did 
 not lend themselves to quick or easy solutions. Laoda’s reputation 
 further deteriorated as a series of violent student protests against the 
 university and the GMp regime shook the campus. 
 
 On a particularly ugly day, April 13, 1931, after announcing at the 
 weekly assembly that the free meal provisions for students would end 
 in July and the student dormitories would close down during the sum- 
 mer vacation, Wang was blockaded inside the auditorium by the verbal 
 barrage and even physical assault of the students. Several hundred 
 students from Laoda’s high school also came to lay siege to the au- 
 ditorium in support of the undergraduates. Even the arrival of armed 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 246 
 
 police could not rescue Wang from the students, who denounced him 
 as “oppressor of students” and “destroyer of labor education.” He was 
 finally released after a five-hour detention, but not before he signed a 
 document canceling these unpopular policies.48 By then, Laoda had 
 become almost ungovernable. 
 
 The shock wave from this incident was so severe for the devastated 
 President Wang that, according to a report published in China Times 
 (also excerpted in Education Journal, the leading monthly forum for 
 education circles in China), he did not set foot on the Laoda campus 
 for some two months, until July 3, 1931. Asa result, important univer- 
 sity matters remained undecided. Worse still, the university was be- 
 sieged by a new crisis stemming from the Ministry of Education’s June 
 12, 1931, order banning the recruitment of new students for the 193 1— 
 32 academic year. Wang's whereabouts remained unknown, and with 
 no one in charge, deep anxiety pervaded the entire university commu- 
 nity. 
 
 To express their opposition to the ministry’s second ban on the 
 recruitment of new students, Laoda undergraduates issued a lengthy 
 public statement pleading for the lifting of the ban. In appealing for 
 public sympathy and support, the students stressed the special pur- 
 pose and historical mission of Laoda as an experiment with labor 
 education which sought to liberate the Chinese laborers who formed 
 the majority of the country’s masses; Laoda paralleled in importance 
 “the functions of the Central Political Academy and the Military 
 Academy to train political and military talents.” Noting that more 
 than eight hundred requests were received for application forms after 
 the admissions announcement had appeared in the press, students 
 criticized the ministry’s decision as a “violation of its own professed 
 purpose of protecting labor education.” They argued that with no 
 incoming freshmen (due to the previous year’s ban) and the imminent 
 graduation of the inaugural class of 1927, the university would be left 
 with only about a hundred students in the three colleges, which was 
 bound to raise even more questions concerning its status as a univer- 
 sity.4? Finally, this public statement questioned the ministry’s pretext 
 of reorganizing Laoda: “If there are no students left, then why should 
 one talk of reorganization? Only with new student recruitment can 
 there be genuine and thorough reorganization; otherwise, there will 
 only be the pretext of reorganization without knowing what and how 
 to reorganize. Last year it was reorganization, this year it is reorganiza- 
 tion again, if next year it will again be reorganization, then the future 
 of Labor University is doomed.’’5° 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 247 
 
 On July 2, 1931, the Ministry of Education again dispatched an 
 inspection team to investigate the situation at Laoda. The next day, 
 Wang Jinggi suddenly appeared on the campus with the ministry’s 
 investigators. They were beset by Laoda undergraduates and striking 
 high-school students who were bitterly opposed to the reduction in 
 Laoda’s budget and cuts in student support. On being asked by the 
 students to make a full report in a classroom, Wang stated that he had 
 already tendered his resignation and thus was no longer able to give a 
 report. He even made public the text of his resignation telegram, in 
 which he cited “poor personal health” as the reason for stepping 
 down. Some students blockaded Wang and the investigators inside 
 the classroom, raising a variety of demands. This incident lasted five 
 hours, and the siege was finally broken by the police who came to 
 suppress the militant students.°! 
 
 According to a press account on the following day, “Wang was said 
 to be quite firm about his resignation, he had already notified the 
 various colleges, departments, and units to prepare for the transfer to a 
 successor, pending whose arrival, the General Affairs Office would 
 handle the administration of the university.’’°2 
 
 A week later, on July 11, 1931, the Ministry of Education took the 
 usual steps in ordering the suspension of Laoda’s student organiza- 
 tions. All Laoda undergraduates and new graduates were ordered to 
 leave the campus, and undergraduates must go through a “reregistra- 
 tion” process conducted by the university administration before they 
 could resume their Laoda enrollment and continue their studies in 
 the fall. The ministry also closed down the high school, whose stu- 
 dents were ordered to vacate the school premises; they also would go 
 through a screening process before they could be transferred to other 
 high schools, and the primary school was to become a municipal 
 school.53 The summer of 1931 was a depressing period for the entire 
 Laoda community, which had already sensed the beginning of the end. 
 
 Despite these events, Wang Jingqi did not leave the helm of Laoda in 
 the storm. He remained as president when the 1931 fall semester 
 began in September and the “reregistered” undergraduates returned to 
 campus. But no freshmen were admitted. According to the brief his- 
 torical sketch in National Labor University General Conditions pub- 
 lished by Laoda in December 1931, “order had been restored to the 
 university, where students attended their classes as usual.”54 Unfor- 
 tunately, the author of this line either did not foresee or dared not 
 reveal that such a return to “classes as usual” was more apparent than 
 real. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 248 
 
 The Downfall of Yi Peiji and the Financial Crisis 
 
 The political fortunes of Yi also had direct bearings on the financial 
 health of Labor University, and as such, Yi’s political demise indi- 
 rectly spelled the end for Laoda. Yi was a teacher and later principal of 
 the Hunan First Provincial Normal School in Changsha during 1914— 
 22, where his students included future ccp leaders Mao Zedong and 
 Cai Hesen. In 1920 he had invited Mao to head the primary school 
 attached to the normal school. Yi went south to Guangzhou in 1922 to 
 join the GMD cause under Sun Zhongshan, who dispatched Yi to work 
 among the intellectual circles in Beijing. Yi soon became a close 
 associate of Li Shizeng, chairman of the board of the Beijing Palace 
 Museum, who appointed Yi as the curator in 1925. Briefly in Novem- 
 ber 1924, and again from December 1925 to March 1926, Yi served as 
 minister of education in the Beijing regime. Concurrently, he held the 
 chancellorship of Beijing Normal University. When the Nationalist 
 government was established in Nanjing in 1927, Yi served as a mem- 
 ber of the University Council headed by Cai Yuanpei. In October 1928 
 Yi was also appointed minister of agriculture and mines in the Nan- 
 jing government in addition to his presidency of Labor University and 
 his curatorship of the Beijing Palace Museum. It was with the full 
 support of Li Shizeng, Wu Zhihui, and Cai Yuanpei—the elder states- 
 men in the GMpD regime with direct control over the educational 
 establishment—that Yi became the first president of Labor Univer- 
 sity in 1927.°° 
 
 It was also because of such political patronage, personal ties, and 
 anarchist connections that Labor University in its early days under 
 Yi’s leadership managed to obtain successive government grants of 
 land and facilities for its campus, factories, and farms, as well as 
 budget allocations for almost continuous construction and renova- 
 tion. While holding the Agriculture and Mines portfolio, which con- 
 trolled considerable sums from official revenue, Yi was able to trans- 
 fer funds directly from the ministry to the coffers of Labor University. 
 In doing so Yi deliberately bypassed the administrative supervision, 
 normal budgetary control, and accounting procedures of the Ministry 
 of Finance, thus creating constant friction with Minister of Finance 
 T. V. Soong, the very powerful brother-in-law of both Jiang Jieshi and 
 the late Dr. Sun. The sums involved in these “direct transfers” were 
 quite substantial, sometimes amounting to over $100,000.°° 
 
 The Cai Yuanpei-Li Shizeng split in 1928-29 destroyed Yi’s ef- 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 249 
 
 fective support base among the Gmp elder statesmen. The sudden 
 death of Tan Yankai, premier of the national government’s Executive 
 Council on September 22, 1930, dealt another fatal blow. Tan, a fellow 
 Hunanese, was a close friend and intimate companion of Yi’s. Only 
 two days after Tan’s death, Yi was officially removed from the Laoda 
 presidency under the new regulations of the Education Ministry. At 
 the end of 1930 Yi also lost his ministerial portfolio when the Minis- 
 try of Agriculture and Mines was merged with the Ministry of Indus- 
 try and Commerce, forming a new Ministry of Industry. The previous 
 minister of industry and commerce, H. H. Kung, another influential 
 brother-in-law of Jiang and Dr. Sun, became the new minister of 
 industry. This effectively excluded Yi from the highest ranks in the 
 Nanjing leadership. The final blow came when Yi Peiji was forced to 
 resign from all the other public offices he still held by a public scandal 
 of alleged embezzlement of articles and treasures from the Palace 
 Museum in the former Qing palaces in Beijing.°” 
 
 On the surface, the ministry funds transferred by Yi to Laoda might 
 seem to be a very substantial amount. But in view of the tight budget 
 and often inadequate level of financial support Laoda had been operat- 
 ing with since its founding in 1927, these funds were vital for the 
 continued existence of the university, the maintenance of its stu- 
 dents, and the operation of its academic and outreach programs. In 
 fact, from the very beginning, budgetary constraints and inadequate 
 funding had troubled Laoda’s administrators, who often publicly ad- 
 mitted this to be the single most crucial obstacle to the growth and 
 progress of the university.°8 A closer examination of Laoda’s financial 
 records substantiates this view. 
 
 At Laoda’s founding stage, the national government approved the 
 monthly budget of the Labor University Preparation Committee at 
 $10,000 for the two colleges plus another $1,000 as expenses of the 
 preparation office, starting from June 1927. Since the university’s 
 industrial labor college did not start formal instruction until Septem- 
 ber, the first three months’ allocation (June—August 1927) of $30,000 
 was used as start-up funds.°? In October 1927, with the establishment 
 of the agricultural labor college, the monthly budget was increased to 
 $20,000. By then Laoda also received an additional $4,000 to $5,000 
 per month from the Jiangsu Provincial Educational Trust.©° 
 
 The 1928 spring semester saw a slight increase in the budget. How- 
 ever, of the originally approved $200,000 for “temporary expenses” 
 (that is, one-time or short-term, nonrecurrent funds) to cover capital 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 250 
 
 investment costs, Laoda actually received only a small portion during 
 the entire 1927-28 academic year, while total expenses mounted 
 substantially with the creation of new units and programs in the fall 
 semester of 1928. Unfortunately, funds from the Jiangsu Provincial 
 Educational Trust were stopped in November 1928, and only 70 per- 
 cent of the budgeted $20,000 per month allotment from the Ministry 
 of Finance was paid. Laoda’s official second anniversary publication 
 noted that, “with expenses greatly exceeding its income, Laoda was 
 placed in an almost unbearable predicament. Only through the presi- 
 dent’s efforts to seek loans and make transfers from various sources, as 
 well as with the extremely tightfisted reduction in expenses, was the 
 university able to survive such hardship.’°! 
 
 In April 1929 the government’s recurrent monthly allocation to 
 Laoda was raised to $50,000, and expansion in campus facilities and 
 student amenities became possible for the 1929 spring semester. How- 
 ever, such payments were often not paid on schedule, and the “tempo- 
 rary expenses” allotment for all of 1929 amounted only to a little over 
 $10,000.62 Even then, these official budget figures were very often 
 misleading. For instance, both the respected daily Ta Kung Pao (Da- 
 gong bao) and the news magazine National News Weekly |Guowen 
 zhoubao) used the Ministry of Education’s approved budget figure of 
 $645,268 as the official allocation to Labor University for the aca- 
 demic year 1928-29. In reality, however, Laoda had to operate with 
 a serious deficit situation, because the payments actually received 
 by the university from the government for this period totaled only 
 $334,500, a shortfall of $310,768, or nearly 48 percent of the originally 
 budgeted amount.°? 
 
 Based on data from the second National Education Congress, the 
 Education Journal (May 1930) listed the budgets of fourteen national 
 universities, citing Laoda’s budget for 1929-30 as $684,686 (or $57,057 
 per month) in recurrent expenses and $149,800 in “temporary” ex- 
 penses, and for 1928—29, $645,268 (or $53,772 per month) in recurrent 
 and $126,287 in “temporary” expenses. As mentioned before, the 
 actual amounts of government funds received by Laoda during these 
 two years were substantially less than the official budgets suggest. 
 Even the Journal’s own comment on this list admitted that the 1929— 
 30 budgets had yet to be approved in late 1929, and the national 
 universities had to operate on the 1928—29 budgets.°4 
 
 Likewise, the monthly recurrent allocation of $64,296.25, or an 
 annual total of $771,550, from the Ministry of Finance to Laoda only 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 251 
 
 referred to the government’s budget figures.°>5 Because of the national 
 government’s own financial difficulties (due to civil wars in 1928-30 
 and Japanese attacks in 1931-32) and the relatively low priority the 
 regime accorded to the education budget, the official allocation fig- 
 ures were often substantially larger than the actual payments made to 
 the national universities, including Laoda. This was a major factor 
 behind the demise of the University Council system and an important 
 cause of the 1930 university crisis in China.°° 
 
 Thus, despite the $684,686 budgeted as government funding, it did 
 not come as a great surprise when Laoda’s administration received a 
 letter dated October 22, 1929, from President Yi Peiji in Nanjing 
 stating that the current political crisis was causing problems with 
 budget allocations, and Laoda’s various plans for expansion must be 
 suspended temporarily until funds became available again.°” Even if 
 paid in full and on time, the total annual recurrent allotment from the 
 government was barely sufficient to cover the basic requirements of 
 Laoda’s rather extensive array of academic programs and other related 
 undertakings. A concrete example is the Laoda budget for 1930-31. A 
 fairly detailed breakdown of Laoda’s proposed budgets for the aca- 
 demic year 1930—31 (prepared and published in the relatively optimis- 
 tic atmosphere of spring 1930) is shown below:°8 
 
 Labor University Proposed Recurrent Budget 
 for Academic Year 1930-31 
 
 Income: 
 From central government education funds $672,724 
 Total $672,724 
 Expenditures: 
 Faculty and staff salaries 369,420 
 Royalties 1,200 
 Workers’ meal stipend 23,892 
 Stationery 9,960 
 Postage and telecommunication 4,860 
 Printing 7,080 
 Rents 1,600 
 Miscellaneous 76,512 
 Repairs and maintenance I1I,460 
 Special official expenses 7,560 
 Survey trips travel 1,200 
 
 Currency exchange 240 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 252 
 
 Subsidy to University Federation 1,440 
 Insurance 6,000 
 Food service 93,240 
 Student uniforms 15,540 
 Lecture notes 9,000 
 Fieldwork/empirical work 28,920 
 Reserve 3,600 
 
 Total $672,724 
 
 Labor University Temporary Expenses Budget 
 for Academic Year 1930-31 
 
 Income: 
 From central government education funds $134,900 
 Total $134,900 
 Expenditures: 
 Construction 33,060 
 Repairs 19,260 
 Equipment 60,416 
 Miscellaneous 6,000 
 Student survey visits 6,780 
 Land purchase 1,850 
 Compilation of China Labor Education Yearbook 2,000 
 Reserve 5,534 
 Total $134,900 
 
 While these two proposed budgets represented an optimistic projec- 
 tion of funding possibilities for the income columns, which antici- 
 pated a total of $807,624 in central government funds, the itemized 
 expenditure headings are quite revealing. First, the funds set aside as 
 reserves in both budgets were quite nominal, with almost no comfort- 
 able margin for the unexpected. In this sense, both were bare-bones 
 budgets with nothing to spare. Second, the largest single item of 
 expenditure in the recurrent budget was faculty and staff salaries 
 ($369,420), amounting to slightly over one-half of the total. This was 
 the normal pattern for most institutions of higher education. But the 
 next largest expenditure was the combined subtotal of $117,780 to 
 cover provisions for students (food service, uniforms, lecture notes). 
 As a public university that charged no tuition fees, Laoda was, on the 
 one hand, totally dependent on state funding for income. On the other 
 hand, Laoda also offered free room and board plus uniforms, lecture 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 253 
 
 notes, and medical care to all its students, thus adding substantially 
 (about 17.6 percent of the 1930-31 recurrent budget) to its finan- 
 cial requirements. Third, survey trips travel and fieldwork/empirical 
 work totaled $30,120, or 4.4 percent of the recurrent budget, and 
 student visitations ($6,780) took 5 percent of the “temporary ex- 
 penses” budget. These three items of expenditure reflected Laoda’s 
 mandatory components in manual labor and social service as well as 
 its genuine commitment to afford its students with opportunities for 
 socially relevant academic participation. Fourth, the expenditures on 
 royalties, printing, and compilation of the China Labor Education 
 Yearbook (amounting to $10,280, about 1.27 percent of the combined 
 budgets) represented Laoda’s strong emphasis on scholarship and pub- 
 lication, since royalties and printing costs included expenses incurred 
 in the publication of works from the Publication and Translation 
 Office as well as other official university publications such as the 
 Laoda Weekly, Monthly, and Anthology. 
 
 As might be expected, Laoda’s financial situation during the aca- 
 demic year 1930-31 was not as rosy as a superficial reading of the 
 proposed budgets would indicate. President Yi’s address at the August 
 30, 1930, academic year inauguration ceremony cited budget diffi- 
 culties and the lack of adequate support as major causes of Laoda’s 
 inability to develop smoothly.°? A week later, Laoda’s General Affairs 
 Office received a letter from Yi in Nanjing explaining the suspension 
 of “temporary expenses” payments and the need to be extremely tight 
 over recurrent expenditures due to funding difficulties.7° 
 
 Then, on September 8, the dean of engineering and concurrent 
 director of general affairs, Cheng Ganyun, informed engineering un- 
 dergraduates at the first weekly assembly of autumn 1930 that univer- 
 sity finances were extremely tight because monthly allocations from 
 the government had been in arrears for four months. The university 
 was already behind on payment for the construction of new buildings 
 on campus, and without any certainty of funding, furnishings and 
 equipment had to be kept to a minimum.’! On the same day, in his 
 report to social sciences majors attending their first 1930 fall semester 
 weekly assembly, the dean of the college, Peng Xiang, stated that plans 
 to expand the college’s enrollment to six hundred through new stu- 
 dent recruitment in the next three years and to build new college 
 facilities on an adjacent site had to be abandoned completely due to an 
 “attack from a certain direction” which banned new student admis- 
 sions and the lack of funds for construction.”2 A week later, even 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 254 
 
 Laoda’s high-school students were told by administrators that in the 
 past several months the Ministry of Education had withheld pay- 
 ments of over $300,000 in approved funds to Laoda, and the univer- 
 sity’s continued operation was made possible only by President Yi’s 
 personal efforts in fund-raising through loans and transfers. Still, over 
 $100,000 was needed soon to meet recurrent expenses and construc- 
 tion costs.7% 
 
 Thus it seemed that the ambitious plans adopted in May 1930 for 
 expansion in both undergraduate enrollment (engineering to four hun- 
 dred, agriculture to four hundred, social sciences to six hundred) and 
 campus facilities at Laoda had to be shelved. If successfully imple- 
 mented, the planned construction of new physical structures during 
 1930-32 would have cost over $100,000 ($30,000 for an auditorium, 
 $20,000 for an agricultural laboratory, over $30,000 for a classroom 
 building, six greenhouses, six chicken sheds, a seed storage shed, a 
 fertilizer pond, and a farm tools hut, plus $20,000 for a high-school 
 classroom and dormitory building, and several thousand dollars for 
 primary school—kindergarten facilities).74 Of these, only the new au- 
 ditorium with a seating capacity of 1,600 was completed by fall 1930. 
 
 Therefore, as the above sequence of events indicates, the financial 
 difficulties Laoda faced in the summer of 1930 predated Yi’s removal 
 from the university presidency. However, this did not lessen the ac- 
 tual impact of his departure, which turned an already bad situation of 
 planned expansions put “on hold” into a worse case of current confu- 
 sion and future uncertainty. The financial crisis at Laoda was saved 
 from further deterioration only by Yi’s parting gesture of support— 
 faculty and staff salaries for August and September 1930 would be 
 paid in full, meal stipends for students would be issued, and all univer- 
 sity recurrent expenses would be met as usual, and Yi would person- 
 ally take care of Laoda’s accounts up to September 20, 1930, when the 
 Laoda senate would assume responsibility.’> 
 
 There is no solid evidence to ascertain whether the Education Min- 
 istry’s nonpayment of Laoda’s budgeted allocations was politically 
 motivated (that is, the result of Minister Jiang’s vendetta against 
 President Yi and Laoda) or simply due to across-the-board belt tight- 
 ening in Nanjing necessitated by financial or political crisis. Laoda’s 
 financial predicament in fact predated Jiang Menglin’s assumption of 
 the Education portfolio in October 1928, and some of its problems 
 stemmed from the acquisition of its campus and expansion of physi- 
 cal facilities during its earliest days. 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 255 
 
 The takeover of two factories in mid-1927 as the foundation to start 
 Labor University meant that considerable modifications of existing 
 structures and construction of new facilities were necessary to turn 
 production plants into a residential campus suitable for Laoda’s Col- 
 lege of Industrial Labor. This kind of new campus construction was 
 both time and money consuming. Later, the takeover of the campus of 
 the banned Shanghai People’s College in the fall of 1927 as the site for 
 Laoda’s College of Agricultural Labor required Yi Peiji to raise over 
 $30,000 to settle the construction fees owed by the Shanghai People’s 
 College. Laoda also had to pay for repairs to the premises because the 
 Nationalist army, which had previously occupied them, had inflicted 
 considerable damage on the existing facilities.”© 
 
 The search for a plot of land for the agriculture college’s experimen- 
 tal farm also entailed much effort. After failing to purchase or lease 
 existing private farmland, Laoda purchased 24 acres three miles away 
 in Jiangwan and leased a plot of over ro acres adjacent to the campus. 
 Yet these plots were either too far away or too narrow to be practical, 
 and their combined acreage was still too small for the purposes of 
 teaching and research. Finally, the national government’s land grant of 
 a former army holding of 360 acres (worth over $100,000) plus an 
 additional transfer of some 4o acres from the high school’s domain 
 yielded a sizable plot of about 400 acres as Laoda’s new university 
 farm. This new farm was located in Sitong, Wusong, near Laoda’s high 
 school, which was then located on a 70-acre site with buildings con- 
 structed in January 1929 at a cost of over $40,000. In order to be close 
 to the farm, the agriculture college switched sites with the high 
 school during the summer holidays. On top of efforts and expenses 
 involved in this two-way transfer, an additional sum of over $10,000 
 was spent to upgrade the new premises of the agriculture college in 
 Wusong.’7 
 
 In addition to the high school, Laoda’s primary school, originally 
 operated out of rented premises next to the Jiangwan main campus, 
 also constructed its own classroom buildings in spring 1928 and dor- 
 mitories in spring 1929. The first branch primary school, attached to 
 the agriculture college’s original campus, purchased new land to con- 
 struct facilities in summer 1929, while a second branch primary 
 school was established in Wusong near the new site of the agriculture 
 college. The construction of facilities and the operation of all these 
 subuniversity-level units cost a substantial amount in capital invest- 
 ment and recurrent expenses.78 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 256 
 
 The two factories which served as the foundation of Laoda also 
 turned out to be financially troublesome. They originally housed 
 thirteen workshops, each specializing in a particular line of produc- 
 tion with machinery and equipment worth several hundred thousand 
 dollars. At the time the university took over the plants, eight work- 
 shops had already been shut down. Under Laoda’s management as the 
 Labor University Factory, production in the machinery workshop, the 
 chemical works, the carpet weavery, the lamp shop, the printing press, 
 the rubber manufactory, and the tin can plant continued. The printing 
 press in particular enjoyed a thriving business. Social sciences stu- 
 dents performed their manual labor service there, and Laoda’s various 
 periodicals and the volumes coming out of the Publication and Trans- 
 lation Office were printed there as well. The profits earned from 
 outside printing and machine orders were used to cover wages for the 
 factory employees, who numbered 300 in 1928. However, the lack of 
 capital prevented any further expansion of the university factory’s 
 production capacity or technology. Later on, the university factory 
 directly operated only the printing press and the machine works and 
 leased the other production facilities to outside contractors, thus 
 earning some rental income, but they could not make any profit from 
 these facilities.”? The takeover of the factories also placed on Laoda 
 the responsibility of settling the accounts left behind by their pre- 
 vious management. In a single stroke, this transfer of ownership 
 forced Laoda to inherit a debt of $855,000 (about $384,000 owed to 
 banks, $366,000 to business firms, $26,000 to various shops, and 
 $7,700 to other creditors). As a newly established nonprofit institu- 
 tion, Laoda was simply unable to shoulder such a heavy financial 
 burden. In winter 1927, Yi Peiji managed to obtain some government 
 treasury bonds from the Ministry of Finance to settle part of the debt. 
 Then, in 1929, the responsibility for the settlement was transferred to 
 the national government’s Domestic and Foreign Debts Reorganiza- 
 tion Committee. Yet as late as October 1929, Laoda was still legally 
 involved in litigation over the repayment of more than $200,000 in 
 factory debts.®° In a very real sense, the takeover of these factories was 
 a financial curse for Laoda. 
 
 An interesting example of the impact of inadequate funding and 
 Yi’s personal contributions may be found in the university library. 
 Facing twin shortages of funds and space, Laoda’s library moved in 
 mid-1928 from its original premises next to the central administra- 
 tion to a structure with stacks and reading rooms converted from a 
 factory warehouse. To supplement the meager budget for acquisition, 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 257 
 
 Yi Peiji donated his president’s salary of $500 per month for book 
 purchases. For 1928—29, the library recurrent budget was set at $1,000 
 (20 percent for newspaper and journal subscriptions, 80 percent for 
 books) a month. In autumn 1929, expansion of library services and 
 facilities (such as new shelves and display cases), purchase of more 
 books in Chinese and Western languages, and the hiring of new library 
 specialists were made possible by the Hua Chang Company’s dona- 
 tion of $20,000 raised by Yi for those purposes ($5,000 for library 
 facilities and $15,000 for books). It was through these extra means of 
 funding that Laoda managed to build up its library holdings from the 
 1928 total of 3,314 books (2,798 in Chinese and 516 in foreign lan- 
 guages) and 36 titles of periodicals to the 1929 total of 16,695 volumes 
 (15,071 in Chinese and 1,624 in foreign languages), 81 titles of Chi- 
 nese and Japanese periodicals, 28 titles of Western-language periodi- 
 cals, plus more than a dozen newspapers in Chinese and Western 
 languages and fifty or so maps. By the end of 1931 the library had 
 accumulated a total of 42,542 titles in Chinese and Western lan- 
 guages.8! 
 
 In May 1930 a highly optimistic expansion plan for the library was 
 adopted. The plan called for a three-year process to build and equip a 
 new library at a total cost of $120,000, and to increase the library’s 
 recurrent expenditures starting with the academic year 1930—31 to 6 
 percent of the university’s total recurrent budget; the ratio of books to 
 be purchased would be social sciences, 5; engineering, 3; agriculture, 
 3; high school, 2; general readings to be decided by the library, 2.82 
 
 As indicated in the proposed budgets for 1930—31, there were sim- 
 ply no available funds to finance this ambitious plan. Perhaps this was 
 a case of the “too much, too soon, with too few” mentality that 
 underlay the first three years of Laoda’s rapid development under Yi's 
 leadership. Nonetheless, the remarkable expansion of the library’s 
 holdings was only one of many examples in which Yi Peiji’s deep 
 personal involvement was almost indispensable for Laoda’s financial 
 survival. Even in a relatively minor undertaking like the students’ 
 own fund-raising campaign to finance the construction of a swim- 
 ming pool on campus in the summer of 1930, Yi took the lead and 
 contributed $30, the largest single gift among the 162 individual 
 donations toward the total of $254.25 raised.83 
 
 Unfortunately, the university itself did not enjoy the same luck in 
 actualizing the plans laid down in 1928 for establishing a National 
 Labor University Foundation with an initial endowment of $5 mil- 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 258 
 
 lion, whose interest would be used to cover Laoda’s current expendi- 
 tures.84 Had such an endowment become a reality, many of Laoda’s 
 social undertakings, such as the outreach activities sponsored by the 
 LEPC and agrarian research projects in the agriculture college, would 
 have been able to develop on a fuller scale and a more permanent basis. 
 
 The Laoda University Weekly carried numerous reports on the 
 postponement, scaledown, or even abandonment of various proposed 
 acquisitions of new equipment or expansion of existing facilities for 
 the agriculture college.8° The dean of agriculture offered a report 
 regarding the impact of financial constraints on academic develop- 
 ment to the weekly assembly on April 21, 1930.8 
 
 There has been considerable outside criticism of our university 
 and labor education, especially on the serious gap between name 
 and reality in our practice of “labor.” On this point about the 
 impracticability of labor education, we also recognize the prob- 
 lem. Indeed, the present situation here is far from perfect. This is 
 entirely because of material resources. If there were sufficient 
 facilities the situation could easily be improved. 
 
 In theory, labor education should be beyond criticism, although 
 its actualization is a rather different matter. Only a decade from 
 now can we answer with facts whether the people trained by our 
 Labor University are useful to society. At present we could claim 
 success if we reached the stage of integrating manual labor and 
 academic study. We do make mistakes and that is why we have 
 not been able to reach this stage. The reason for this is material 
 resources. 
 
 In the twenty-four hours per day in everyone’s life, after setting 
 aside twelve hours for sleeping, eating, and rest, there are still 
 twelve productive hours: four hours for productive labor and the 
 other eight hours for learning. In the credit system one hour of 
 classwork per week constitutes one academic credit. Here at 
 Laoda we require a minimum of twenty-one credits and a maxi- 
 mum of twenty-four credits per semester, which is more than 
 the academic load of other ordinary universities. Aside from the 
 hours for manual labor, our students should still have enough 
 time for academic studies. 
 
 Let us calculate whether four hours of productive labor per day 
 can be sufficient to maintain an individual’s life of learning. At 
 present the minimum amount required for an undergraduate is 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 259 
 
 $300 a year, or $25 per month. If this student could produce $25 
 worth he could be self-sufficient. We now require each student to 
 perform four hours of labor per day, which is equivalent to half of 
 a worker on an eight-hour day. Then two students together should 
 amount to the monthly wage of a worker at $50. Of course this 
 amount is impossible for factories and farms in China now, but 
 in Europe and America labor wages are much higher than this 
 amount because of their large-scale enterprises; thus if we were 
 endowed with huge funds and good facilities, we could achieve 
 that without difficulty. 
 
 As for the actual situation of our agriculture college, we have a 
 total of 140 undergraduates with another too freshmen to be 
 recruited this summer. At $300 per person per year for 240 stu- 
 dents, we should produce over $70,000 worth. If we could raise 
 $100,000 to expand and upgrade our equipment and facilities and 
 use all our students as farm labor without hiring extra farmhands, 
 then the total productivity would be much greater than this. But 
 since such a sum cannot be raised, we must try to produce with 
 existing facilities. Yet we cannot expect very good results without 
 upgrading and expanding our facilities. 
 
 Indeed, this was a vivid admission—made during a period of relative 
 optimism at Laoda—of the financial inadequacy that undermined 
 Laoda’s experimentation in laborized education. 
 
 The acute financial constraints at Laoda were further elaborated by 
 the University Secretariat in its May 8, 1930, rebuttal addressed to the 
 editors of Ta Kung Pao (Dagong bao, China’s leading daily, published 
 in Tianjin). The letter refuted Ta Kung Pao’s accusation that “the 
 National Labor University with its student enrollment of 287 drew an 
 annual expense of $645,268 in 1928, at $2,213 per student of public 
 funds. We hear that its academic standard was only at the level of a 
 vocational middle school. But because of the special power and influ- 
 ence of the university president, two hundred some students could 
 consume more than $645,000 a year. Such a waste is really shock- 
 ntroneg /537/ 
 
 Laoda’s official rebuttal stated that: 
 
 1. Budget 
 The total budget of Labor University for academic year 1928— 
 29 amounted to $334,500, which is $310,000 less than the 
 amount reported in your paper. Each student’s share of the 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 260 
 
 public funds is only $848.35, which is over 100 percent less 
 than the per capita amount listed in your paper. 
 
 2. Student Numbers 
 For the academic year 1928—29, the university enrolled a total 
 of 380 undergraduates plus 300 students in the high school and 
 over 200 students in the primary school. In addition Laoda also 
 operated eight adult schools. These student figures differ sub- 
 stantially from those reported by your newspaper. Besides con- 
 forming to the national government's educational objectives, 
 the founding purpose of Labor University has been the de- 
 velopment of and experimentation in labor education, which 
 is somewhat different from the nature of ordinary universities. 
 In fact, room and board for undergraduates and high-school 
 students at Laoda are all provided free of charge by the univer- 
 sity. 
 
 3. Academic Standards 
 Laoda has been in existence for less than three years, and thus 
 it is premature to pass judgment on its academic achieve- 
 ments. But it should be noted that its matriculation require- 
 ments for new students and the academic standards of its 
 curriculum all conform to the norms and regulations of the 
 Education Ministry. Laoda faculty members are all expert 
 scholars who have held teaching appointments in other uni- 
 versities. How could the situation be as bad as that reported in 
 your newspaper? 
 Furthermore, the budget allocation for all the national univer- 
 sities listed in your newspaper must have been based on the 
 Education Ministry’s proposal for higher education improve- 
 ment. Yet the proposed national university budgets for 1928— 
 30 differed very significantly from the actual budget allot- 
 ments. We have already clarified this with the ministry. It is 
 hoped that your newspaper as a forum for social justice and the 
 mouthpiece of the people will disclose the truth to enable 
 public understanding of the real situation at Laoda.88 
 
 The very fact that such a detailed public rebuttal became necessary 
 for Laoda in its third year of existence is a clear indication of its 
 serious image problem and the tremendous negative external pressure 
 on its academic standing and budgetary justification. The downfall of 
 Yi Peiji only worsened an already desperate situation at Laoda. The 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 261 
 
 new administration under Wang Jingqi came too late to bring about 
 any effective, far-reaching reform to reverse Laoda’s alarming decline 
 after Yi’s departure. 
 
 The End 
 
 It was against such a complicated web of bitter conflicts and accusa- 
 tions of mismanagement that the curtain finally fell on Labor Univer- 
 sity in mid-1932. Following the Japanese invasion of the Manchurian 
 provinces in September 1931, Japanese naval forces launched an at- 
 tack on Shanghai in early 1932, commonly known as the “Shanghai 
 Incident of January 28.” The Jiangwan and Baoshan areas were major 
 targets of the Japanese bombardment. The Jiangwan campus was al- 
 most completely obliterated because of its close proximity to the 
 local train station, while the Wusong campus of Laoda was more than 
 half destroyed. Many students were injured and some were reported 
 missing. Most of the buildings and major facilities on both campuses 
 were left in ruins, with total damages estimated at over $750,000.89 In 
 early March 1932 Laoda resumed instruction at its temporary prem- 
 ises on Avenue Albert in the French Concession of Shanghai, but this 
 ad hoc arrangement lasted only a few months.”° The physical destruc- 
 tion of Laoda came at the end of a long period of student unrest 
 resulting from Laoda’s own administration problems and the Gmp 
 regime’s appeasement of Japan. Under these circumstances, the Nan- 
 jing government seized the excuse of physical destruction and the 
 lack of funds for reconstruction as a convenient pretext to order Labor 
 University to close in July 1932. This ended the brief five-year history 
 of anew kind of experiment in higher education in Republican China. 
 
 The minister of education (February 1932—April 1933) who ordered 
 the permanent closure of Laoda was Zhu Jiahua, a former (1917—26) 
 professor at Beida. A Berlin-educated geologist, Zhu was the protégé of 
 right-wing GMD leader and senior ideologue Dai Jitao, a close confi- 
 dant of Jiang Jieshi. Dai was president of Zhongshan University in 
 Guangzhou during 1926-30 as well as the founding provost of the 
 GMb’s Central Party Affairs Institute, a party and government cadre 
 training school in Nanjing which had Jiang as its nominal head. In 
 October 1928 Dai became chairman of GMD Central’s Committee for 
 Training the Masses, and six months later he also headed Gmp Cen- 
 tral’s Department of Training. In these official capacities, Dai blocked 
 student involvement in national politics and disbanded the National 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 262 
 
 Student Association. In January 1930 the Department of Training 
 under Dai’s leadership issued two sets of regulations that dissolved 
 all nonacademic student organizations and replaced the politically ac- 
 tive “student associations” with “self-governing associations” whose 
 functions were confined to educational concerns and campus mat- 
 ters: 
 
 Before assuming the education portfolio in February 1932, Zhu 
 Jiahua had served as the vice president (1927—30 under Dai Jitao) and 
 president (1930) of Zhongshan University and president of Central 
 University (1930-31) in Nanjing, and he also held a series of key gov- 
 ernment posts. As an ardent partisan of the Gmp Right, especially the 
 archconservative diehard cc Clique loyal to Jiang Jieshi, Zhu played a 
 leading role in the 1927 anticommunist purge in Guangzhou, where 
 he was also secretary general of the Gmp regional political council. As 
 deputy to Dai Jitao, Zhu was instrumental in promoting and enforcing 
 “party education”—intensive Gmp ideological indoctrination and 
 rigid disciplinary political control of the students in Zhongshan Uni- 
 versity during 1927—30. In March 1929 Zhu was elected to both the 
 Central Executive Committee and the Central Political Council, the 
 highest organs of the Gmp. With such political clout in both the cmp 
 party hierarchy and the government and enjoying the trust and support 
 of Jiang Jieshi and “elder statesmen” Dai Jitao and Zhang Jingjiang, as 
 well as the respect of intellectual leaders and many Beida elements, 
 Zhu Jiahua was a very powerful and resourceful education administra- 
 tor. Indeed, as minister of education during 1932—33, Zhu managed to 
 keep a tight and effective control over the Chinese educational sys- 
 tem, in budget and funds as well as in the promotion of both party 
 education and practical courses, i.e., the study of science, technology, 
 agriculture, and medicine for national reconstruction needs.92 
 
 With the understanding of Wu Zhihui and Li Shizeng, Education 
 Minister Zhu’s proposal to close down Labor University permanently 
 was formally approved by the Nanjing regime’s cabinet, the Executive 
 Council, on June 9g, 1932. Labor University was ordered to cease 
 operation at the end of its 1932 Spring Semester. After that its under- 
 graduates were to be transferred to other national universities to 
 complete their studies. On July 19, 1932, the closed Labor University 
 and all its facilities were formally taken over by officials from the 
 Education Ministry, thus terminating its five years of existence in 
 Shanghai.?3 
 
 Following the Shanghai Incident in late January 1932, administra- 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 263 
 
 tive organs of the central government were forced to operate at 30 
 percent of their original budget allocation. However, through personal 
 negotiations with Finance Minister T. V. Soong, Zhu was able to have 
 the actual payment for national education raised from 30 to 50 per- 
 cent of the budgeted amount from March 1932 onward, even though 
 other government organs were still paid at 30 percent until June. By 
 July 1932, education budget payments were restored to the roo per- 
 cent level. 
 
 This suggests that the closure of Labor University in July 1932 was, 
 in a real sense, more a deliberate political decision than a necessary 
 product of budgetary considerations. In fact, after the decision to close 
 down Laoda, Zhu decided to transfer Laoda’s originally allocated bud- 
 get funds toward the establishment of a “northwest agricultural 
 school.’”4 In contrast, Zhu’s alma mater, National Tongji University, 
 also located in Wusong and which had sustained $788,000 worth of 
 damage from the Japanese attack, was not closed down. Its long his- 
 tory as a German-run institution (until World War I) and German- 
 language university was also a major factor, as by the 1930s Zhu was 
 the key link in the Gmp regime’s increasingly close military, political, 
 and economic ties with Germany.?° 
 
 With his highly authoritarian archconservative ideological stance 
 and his full commitment to politicize the entire education system in 
 the GMD party mode, Zhu could hardly tolerate the continued opera- 
 tion on government funds of such a “heterodox” institution of higher 
 education as Laoda. The only higher political-administrative author- 
 ity within the Nanjing establishment who could have overridden 
 Zhu’s decision to terminate Laoda’s existence was the premier of the 
 Executive Council, Wang Jingwei. Yet Wang, himself an anarchist 
 sympathizer earlier, chose not to intervene to save Labor University 
 from its untimely demise. Neither did the secretary general of the 
 Executive Council, Chu Minyi, a core member of Wang’s own Reorga- 
 nization Clique (then in power) and himself a French-educated medi- 
 cal scientist with anarchist ties, who had been a member of the Labor 
 University Preparation Committee in 1927.9° Perhaps Laoda had been 
 for too long both an ideological embarrassment to the GMp establish- 
 ment and an unwelcome drain on its financial resources. The Guo- 
 mindang Left had little reason to defend an institution sponsored by 
 its enemies, Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui. It is not surprising that 
 partisans of both the Left and the Right within the cmp leadership did 
 not bemoan Laoda’s demise. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 264 
 
 The Aftermath 
 
 Not only was Tongji University spared the sad fate of Labor University 
 in the aftermath of the Japanese attack, but it was soon able to embark 
 on a course of substantial growth and development. As openly ac- 
 knowledged by its rector, Dr. Ong Tsi-lung, the rapidity of Tongji’s 
 recovery was due mainly to the strong support of the university’s most 
 politically prominent alumnus (1908—13), Education Minister Zhu 
 Jiahua. Not only were damaged facilities repaired and restored, but the 
 government allocated the Central University Medical College’s for- 
 mer plant near the Wusong train station to Tongji for the expansion of 
 its high school. “It was indeed totally unexpected that Tongji would 
 emerge from such destruction with a new atmosphere and a fresh 
 image.”9” (Dr. Ong, a 1920 Tongji medical graduate who received his 
 M.D. in Germany, had been appointed director of the Zhongshan 
 University Medical School Hospital in Canton by Zhu Jiahua in 1927, 
 when Zhu was in charge of Zhongshan University. Later, in September 
 1932, when Hu Shuhua resigned the rectorship of Tongji, Zhu, as 
 education minister, appointed Ong to head the university.)98 
 
 Indeed, in May 1932, not long after the Japanese bombardment that 
 destroyed its high-voltage and metallurgy laboratories and its phys- 
 icology institute, Tongji was able to celebrate the twenty-fifth anni- 
 versary of its founding as the Deutsche Medizinschule in Shanghai by 
 German physician Dr. Erich Paulun.?? For this special occasion Zhu 
 contributed a preface, dated May 9, 1932, to the commemorative 
 Festschrift in which he stated that “without any exaggeration, Tong- 
 ji’s medical and engineering schools are, of course, among the best- 
 developed in China. In the present situation, the study of engineering, 
 medical, and agricultural subjects in China ought to be promoted 
 with the utmost vigor. German medicine and engineering are world 
 renowned. The medical and engineering programs of Tongji are pat- 
 terned after the German model. Therefore, they are full of future 
 promise. Despite this devastation, we must do our utmost to develop 
 Tongji and to catch up with world civilization head-on in order to save 
 the Chinese nation from its roots.””10° 
 
 Two weeks later, on May 17, 1932—after the Sino-Japanese truce 
 agreement of May 5, 1932, but before Japanese forces had been com- 
 pletely evacuated from the neighborhood—Zhu made an inspection 
 tour of the Tongji campus in Wusong. Standing on the site of the 
 destroyed facilities, Zhu said that while damage to Tongji’s campus 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 265 
 
 was definitely severe and costly, the situation was not beyond remedy. 
 He promised to provide Tongji with material support from the Educa- 
 tion Ministry when necessary.!°! Not unlike the situation at Laoda a 
 month earlier, Tongji’s engineering college and high school resumed 
 classes in temporary rented premises in Shanghai’s French Conces- 
 sion in April 1932, while the medical college carried on its normal 
 work at the Paulun Hospital. On September 19, 1932, Tongji under- 
 graduates and high school students began the new academic year on 
 their restored Wusong campus.!92 They were indeed far more fortu- 
 nate than their Laoda peers. 
 
 In May 1933, a few months after the Nazis came to power in Ger- 
 many, the GMp awarded Tongji—perhaps as a generous twenty-sixth 
 anniversary gift—a substantial site in Jiangwan with industrial plants 
 and machinery. This site and its facilities were allocated with the 
 specific aim of reviving and expanding Tongji University’s attached 
 school of mechanics (which was founded in 1926 but had stopped 
 accepting new students in 1930). In September 1933, some eighty 
 junior high school (ninth-grade) graduates were admitted into the 
 inaugural class of the new Tongji University Advanced Vocational 
 School, located on the former premises of Labor University’s engineer- 
 ing college, whose former (and last) dean, Tang Ying, served as the new 
 school’s director. This advanced vocational school offered three-year 
 programs in civil and mechanical engineering, which enrolled thirty- 
 five and fifty students, respectively, in February 1934. 
 
 In May 1935 the Education Ministry changed the school’s official 
 name to Tongji University Advanced Industrial and Vocational School, 
 and the curriculum was extended to a four-year program with more 
 practical training and theoretical studies. Tongji school instructors, 
 most of them Tongji University graduates who had returned from 
 Germany after advanced studies there, maintained relatively high 
 standards of teaching and learning; many vocational school textbooks 
 throughout China were patterned after lecture notes compiled by Tang 
 Ying and his colleagues. By spring 1937 the school had a total enroll- 
 ment of 244 students, all male.!%% 
 
 However, Tongji students had little time to enjoy the former Laoda 
 facilities. As a Tongji alumnus recalled, at 8:00 A.M. on August 12, 
 1937, Tongji University held its freshman entrance examinations in 
 the Advanced Industrial and Vocational School auditorium, which, 
 with a seating capacity of sixteen hundred, was once the pride of Labor 
 University. The examinations were suspended shortly after 10:00 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 266 
 
 A.M., and the candidates dispersed immediately as Japanese forces 
 again approached Jiangwan. Hostilities broke out the next day, begin- 
 ning the Shanghai phase of the 1937—45 Sino-Japanese theater of the 
 Second World War. Tongji University’s main campus in Wusong was 
 soon nearly obliterated by Japanese bombardment.!°4 Nearly a decade 
 would elapse before Tongji students could again meet for classes on 
 the Jiangwan site, the same campus that, as Laoda, had been damaged 
 by the Japanese in 1932. 
 
 During the war the Tongji Industrial and Vocational School (under 
 Tang Ying’s directorship until 1942) moved several times: first, in 
 autumn 1937, to Zhejiang, where Zhu Jiahua was provincial governor; 
 then to Jiangxi in January 1938; then to Guangxi in July 1938; to Yun- 
 nan in winter 1938—39; and finally to Sichuan in autumn 1942.19 
 After the Japanese surrender, Tongji University returned to Shanghai 
 in mid-1946, but instruction did not resume until February 1947. In 
 June 1947 the Tongji Advanced Technical and Vocational School en- 
 rolled 250 students, with 20 instructors and 7 staff. The ironworks and 
 steel plant of the school factory were revived, and a new dormitory and 
 new athletic grounds were constructed. Admissions to the school re- 
 mained keenly competitive after the war, with only 50 candidates ad- 
 mitted each year from a pool of over 500 applicants. The well-trained 
 graduates of Tongji’s Advanced Industrial and Vocational School, un- 
 like their less fortunate counterparts from many “graduation equals 
 unemployment” schools in Shanghai, were in great demand. Govern- 
 ment plants, private textile mills, and military agencies all sought to 
 secure their services, and some Tongji graduates received several job 
 offers.!°° But this was only an Indian summer, as the GMD regime was 
 fast losing the civil war. 
 
 On May 37, 1949, Chinese Communist forces assumed complete 
 control of Shanghai. Four weeks later, the new communist regime 
 formally took over the administration of Tongji University at a public 
 ceremony. In August 1949 the Advanced Industrial and Vocational 
 School attached to Tongji was ordered to enroll eighty new students, 
 who would turn out to be its last class.1°7 In 1953, as part of the 
 reorganization of the education system in the PRC, the school closed 
 after a span of twenty years, eleven of them in Jiangwan. Its civil 
 engineering program became the core of the new Nanjing Construc- 
 tion Engineering College, and its Jiangwan campus was absorbed into 
 the reorganized Fudan University.!°8 The former Laoda site in Jiang- 
 wan, ironically, was to become the location for the new Shanghai 
 Finance University. 
 
Politics, Finances, and Laoda’s Demise 267 
 
 From the Shanghai People’s College of 1922—27 under the ccp-GMp 
 united front, to the anarchist-Gmp Labor University of 1927—32, to 
 the Tongji Advanced Industrial and Vocational School of 1933-53, to 
 the PRC’s Fudan University in 1953, and, finally, to the present Shang- 
 hai Finance University, the drama of Laoda’s five short years may well 
 be the most interesting, if least known, part of the Jiangwan campus 
 story. 
 
 If Labor University’s College of Engineering could claim a partial 
 reincarnation for twenty years (1933-53) as Tongji University’s Ad- 
 vanced Industrial and Vocational School on the same campus in Jiang- 
 wan, then the Laoda College of Agriculture found its own legacy 
 inherited, in functional and financial terms if not in location, by an 
 institution in Shaanxi. As mentioned earlier, Minister of Education 
 Zhu Jiahua, after deciding to close Labor University in July 1932, 
 resolved to transfer the government funds originally budgeted for 
 Laoda toward the establishment of a “northwest agricultural school.” 
 The decision to fund this new school in Shaanxi was indeed very 
 consonant with the fervent interest and long-standing advocacy for 
 developing northwest China on the part of Zhu’s political and ideo- 
 logical mentor, Dai Jitao. 
 
 In April-May 1932, Dai undertook an extensive month-long offi- 
 cial inspection tour of the northwest provinces on behalf of the Gmp 
 national government.!9? During this tour and after his return to Nan- 
 jing, Dai proposed various measures to encourage the development of 
 the northwest region. One result of his recommendations was the 
 formal establishment in spring 1934 of the Northwest Institute of 
 Agriculture and Forestry in Wukong, Shaanxi, which Dai visited again 
 in April 1934.!1!° It seems certain, therefore, that Zhu’s timing and his 
 deliberate allocation of Laoda funds were neither coincidental nor 
 apolitical. However, Zhu’s “gift” to the northwest region and his 
 realization of Dai’s long-cherished dream were shattered by Japanese 
 hostilities. In August 1940 Japanese aerial bombardment destroyed 
 more than a hundred houses belonging to the Northwest Institute of 
 Agriculture and Forestry, with the loss of several dozen lives. It was 
 reported by official sources that Dai was extremely disturbed by this 
 sad event.!11 
 
 Labor University, its “predecessor” institution (the Shanghai Peo- 
 ple’s College), and its “successor” institutions (the Tongji Advanced 
 Industrial and Vocational School and the Northwest Institute of Agri- 
 culture and Forestry) all shared the common fate of many sociocul- 
 tural and educational organizations in Republican China: domestic 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 268 
 
 repression and the depredations of foreign imperialism. The decisions 
 by Zhu Jiahua and the Nationalist regime to allocate the former Laoda 
 campus to a new engineering school and to divert budgeted Laoda 
 funds for a new agriculture school might in some sense find justifi- 
 cation in the GMp’s platform of state building and national recon- 
 struction vis a vis foreign encroachment. In 1932, in the aftermath of 
 the Japanese seizure of the Manchurian provinces and the attack on 
 Shanghai, the GMp party-state leadership (particularly the archconser- 
 vative, ultranationalist cc Clique, with which both Dai and Zhu were 
 closely allied) pursued a new educational policy that emphasized 
 “practical training and vocational studies,” with medical, engineer- 
 ing, and agricultural courses becoming the academic programs fa- 
 vored for official funding and support. !!2 
 
 This renewed emphasis on vocational education throws into relief 
 the political considerations that played a part in Labor University’s 
 termination. Labor University was in a sense also a vocational school 
 that was already in place, and it should have been regarded favorably 
 by advocates of vocational education. But Labor University was a 
 vocational school with a difference. Its premises were not merely 
 practical, but radically ideological: not merely to provide technical 
 labor for existing society, but to transform the existing social struc- 
 ture through the instrumentality of the universal practice of labor. 
 Beyond all the factional struggles in Chinese educational and political 
 circles, it was this radical goal that the university represented—and 
 did its best to realize during its brief existence—that made it into a 
 thorn in the sides of its opponents, and intolerable even to those who 
 might have accepted it as a vocational service school but were unwill- 
 ing to entertain either its ideological premises or its claims to van- 
 guard status in Chinese education. 
 
9 In Retrospect 
 
 Labor University was the most ambitious of all efforts in twentieth- 
 century China to institutionalize an educational ideal that has been 
 shared widely by Chinese revolutionaries: to integrate labor and learn- 
 ing in education to bring about a revolutionary transformation of 
 Chinese society that would be at once social and cultural. As with 
 others who have shared this goal, its founders believed that the com- 
 bination of labor and learning in education would be genuinely revolu- 
 tionary in its consequences because it would change life at the quoti- 
 dian level, where the distinction between the social and the cultural 
 became meaningless. Having abolished this fundamental division of 
 labor in “the practice of everyday life” (the phrase is de Certeau’s)— 
 and therefore in their consciousness—the products this education 
 were to serve as instruments in bringing to an end the social and 
 cultural hierarchy that hitherto had fashioned China’s social organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 There is little question as to where the inspiration for Labor Univer- 
 sity originated. Though the university was established under Guo- 
 mindang auspices and was quickly brought under government con- 
 trol, anarchists were its architects. It was the culmination of two 
 decades of anarchist efforts to make labor learning into a reality of 
 Chinese education, and it was a direct outgrowth of anarchist educa- 
 tional activity in Shanghai in the 1920s. 
 
 The legacy of the university is more difficult to assess. During its 
 brief five years of existence the university received support from a 
 wide range of distinguished intellectuals in China and produced sev- 
 eral graduates of distinction; future research may reveal that these 
 intellectuals’ experience with the university played a part in keeping 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 270 
 
 alive the labor-learning ideal, which was to reappear in similar experi- 
 ments in Chinese education, especially in the People’s Republic of 
 China, where labor learning was to reemerge as a central issue of a 
 revolutionary education during the two decades encompassing the 
 Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution (1956-76). 
 
 Such an effort may be moot in any case. Labor University, rather 
 than being the source of the labor-learning ideal, was itself the product 
 of a revolutionary discourse that cut across ideological and organiza- 
 tional lines in the Chinese Revolution. While unmistakably of anar- 
 chist inspiration in China, by the time of the May Fourth Movement 
 (in 1919) the labor-learning ideal had ceased to be an exclusively 
 anarchist concern. It had become integral to the thinking of revolu- 
 tionaries who differed otherwise over questions of immediate political 
 goals and strategy. Most important, it was from the beginning integral 
 to Chinese Marxism, not only because as a species of Marxism it had 
 affinities with this anarchist ideal—since Marxism is just as con- 
 cerned as anarchism with the ultimate abolition of the division be- 
 tween mental and manual labor as a condition of communism— 
 but even more significantly because many of China’s first-generation 
 Marxists had turned to Marxism in the course of experiences with 
 anarchist-inspired educational and social experiments during the May 
 Fourth period.! Any assessment of Labor University’s legacy must 
 therefore view it within this broader context of anarchist impact on 
 revolutionary discourse in the formative years of the Chinese Revolu- 
 tion. The work-study program in France around the May Fourth pe- 
 riod, the educational experiments of the early twenties, Labor Univer- 
 sity, and the various attempts to abolish the distinction between 
 mental and manual labor after 1949 may be viewed as different man- 
 ifestations of an abiding theme in the Chinese Revolution that was 
 first introduced and then diffused through the vehicle of anarchism. 
 The most important issue may not be the legacy of any particular 
 experiment or institution, but the pervasiveness of the ideal of labor 
 learning in revolutionary discourse. Labor University added another 
 dimension, and constituency, to the pursuit of this ideal, which had 
 been widely diffused earlier through the diligent-work frugal-study 
 program in France. 
 
 This perspective also suggests that labor learning as an instrument 
 of social revolution is not to be identified with the idiosyncracies of an 
 individual (Mao Zedong) or individuals (Mao’s Cultural Revolution 
 followers), but was basic to the language of revolution of a whole 
 
In Retrospect 271 
 
 generation of revolutionaries. What part these revolutionaries may 
 have played in providing Mao with the support he needed to promote 
 certain educational policies—and a certain conception of revolu- 
 tion—remains to be investigated. The results of such an investigation 
 might cast the Cultural Revolution in a new light. 
 
 In its language, if not in its ideological reasoning, the Communist 
 government’s experimentation with labor learning since 1949 has 
 continued to bear the stamp of this revolutionary legacy. It is probably 
 no accident that the Communists chose “mutual aid” (huzhu) to 
 describe the small agrarian collectives they established during the 
 Yan’an period and after 1949. More significant was the structure of the 
 people’s communes established from 1958 onward, which reminded 
 Colin Ward, editor of Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories and Workshops of 
 Tomorrow, of Kropotkin’s “industrial villages.’’? It is also significant 
 that when the people’s communes were established, they were part of 
 an emerging program of development that was to constitute a dis- 
 tinctly Chinese way of development that differed from the capitalist 
 and socialist alternatives that then existed. While they were idealized 
 as organic units of development that would integrate industry and 
 agriculture, and provide a cultural (as well as a military) world of their 
 own, it was also important that the program of modernization they 
 articulated had an antimodernist aspect to it that glorified the coun- 
 tryside at the expense of the city and was suspicious of technology (or 
 of the “fetishism” of technology) as well as of the professionalism that 
 was a by-product of modernity. 
 
 Nor, perhaps, was it fortuitous that the establishment of the peo- 
 ple’s communes coincided with a renewed demand for integrating 
 labor and learning. Labor learning, in its radical interpretation, had 
 been linked in earlier years, too, to “mutual aid” and communal 
 existence; it was the cultural counterpart to the social organization 
 represented by communes, which sought to abolish the distinctions 
 between mental and manual labor that inevitably obstructed social 
 unity. The official insistence on the need to combine “redness” and 
 expertise is quite familiar and need not be elaborated here; suffice it to 
 say that the insistence on making professionals and intellectuals 
 redder by demanding that they engage in manual labor, and making 
 laborers more expert by educating them, was to be a cornerstone of 
 radical policy for the next two decades, reaching a crescendo with the 
 Cultural Revolution. 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 272 
 
 What has been most striking about this insistence on labor learning 
 has been its impact on intellectuals and professionals. Nevertheless, 
 it would be simplistic to view it merely as a means to suppress 
 intellectual rivals of the party elite (who by the time of the Cultural 
 Revolution found themselves in fields and factories) or as a function of 
 Maoist anti-intellectualism. A Party Work Conference in 1957 sig- 
 naled a shift in educational policy by calling on schools at all levels to 
 apply the “principle of combining work with study.” The vocabulary 
 was even more revealing. Several collections on the progress of the 
 new policy published in Shanghai in 1958 revealingly used “diligent- 
 work frugal-study” (gingong jianxue) in their titles.* It may also have 
 been no coincidence that some of the more elaborate memoirs of the 
 work-study program in France were published at this time, or that the 
 party mobilized graduates of that program to urge youth to “integrate 
 manual and mental labor, and use both hands and brains.’’4 The same 
 year, Communist Labor University (Gongchan zhuyi laodong daxue) 
 was established in Jiangxi to promote “both a technological and a 
 cultural revolution.” 
 
 While it coincided with the renewed radicalization of Chinese so- 
 ciety in the Great Leap Forward of 1958, and was represented for the 
 next two decades as the key to the creation of new socialist individ- 
 uals (and socialism), the call for labor learning also had a practical side 
 to it: it increased the possibilities for universal education. We have 
 noted in the pages above that from the beginning the labor-learning 
 ideal had a twofold function in anarchist thinking: as the means to 
 create a new anarchist individual and as a practical means to promote 
 education. A similar ambiguity has characterized the promotion of 
 diligent-work frugal-study since 1958. During the Cultural Revolu- 
 tion years, the revolutionary promise of labor learning overshadowed 
 its practical aspects. Since Mao’s death, the ideal of diligent-work 
 frugal-study has appeared once again.® In keeping with the practical 
 orientation of the post-Mao years (and with the personal experience of 
 Deng Xiaoping, whose participation in the program in the 1920s had 
 been motivated above all by practical considerations—he apparently 
 did little “work” while in Paris!), the emphasis now is almost exclu- 
 sively on the practical benefits to be derived from students working to 
 support their education. 
 
 If the experiments with labor education after 1949 can be viewed as 
 products of the same revolutionary discourse that produced Labor 
 University, it is also possible to point to some parallels between 
 
In Retrospect 273 
 
 Laoda’s career and attempts at integrating labor learning under the 
 Communist regime. Especially important is the relationship of educa- 
 tion to its social and political circumstances. 
 
 Anarchists themselves carried some responsibility for the fate of 
 the university. The founders of the university—Guomindang anar- 
 chists such as Li Shizeng, Wu Zhihui, and others—proved in the end 
 to be rather fickle in their loyalty to the institution they had brought 
 into being; Li Shizeng apparently never once set foot on the campus of 
 the university. His conflicts with Cai Yuanpei, as well as the question- 
 able political and financial maneuvers of Yi Peiji, played an important 
 part in undermining support for the institution. Most important, 
 Guomindang anarchists were unwilling or unable to defend the uni- 
 versity against political pressures; indeed, it appears that when they 
 were faced with a choice, their loyalties to the Guomindang took 
 precedence over their anarchist commitments. 
 
 These personal failings, however, should not be allowed to cover up 
 the very real obstacles to the success of the university inherent in its 
 social and political circumstances. Anarchists had argued all along 
 that if their revolutionary program was to have any hope of success, it 
 would have to be free of politics and political interference. Labor 
 University, on the contrary, was established under Guomindang polit- 
 ical auspices and owed its existence to the party’s support and toler- 
 ance. From the very beginning it was as much an instrument of 
 Guomindang interests as it was a base for disseminating anarchist 
 ideals. It was also subject throughout to the power of shifting political 
 winds in the Guomindang, which in the end brought it down when 
 the party turned against the revolution. 
 
 Moreover, unlike successful examples of labor education such as 
 the Labor University in Charleroi, which served as its model, Labor 
 University had no autonomous source of support; there was no strong 
 labor movement in China capable of looking after the interests of 
 labor. As with much of the experimentation with labor learning be- 
 fore or after, its emphasis remained more on the education of intellec- 
 tuals in labor than on the education of laborers. While it did provide 
 an institutional space for the education of laborers, and for bringing 
 together intellectuals and laborers, its accomplishments in this regard 
 were overshadowed by the role it played as a forum for promoting 
 a certain conception of the intellectual in society, which not only 
 brought it under attack from those who held different ideas of intel- 
 lectuals and education, but also clashed with the received culture of 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 274 
 
 intellectuals (not to say their interests) that was based on the abstrac- 
 tion of intellectual activity from its social origins. The labor-learning 
 ideal sought not just to abolish the power that intellectuals derived 
 from their claims to such abstract activity, but intellectuals them- 
 selves as a social group by making them one with laborers—a concept 
 few intellectuals were prone to look upon with great enthusiasm. As 
 the anarchists themselves could not but acknowledge, as with the 
 work-study program in France earlier, the students who enrolled in 
 Labor University looked on it more as a means of “making it” within 
 existing society by acquiring an education than of becoming through 
 it the vanguards of a future revolutionary society. For the students, at 
 least, the practical promise of the university overshadowed its revolu- 
 tionary aspirations. For lack of significant social support in a strong 
 labor movement, Labor University was defeated at the most funda- 
 mental level by the very social practices it sought to transform. 
 
 Similar problems also have undermined experimentation with la- 
 bor learning after 1949, with even more severe consequences. The re- 
 surgence of labor learning after 1956 if anything made labor learning 
 explicitly into an instrument of political power promoting the politi- 
 cal domination of the Communist Party.” Furthermore, as in the case 
 of Labor University, labor education after 1949 was caught up in so- 
 cial power struggles between the Communist Party and intellectuals 
 whose social identity and interests depended on their ability to pre- 
 serve control over the domain of intellectual activity. Given the total- 
 istic power the Communist Party has commanded, which was ren- 
 dered far more arbitrary by the confusion created by the Cultural 
 Revolution, at its worst the ideal of labor learning has been perverted 
 into a punishment for recalcitrant intellectuals who resisted their 
 subjection to the power of the party. Conceived initially by the anar- 
 chists as a means of bridging the gap between the intellectual elite and 
 laborers, labor learning was to degenerate, as it did earlier, into an 
 issue in the struggles for power within the elite. 
 
 At a most fundamental level, however, the experimentation with 
 labor learning over the years has met its greatest obstacle in a resis- 
 tance to the antimodernist implications imbedded in its basic prem- 
 ises, which were already present when it was introduced into revolu- 
 tionary discourse by the anarchists. The practical aspects of labor 
 learning, tied in with a modernizing program, have been far more 
 widely acceptable than its revolutionary aspects, which, ironically, 
 challenge basic premises of modernity, in particular the abstraction of 
 
In Retrospect 275 
 
 intellectual activity from its social roots, and the alienation to the 
 abstraction of the power to dispose of quotidian existence. Labor in 
 education was intended by anarchists to bring education and intellec- 
 tual activity closer to society. Resistance to labor learning, on the 
 other hand, has found voice in charges against its inefficiency in the 
 utilization of intellectual resources—a notion that is unmistakably 
 modernist in its economistic and technological logic. 
 
 In this particular sense, the questions raised by the fate of Labor Uni- 
 versity, as with the preoccupation in general with labor learning in 
 twentieth-century China, is relevant to understanding not just the 
 conflicting strains in the Chinese Revolution but also a fundamental 
 problem of education in the modern world: its alienation from its 
 social roots and claims. Marxists were probably justified in their criti- 
 cism that anarchists themselves were guilty of abstracting problems of 
 education from their social context, that education is incapable of 
 overcoming its own alienation from society without an accompanying 
 social transformation. On the other hand, their own experience with 
 labor learning shows that their own fetishism of modernity (accom- 
 panied by the political alienation of the communist parties from their 
 constituencies) has further deepened this alienation rather than ame- 
 liorated it. The anarchist conception of education, of which Labor 
 University was an expression, may not be sufficient to resolve this 
 fundamental problem, but it raises questions that any solution for the 
 problem must take into account if it is to have any hope of success. 
 
 The decades surrounding the brief existence of Labor University wit- 
 nessed efforts worldwide to bring education closer to the people. From 
 the Highlander School in the Appalachians in the United States to the 
 Village Institutes in Turkey, from Ruskin College at Oxford to Charle- 
 roi University, labor unions, radical leftists, populists, and Christian 
 social activists engaged in attempts to turn education into an instru- 
 ment of social reform and, at its most radical, to render it into an 
 integral part of popular everyday existence. In spite of their diverse 
 ideological origins, these efforts seem to have shared two goals: first, 
 to make education accessible to the people at large; and, second, to 
 make the common people participants in the process of education 
 by opening up education to their immediate needs and experiences, 
 thereby overcoming the alienation of education to academic experts 
 and, through their agency, to structures of economic and political 
 power increasingly distant from everyday life. In most cases, they 
 
Schools into Fields and Factories 276 
 
 looked to the integration of intellectual activity with labor as the 
 foremost means of achieving this goal. 
 
 In a global perspective, Labor University was a manifestation in 
 China of this worldwide ferment, and it had direct ties to similar 
 experiments in Europe. While its career was shaped by specifically 
 Chinese circumstances, its broader meaning derives from these asso- 
 ciations. Labor University may be dismissed for its failures and its 
 brief existence as an institution, but only through the suppression of 
 daily reminders around the world that the conviction which gave 
 birth to it, and to similar institutions elsewhere, may be more rele- 
 vant than ever. Now, as then, there is a need to create an “education for 
 life.” 
 
Appendix 
 Number, Distribution, Age, 
 and Provincial Origin 
 of Laoda Students, 
 1928-31 
 
Appendix 278 
 
 Table A.t Number, distribution, age, and provincial origin of students at 
 the College of Industrial Labor, fall 1928 
 
 Industrial Labor Mechanical Civil 
 Sociology Education Engineering Engineering 
 Department Department Department Department 
 
 Total number 34 DN 32 50 
 
 Male 34 19 Sp 46 
 Female 0 2 0 4 
 Age 
 
 17 
 
 18 
 
 19 
 
 20 
 
 Dal 
 
 DD) 
 
 23 
 
 24 
 
 25 
 
 26 
 
 Dif 
 
 unknown 
 
 wn 
 oo 
 
 ‘© 
 = 
 
 Re NYNOre NVYNNONN 
 SCOOWNAN WwW 
 SCONNNKYKHNK ORE 
 
 Wolo © OlNne 1s 
 
 fan) 
 OQ 
 
 Province 
 Jiangsu 
 Zhejiang 
 Hunan 
 Guangdong 
 Henan 
 Fujian 
 Yunnan 
 Guizhou 
 Anhui 
 Guangxi 
 Sichuan 
 Shandong 
 Jiangxi 
 Shanxi 
 Unknown 
 
 —_— 
 
 HOODOO OPHENHNHWOUON 
 SeOCCOOKF COCO ONwananr 
 SOFONNKNKKFONOOAYH 
 Seay ee SS 
 
 Source: Tabulated from data in Guoli laodong daxue zhounian jiniankan (National 
 Labor University First Anniversary Commemorative Volume) (Shanghai, 1928), ““Direc- 
 tory of Faculty and Students,” pp. 14-31. 
 
Laoda Students, 1928-31 279 
 
 Table A.2 Number, distribution, age, and provincial origin of students at 
 the College of Agricultural Labor, fall 1928 
 
 Horticulture Agrochemistry Agriculture 
 Department Department Department 
 Freshmen Sophomores Sophomores Freshmen Freshmen 
 Total number 17 29 21 14 52 
 Male 16 26 21 14 48 
 Female 1 3 0 0 4 
 Age 
 17 1 1 1 0 0 
 18 1 5 2 0 1 
 19 4 1 2 2 8 
 20 1 6 5 3 9 
 21 6 5 2 3 7 
 D9} p) 7 3 2 16 
 23 y) 1 3 4 5 
 24 0 2} 1 0 5 
 25 0 1 1 0 1 
 26 0 0 1 0 0 
 Province 
 Jiangsu 2 i 9 5 13 
 Zhejiang 6 4 3 2) 10 
 Hunan 2 9 6 5 10 
 Guangdong 0 1 1 0 2 
 Henan D) 0 0 1 1 
 Fujian 0 0 1 0 3 
 Yunnan 0 1 0 1 1 
 Guizhou 0 1 0 0 0 
 Anhui 2} 3 0 0 2 
 Guangxi 0 0 0 1 0 
 Sichuan 2 1 0 0 4 
 Jiangxi 0 1 0 0 4 
 Shanxi 1 0 0 0 1 
 Hubei 0 1 0 0 0 
 Shaanxi 0 0 0 0 1 
 
 Source: Tabulated from data in First Anniversary Volume, 1928, “Directory of Faculty 
 and Students,” pp. 14-31. 
 
Appendix 280 
 
 Table A.3 Number, distribution, and provincial origin of students in the College 
 of Engineering, College of Agriculture, and College of Social Sciences, Spring 1930 
 
 College of Engineering 
 College of Agriculture 
 
 
 
 Mechanical Civil Electrical eee eee 
 Engineering Engineering Engineering Agriculture Agrochemistry 
 Department Department Department Department Department 
 Total number 24 48 46 37 31 
 Male 24 44 45 35 30 
 Female 0 4 1 2 1 
 Province 
 Jiangsu 5 19 14 stl vl 
 Zhejiang 10 12 8 7 2 
 Hunan 4 if 3 10 11 
 Guangdong 0 1 ra) 1 1 
 Anhui 1 1 1 0 ] 
 Jiangxi 0 0 3 ] 1 
 Fujian 2 0 3 3 1 
 Sichuan 1 1 5 l i 
 Yunnan 0 0 l 2 ] 
 Guangx1 0 0 0 0 1 
 Henan 0 4 2 0 3 
 Hubei 0 0 0 0 0 
 Liaoning 0 0 0 0 0 
 Guizhou 0 0 0 0 1 
 Shandong 0 2 3 0 0 
 Jilin 0 0 0 0 0 
 Qinghai 0 0 0 0 0 
 Shanxi 0 1 0 0 0 
 Shaanxi 0 0 0 1 0 
 
 Source: Tabulated from data in Guoli laodong daxue xiaokuang (National Labor University 
 Developments) (Shanghai, 1930), p. viii. 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Laoda Students, 1928-31 281 
 
 College of Social Sciences 
 Total 
 
 Horticulture Sociology Education Economics Laoda 
 Department Department Department Department Enrollment 
 
 66 44 19 93 408 
 56 44 17 85 380 
 10 0 D, 8 28 
 19 6 7 21 109 
 14 13 6 16 88 
 14 8 3 22 82 
 0 4 2 5 17 
 3 2 0 2 11 
 2 2) 0 7 17 
 2 2 0 2 15 
 2 2 0 6 19 
 0 1 0 4 9 
 4 2 1 0 8 
 1 1 0 0 11 
 0 1 0 2 3 
 2 0 0 0 2 
 0 0 0 2, 3 
 0 0 0 2 7 
 0 0 0 1 1 
 1 0 0 0 1 
 2) 0 0 0 3 
 0 0 0 1 2 
 
Appendix 282 
 
 Table A.4 Number, distribution, age, and provincial origin of students in the 
 College of Engineering, College of Agriculture, and College of Social Sciences, 
 December 1931 
 
 College of Engineering 
 
 Civil Electrical Mechanical ane 
 Engineering Engineering Engineering Agriculture 
 Department Department Department Department 
 (Seniors) (Juniors) (Juniors) (Juniors) 
 Total number 38 24 il/5) 9 
 Male 36 24 14 9 
 Female 9) 0 ] 0 
 Age 
 17 0 0 ] 0 
 18 0 0 0 0 
 19 0 0 1 0 
 20 3 ) 4 0 
 21 4 2 d) 0 
 DD) 8 6 0 2; 
 23 11 8 3 2} 
 24 7 3 3 1 
 25 3 i 0 3 
 26 ] ] 1 1 
 27 0 0 0 0 
 28 0 0 0 0 
 unknown ] 1 0 0 
 Province 
 Jiangsu 14 8 2 4 
 Zhejiang 10 6 1 D} 
 Hunan 5 0 D 0 
 Guangdong 0 0 3 0 
 Henan 4 3 0 0 
 Fujian 0 0 3 0 
 Yunnan 0 0 1 0 
 Anhui 1 0 0 1 
 Sichuan 1 3 1 0 
 Shandong 2) 2 1 0 
 Jiangxi 0 2) 1 0 
 Shanxi 1 0 0 0 
 Guizhou 0 0 0 0 
 Hubei 0 0 0 0 
 Guangxi 0 0 0 2 
 Liaoning 0 0 0 0 
 Qinghai 0 0 0 0 
 
 
 
 Source: Tabulated from data in Guoli laodong daxue gaikuang (National Labor University 
 General Conditions) (Shanghai, 1931), “List of Faculty and Students,” pp. 18—43. 
 
Laoda Students, 1928-31 283 
 
 
 
 College of 
 College of Agriculture Social Sciences 
 __ EE eee pom Ei es Total 
 Agrochemistry Horticulture Economics Laoda 
 Department Department Department Enrollment 
 (Juniors) (Juniors) (Juniors) Fall 1931 
 11 9 32 138 
 11 i/ 26 NDT 
 0 2 6 1] 
 0 0 0 l 
 0 0 0 0 
 0 0 0 I 
 0 0 0 9 
 ] 3 6 18 
 ] D} 5 24 
 2 0 10 Bi 
 1 & 4 Dp), 
 0 ] 4 12 
 3 0 1 8 
 2 0 0 2) 
 1 0 ] Dy} 
 0 0 0 y) 
 4 2 5 39 
 yD} 0 i/ 28 
 1 3 U/ 19 
 0 0 2 5) 
 0 0 0 6 
 1 0 0 4 
 0 0 il 2 
 0 0 1 3 
 ] 0 ] 7 
 0 0 D) 7 
 0 0 4 7 
 0 ] 0 2) 
 0 0 1 I 
 0 0 1 2 
 0 2 0 4 
 1 1 0 2 
 1 0 0 1 
 
Appendix 284 
 
 Table A.s Number, distribution, age, and provincial origin of Group A graduates, 
 Summer 1931 
 
 
 
 Mechanical 
 Engineering Agriculture Agrochemistry Horticulture 
 Department Department Department Department 
 Total number 24 9 VS 
 Male 24 9 15 6 
 Female 0 0 0 1 
 Age 
 20 0 0 0 0 
 ait 4 D 1 1 
 2) 3 0 3 1 
 23 5 1 1 1 
 24 7 3 4 0 
 25 1 2} 2 2} 
 26 Dy 0 4 2 
 DH, 0 0 0 0 
 28 2 0 0 0 
 29 0 1 0 0 
 Province 
 Jiangsu 5 oD; 3 D) 
 Zhejiang 10 2 Dp} MB 
 Jiangxi 1 0 0 0 
 Sichuan 1 0 0 0 
 Hunan 4 3 5 0 
 Fujian 2 0 ] 0 
 Anhui 1 0 0 2 
 Henan 0 2 ] 0 
 Yunnan 0 0 ] 0 
 Guangxi 0 0 1 0 
 Guizhou 0) 0 1 0 
 Guangdong 0 0 0 1 
 Hubei 0 0 0 0 
 
 
 
 Source: Tabulated from data in National Labor University General Conditions, 1931, “List of 
 Faculty and Students,” pp. 18—43. 
 

 
 Laoda Students, 1928-31 285 
 
 Total 
 Education Sociology Economics Group A 
 Department Department Department Graduates 
 19 27 11 1D 
 i 27 1] 109 
 2 0 0 3 
 0 5) 0 5 
 0 4 ] 13 
 0 3 3 13 
 4 4 1 7/ 
 3 3 1 21 
 6 3 0 16 
 3 2 4 17 
 3 1 1 5) 
 0 2 0 4 
 0 0 0 ] 
 7 4 3 26 
 6 9 1 oy 
 0 0 ] 2 
 0 1 0 2 
 3 4 4 23 
 0 0 0 3 
 0 ] 0 4 
 0 1 0 4 
 0 1 1 3 
 1 2) 0 4 
 0 0 1 2 
 2) 3 0 6 
 0 1 0 1 
 
Appendix 286 
 
 Table A.6 Number, distribution, age, and provincial origin of Group B graduates, 
 Summer 1931 
 
 Agriculture Agrochemistry Horticulture Sociology 
 Department Department Department Department 
 
 Total number 24 13 10 12 
 
 Male 23 13 6 12 
 
 Female 1 0 3 0 
 
 Age 
 20 
 21 
 DD 
 23 6 
 24 
 25 
 26 
 Dy, 
 28 
 29 
 
 Province 
 Jiangsu 
 Zhejiang 
 Jiangxi 
 Sichuan 
 Hunan 
 Fujian 
 Anhui 
 Henan 
 Yunnan 
 Guangdong 
 Shaanxi 
 Shanxi 
 
 SSS 
 i) 
 
 Or oonnnn- 
 COONNNNNOCOO 
 CONWKwWNKOCO 
 
 COrr aA 
 
 OMS ooo ae = ao 
 SCOrFONnNKORHH OW 
 KHOOrKFKOQOHKPOnAO 
 SCOrccddOoOwHKnan 
 
 Source: Tabulated from data in National Labor University General Conditions, 1931, “List of 
 Faculty and Students,” pp. 18—43. 
 
 
 
Laoda Students, 1928-31 287 
 
 Total 
 Economics Group B 
 Department Graduates 
 21 80 
 20 Ns) 
 1 5 
 1 1 
 0 2D, 
 y} 14 
 3 15 
 6 17 
 4 16 
 2 8 
 0 3 
 2 3 
 ] 1 
 7 21 
 7 19 
 1 1 
 ] 4 
 3 16 
 0 1 
 1 2 
 0 3 
 1 2) 
 0 3 
 0 1 
 0 1 
 
Appendix 288 
 
 60 
 55 
 50 
 45 
 40 
 35 
 30 
 
 25 
 
 Number of students 
 
 20 
 
 7 18 19 20 21 DH), PR) 24 25 ghey YIif 
 Age 
 
 Figure A.1. Labor University undergraduates, age distribution, fall semester 
 1928. Source: First Anniversary Volume, 1928. 
 
Laoda Students, 1928-31 289 
 
 Hubei 
 Shaanxi 
 Shanxi 
 Guangxi 
 Jiangxi 
 Anhui 
 Guangdong 
 Hunan 
 Jiangsu 
 Zhejiang 
 Sichuan 
 Henan 
 Fujian 
 Yunnan 
 Guizhou 
 Shandong 
 
 Fengtian 
 
 
 
 T T T T T T Ir T le T T T T T ] 
 OMe LO Mn 5a Obes ONC OnE Ome oD OO Om OO MOonN/OMe/OMSOmISo 
 
 Number of students 
 
 Figure A.2. Labor University undergraduates, provincial origins, fall semes- 
 ter 1928. Source: First Anniversary Volume, 1928. 
 
Appendix 290 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 College of 
 Engineering 
 
 College of 
 Agriculture 
 
 College of 
 Social 
 Sciences 
 High 
 school 
 
 Primary 
 school 
 
 
 
 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 
 
 Number of students 
 
 Figure A.3. Labor University student enrollment according to division, Oc- 
 tober 1929. Source: Laoda gaikuang (The General Development of Labor 
 University) (Shanghai, 1929). 
 
 16 
 
 e 
 bw by wv 
 hw bv 
 
 i) 
 on 
 
 
 
 T T T T T T T T | i (=) Seee eee eee 
 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 
 
 Number of students 
 
 Figure A.4. Labor University undergraduates, age distribution, October 
 1929. Source: The General Development of Labor University, 1929. 
 
Laoda Students, 1928-31 291 
 
 Qinghai 
 Jilin 
 Liaoning 
 Shaanxi 
 Shanxi 
 Hubei 
 Guizhou 
 Shandong 
 Guangxi 
 Yunnan 
 Anhui 
 Henan 
 Fujian 
 Jiangxi 
 Guangdong 
 Sichuan 
 Hunan 
 Zhejiang 
 
 Jiangsu 
 
 
 
 
 
 aul T T 1 T T | 
 10 20 30 40 50 ~=60 70 ~=80 90 100 110 
 
 Number of students 
 
 Figure A.5. Labor University undergraduates, provincial origin, October 
 1929. Source: The General Development of Labor University, 1929. 
 
Appendix 292 
 
 70 
 
 60 
 
 50 
 
 40 
 
 30 
 
 Number of students 
 
 20 
 
 TLaahh 
 
 0 High Senior Special Studied Studied Normal Studied Others’ 
 
 
 
 school middle course in in school in 
 graduates graduates graduates special senior graduates university 
 course middle 
 school 
 
 Figure A.6. Labor University undergraduates, educational background, Oc- 
 tober 1929. Source: The General Development of Labor University, 1929. 
 *Includes seven trained in Guomindang party schools or institutes. 
 
iv 
 io) Aen 
 i i 
 
 i 
 Pe etatat 
 
 7a 
 
 ; i 
 
 oy wh 
 
 
 

 
se) 
 
 1 Introduction 
 
 Lu Han, “Zhongguo qingong jianxue chuyide taolun” (Discussion of a humble 
 opinion on China’s diligent-work frugal-study), Geming zhoubao (Revolution 
 Weekly, hereinafter Geming) 98—99 (June 1929): 271-77. 
 
 Zhao Zhenpeng, “Laodong daxuede huiyi” (Recollections of Labor University), 
 Zhuanji wenxue (Biographical Literature) 37.4 (October 1980): 57—60. 
 
 For these references see William Duiker, T's’ai Yuan-p’ei: Educator of Modern 
 China (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), p. 89; and 
 Yeh Wen-hsin, “The Alienated Academy: Higher Education in Republican 
 China” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1984), pp. 451-55, 
 which describes Labor University as a “tame” experiment. 
 
 Wu Xiangxiang, “Zai ‘yidang zhiguo’ kouhaoxia zhengqu yanlun ziyou” (The 
 struggle for freedom of speech under the slogan of “party rule of the country”), 
 Zhuanji wenxue 52.6 (June 1988): 26—36. 
 
 Yuan Chunhui, Zhongguo jindai jiaoyu fanglue (Strategies of education in 
 modern China) (Taipei: Xingtai yinshua chan, 1963); quotation on p. 78. 
 
 For recent examples see Stanley Aronowitz, Science as Power: Discourse and 
 Ideology in Modern Society (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 
 1988); and Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual Labor: A Critique 
 of Epistemology, trans. from the German by Martin Sohn-Rethel (Atlantic 
 Heights, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983). 
 
 “Fangwen Fan Juntian xianshengde jilu” (Record of a visit with Mr. Fan Jun- 
 tian, in Ge Maochun et al., eds., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang ziliao xuan (Selec- 
 tions on anarchist thought), 2 vols. (Beijing: Beijing daxue chuban she, 1983), 
 2:1039—48. 
 
 Lin Yi, “Sinian qian Zhongguode laodong daxue” (The Chinese Labor Univer- 
 sity of four years ago), Geming 29-30 (December 1927): 207. 
 
 For Shen’s statement, see “Fakan ci” (Opening editorial), Geming 1 (July 1927): 
 R17 
 
 Zhuo, “Shanghai Guoli Laodong daxuexiao qingzhu yijiuerba niande wuyi 
 jiede dianli he zhuce” (The ceremonies and commemorative speeches in the 
 
If 
 
 fe) 
 
 II 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 
 15 
 
 16 
 17 
 
 Notes to Chapter 2 296 
 
 celebration of May Day 1928 at the National Labor University in Shanghai), 
 Pingdeng (Equality) 11 (June 1928): 12—14. In this letter written to the editors 
 of Pingdeng in San Francisco, Zhuo noted that rather than celebrate workers, 
 this May Day celebration at Laoda had instead played up the need for everyone 
 to work harder to achieve national goals. Among the speakers he cites were 
 Xiong Mengfei, Zhang Xingbai, and an unnamed French professor, possibly 
 Jacques Reclus. This is further evidence, Zhuo added, that everything in China 
 at the time was run by “sick men” (bingren). 
 
 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” in L. Althusser, 
 Lenin and Philosophy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 127—86. 
 
 2 Anarchism and the Labor-Learning Ideal 
 in Chinese Revolutionary Discourse 
 
 Bi Bo (Bi Xiushao), “Laodong daxuede mudi yu shiming” (The goals and mis- 
 sion of Labor University), Geming 9 (August 1927): 264—68. 
 
 Ibid., p. 267. 
 
 Shi Guang, “Shouli laodong yu naoli laodong” (Manual and mental labor), 
 Geming 26 (December 1927): 179-84. 
 
 For further discussion see Arif Dirlik, “Vision and Revolution: Anarchism in 
 Chinese Revolutionary Thought on the Eve of the 1911 Revolution,” Modern 
 China 12.2 (April 1986): 123-65. 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Zhen [Li Shizeng], “Jinhua yu geming” (Evolution and revolution), Xin shiji 
 (New Era, hereinafter XS/) 20 (November 2, 1907): I. 
 
 Min [Chu Minyi], “Gongren” (Workers), XS] 79 (December 26, 1908): 4. 
 
 Wu Zhihui, Jiu shehui zhuyi yizheng gemingzhi yilun (Clarifying the meaning 
 of revolution through socialism) (Paris: Xin shiji congshu, 1907), p. 2. 
 
 For a discussion of this problem see James Pusey, China and Charles Darwin 
 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 370-433. 
 
 Daniel W. Y. Kwok, Scientism in Chinese Thought (New Haven: Yale Univer- 
 sity Press, 1965). 
 
 See the report on the first meeting of the Society for the Study of Socialism, in 
 XS] 22 (November 16, 1907). 
 
 Shen Shu (Liu Shipei), “Renlei junli shuo” (On the equal ability of human 
 beings), Tianyi bao (Natural Justice, hereinafter TYB) 3 (July 10, 1907): 34-35. 
 “Lun xinzheng wei bingminzhi gen” (New politics is the root of the people’s 
 sickness), TYB 8—10 (combined issues): 193—203. 
 
 Peter Zarrow, “Chinese Anarchists’ Ideals and the Revolution of 1911” (Ph.D. 
 diss., Columbia University, 1987), especially chap. 4. 
 
 See Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang ziliao xuan, 1:158—62. 
 “Lun xinzheng wei bingminzhi gen,” pp. 194-203. 
 
 Qu Fei (trans.), “I Duerside da Riben baozhi xinwenshe shu” (Tolstoy’s letter to 
 Japanese Periodical and Newspaper Association), TYB 5 (August 10, 1907): 99— 
 102. Judging by its contents, this letter was not significantly different from a 
 letter Tolstoy sent about the same time to Gu Hongming. For a discussion see 
 Derk Bodde, Tolstoy and China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 
 pp. 47—58. The letter was entitled “Letter to a Chinese.” 
 
18 
 
 19 
 20 
 
 21 
 22 
 
 23 
 24 
 
 25 
 26 
 
 27 
 
 28 
 29 
 
 30 
 31 
 
 32 
 
 33 
 
 34 
 35 
 36 
 37 
 38 
 
 39 
 
 40 
 
 4I 
 
 42 
 
 Notes to Chapter 2 297 
 
 For a discussion see Wolfgang Bauer, China and the Search for Happiness, 
 trans. from the German by Michael Shaw (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), pp. 
 352-53. 
 
 “Renlei junli shuo.” Also see Bauer, China and the Search for Happiness, 
 p. 356. 
 
 Ran [Wu Zhihui], “Wuzhengfu zhuyi yi jiaoyu wei geming shuo” (Anarchism 
 is revolution through education), XS] 65 (September 19, 1908): 10-12. 
 
 Ibid., p. 11. 
 
 Min [Chu Minyi], “Wuzhengfu shuo” (On anarchism), XS] 40-47 (March—May 
 1908). 
 
 “Lun zhishi yiwai wu daode,” XSJ 79 (December 26, 1908). 
 
 Zhen, “Tan xue” (On learning), XS/ 7 (August 3, 1907), and 21 (November 9, 
 1907). 
 
 Ibid., XS] 7. 
 
 Jue Sheng, “PaiKong zhengyan” (Reasons for getting rid of Confucius), XSJ 52 
 (June 20, 1908): 4. 
 
 Zhen, “Sangang geming” (Revolution in the three bonds), XS] 11 (August 31, 
 1907): 2. 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Paul Bailey, “The Chinese Work-Study Movement in France,” China Quar- 
 terly 115 (September 1988): 441-61, especially p. 445. 
 
 For a longer discussion, see Zarrow, “Chinese Anarchists’ Ideals,” pp. 138—4o. 
 See the essay reprinted in Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang ziliao 
 xuan, 1:163—66. 
 
 Jing Meijiu, “Zuian” (Account of crimes), in Xinhai geming ziliao leipian 
 (Materials on the 1911 revolution) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chuban- 
 she, 1981), pp. 144-45. 
 
 Quoted in Paul G. Clifford, “The Intellectual Development of Wu Zhihui: A 
 Reflection of Society and Politics in Late Qing and Early Republican China” 
 (Ph.D. diss., London University, 1978), p. 25. 
 
 Quoted in Bailey, “Chinese Work-Study Movement,” p. 445. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 448—49. 
 
 Ibid., p. 449. 
 
 Ibid., p. 447. 
 
 Translated in ibid., pp. 449-50. The poem was written for Li Yuru. See Fufa 
 qingong jianxue yundong shiliao (Historical materials on the diligent-work 
 frugal-study movement in France), 3 vols. (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1980), 
 2a:57-61. 
 
 Genevieve Barman and Nicole Dulioust, “Refining a Portrait of Youth: Chron- 
 icle of Deng Xiaoping’s French Years” (unpublished manuscript). We thank the 
 authors for sharing this paper with us. 
 
 See Marily Levine, “The Found Generation: Chinese Communism in Europe, 
 1919-1925” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1985). 
 
 For details of this society see Edward Krebs, “Liu Ssu-fu and Chinese Anar- 
 chism, 1905—1915” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1977). 
 
 For further information on this group and its activities see Arif Dirlik, “The 
 New Culture Movement Revisited: Anarchism and the Idea of Social Revolu- 
 tion in New Culture Thinking,” Modern China 11.3 (July 1985): 25 1—300; and 
 
43 
 
 44 
 
 45 
 
 46 
 
 47 
 
 48 
 
 49 
 
 50 
 
 SI 
 
 5) 
 
 53 
 
 54 
 
 55 
 
 56 
 
 SH 
 58 
 59 
 60 
 61 
 
 62 
 
 63 
 
 64 
 
 Notes to Chapter 2 298 
 
 “The Path Not Taken: The Anarchist Alternative in Chinese Socialism, 1921— 
 1927,” International Review of Social History 1 (1989): 141. 
 
 See Ming K. Chan, “Labor and Empire: The Chinese Labor Movement in the 
 Canton Delta, 1895-1920” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1975), for these 
 activities. 
 
 Dirlik, “The Path Not Taken.” 
 
 Arif Dirlik and Edward Krebs, “Socialism and Anarchism in Early Republican 
 China,” Modern China 7.2 (April 1981): 117—51. 
 
 See ibid., pp. 134-35, for a fuller description. 
 
 For an account of these activities see Liu Shixin, “Guanyu wuzhengfu zhuyi 
 huodongde diandi huiyi” (Remembering bits and pieces of anarchist activity), 
 in Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang ziliao xuan, 2:926—39. 
 Quoted in Wusi shiqi gikan jieshao (Introduction to periodicals of the May 
 Fourth period), 6 vols. (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1979), 2a:168. 
 
 Ibid., p. 178. 
 
 Cai’s fantasy, “Xinnian meng” (New year’s dream), was one of the first pieces 
 published by the Chinese that suggested anarchist influence. See Ge Maochun 
 et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang ziliao xuan, 1:41—52. 
 
 See Bailey, “Chinese Work-Study Movement,” pp. 448—49. 
 
 Originally published in Beijing daxue rikan (Beijing University Daily), 
 November 27, 1918. 
 
 M. K. Gandhi, Towards Non-Violent Socialism, ed. B. Kumarappa (Ahmed- 
 abad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1951), pp. 66—67. 
 
 Cai Jiemin xiansheng yanxing lu (Record of Mr. Cai Jiemin’s speeches) (Bei- 
 jing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1920), pp. 58—59. 
 
 For a discussion of these activities see Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese 
 Communism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 90-94. 
 
 Wang Guangqi, “Gongdu huzhu tuan” (Labor-learning mutual aid groups), 
 Shaonian Zhongguo (Young China) 1 (January 1920). Reprinted in Wusi shi- 
 qidi shetuan (Societies of the May Fourth period), 4 vols. (Beijing: Sanlian 
 shudian, 1979), 2:379. 
 
 For brief discussions of these institutions see Xiong Mingan, Zhongguo gao- 
 deng jiaoyu shi (History of higher education in China) (Chongqing: Chongqing 
 chubanshe, 1983), pp. 433-39. 
 
 Yeh Wen-hsin, “The Alienated Academy,” pp. 439-52. 
 
 For anarchist criticisms of class struggle see Dirlik, “The Path Not Taken,” pp. 
 23—25. 
 
 Ibid., p. 24. 
 
 Ibid., p. 12. 
 
 “Tongzhi xiaoxi” (News of Comrades), Jingzhe (Spring Festival [literally The 
 awakening of insects]) 1 (1924). 
 
 Kosugi Shuji, “Shanghai koodan rengookai to Shanghai no roodoo undoo” (The 
 Shanghai federation of syndicates and the Shanghai labor movement), Rekishi- 
 gaku Kenkyu (Historical Studies) 392 (January 1973): 14—63, especially pp. 18— 
 19. 
 
 Jean Chesneaux, The Chinese Labor Movement, 1919-1927 (Stanford: Stan- 
 ford University Press, 1968), pp. 223-27, 252-59. 
 
65 
 66 
 
 67 
 
 68 
 69 
 
 70 
 
 71 
 72 
 
 73 
 
 Notes to Chapter 3 299 
 
 Chesneaux (ibid., p. 225) notes that Hunanese constituted the more serious 
 organizers in the federation. 
 
 See “Tongzhi xiaoxi,” n. 25. 
 
 “Wuzhengfu gongchandang Shanghaibu xuanyan,” Ziyou ren (Free People) 3 
 (May 1924), in Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang, 2:751—57, espe- 
 cially p. 753. 
 
 Lin Yi, “Sinian qian Zhongguode laodong daxue,” p. 286. 
 
 Zheng Peigang, “Wuzhengfu zhuyi zai Zhongguode ruogan shishi” (Some facts 
 on anarchism in China), Guangzhou wenshi ziliao (Historical and Literary 
 Materials on Guangzhou) 1 (April 1962): 171-208, especially pp. 205—6. 
 Zhang Jing, “Annaqi zhuyi zai Zhongguodi chuanbo huodong pianduan” (A 
 brief account of the propagation of anarchism and anarchist activity in China), 
 in Wenshi ziliao xuanpian (Selections of Historical and Literary Materials), 
 quanguo (national) (Beijing: Wenshi ziliao chubanshe, 1983), pp. 113—24. For 
 further documentation on this school (and Kuang Husheng), see Kuang Hu- 
 sheng yu Lida xueyuan (Kuang Husheng and Lida College) (Beijing: Shifan 
 daxue chubanshe, 1985). 
 
 Zheng, “Wuzhengfu zhuyi zai,” p. 206. 
 
 Bi Xiushao, “Wo xinyang wuzhengfu zhuyidi qiangian houhou” (Account of 
 my anarchist beliefs), in Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang, 2: 
 1022-38, gives a brief account of the meeting on p. 1030. 
 
 Zheng, “Wuzhengfu zhuyi zai,” p. 206. 
 
 3 Anarchists and the Guomindang: 
 The Founding and Goals of Labor University 
 
 Lin Yi, “Sinian gian Zhongguode laodong daxue,” p. 307. 
 
 For a discussion of Wu’s arguments against class struggle see Arif Dirlik, “The 
 Revolution That Never Was: Anarchism in the Guomindang,” Modern China 
 15.4 (October 1989). 
 
 Letter appended to Wu Zhihui’s response. See Wu, “Zhi Hua Lin shu” (Letter 
 to Hua Lin), in Wu Zhihui quanji (Collected works of Wu Zhihui) (Shanghai: 
 Qunzhong tushu gongsi, 1927), vol. 3, sec. 7, pp. 24-35, especially p. 24. 
 According to Bi Xiushao, when he began to cooperate with the Guomindang, 
 Bajin cut off relations with him. See Bi, “Wo xinyang wuzhengfu zhuyide 
 qiangian houhou” (Account of my anarchist beliefs), in Ge Maochun et al., 
 Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang, 2:1022—38, especially p. 1031. 
 
 For a discussion of these societies see Edward Krebs, “Liu Ssu-fu and Chinese 
 Anarchism,” pp. 246—48. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 306—9. 
 
 Editorial, Minzhong (People’s Tocsin) 2.3 (March 1927). 
 
 Wu Zhihui hinted in his letter to Hua Lin that Li Shizeng had earlier been 
 critical of the political involvement of his fellow anarchists. See “Zhi Hua Lin 
 shumapeaae 
 
 Yibo, “Ping Chen Duxiu xianshengde jiangyanlu” (Critique of Mr. Chen Du- 
 xiu’s collection of speeches) Xuedeng (Light of Learning) 20 (November 1924). 
 
12 
 
 13 
 14 
 15 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 
 18 
 
 19 
 
 20 
 21 
 
 22 
 
 23 
 24 
 25 
 26 
 
 27 
 
 28 
 
 29 
 
 30 
 
 31 
 
 Notes to Chapter 3 300 
 
 Li Shizeng and Chu Minyi, Geming (Revolution) (Paris: Xin shiji congshu, 
 1907). 
 
 Richard Tze-yang Wang, “Wu Chih-hui: An Intellectual and Political Biogra- 
 phy” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1976), p. 233. 
 
 Xin Ai (Shen Zhongjiu), “Wuzhengfu zhuyizhe keyi jiaru Guomindang ma?” 
 (Can anarchists join the Guomindang?), Ziyou ren (Free People) 5 (July 1924), 
 in Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang, 2:771—89. 
 
 Ibid., p. 787. 
 
 Ibid., p. 786. 
 
 [Wei] Huilin, “Shehui geming yu guomin geming” (Social revolution and na- 
 tional revolution), Minzhong 2.1 (January 1927): 11—21. 
 
 For this exchange see “Zhen Tian yu Faguo wuzhengfu zhuyizhe Gelafude 
 tongxin” (Zhen Tian [Bi Xiushao’s] correspondence with the French anarchist 
 Grave), Minzhong 2.4—5 (May 1927), in Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi 
 S1X1dNg, 2:729—34. 
 
 Junyi [Wu Kegang], contribution to symposium, “Wuzhengfu zhuyi yu shiji 
 wenti” (Anarchism and the question of practice), in ibid., pp. 826—49, espe- 
 cially p. 848. 
 
 Liu Shixin, “Guanyu wuzhengfu zhuyi huodongde diandi huiyi” (Remember- 
 ing bits and pieces of anarchist activity), in ibid., pp. 926-39. 
 
 For a discussion of anarchist-communist relationships during the 1920s, see 
 Arif Dirlik, “The Path Not Taken.” 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 See, for example, Xin Tian [Shen Zhongjiu], “Gao Gongchandangde qingnian”’ 
 (To communist youth), Minzhong 2.3 (March 1927): 205-22. 
 
 Jiang Jun, “Lu Jianbo xiansheng zaoniande wuzhengfu zhuyi xuanquan huo- 
 dong jishi” (An account of Mr. Lu Jianbo’s anarchist activities in his youth), in 
 Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang, 2:1009—22, especially p. 1020. 
 “Wuzhengfu zhuyi yu shiji wenti,” pp. 833-34. 
 
 Ibid., p. 848. 
 
 Bi, “Wo xinyang wuzhengfu zhuyi,” pp. 1029-31. 
 
 “Fangwen Fan Tianjun xianshengde jilu” (Record of a visit with Mr. Fan 
 Tianjun), in Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang, 2:1039—48, espe- 
 cially p. 1043. 
 
 For the quotation, see Lu Han, “Zhongguo qingong jianxue chuyide taolun” 
 (Discussion of a humble opinion on China’s diligent-work frugal-study), Ge- 
 ming 98—99 (June 1929): 271-77, especially p. 272. 
 
 Guoli Laodong daxue, Guoli Laodong daxue guicheng (National Labor Univer- 
 sity regulations) (Shanghai 1927). “Organizational Guidelines of the College of 
 Industrial Labor,” p. 1, and section on agricultural labor college, pp. 1-2. 
 
 Bi Bo, ‘“Laodong daxuede mudi yu shiming,” Geming 9 (August 1927): 265—66. 
 The complete speech is in Chen Mingqiu [Ming K. Chan], “Zhishi yu laodong 
 jiehezhi jiaoyu shiyan” (An educational experiment ‘to combine learning and 
 labor’), in Ming K. Chan, ed., Zhongguo yu Xianggang gongyun zongheng 
 (Dimensions of the Chinese and Hong Kong labor movement) (Hong Kong: 
 Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee, 1986), pp. 61-77. 
 
 Li did not use the words, but the journal he sponsored, Geming, stated this to 
 
32 
 
 33 
 34 
 35 
 36 
 
 37 
 38 
 39 
 40 
 
 41 
 
 42 
 43 
 
 44 
 45 
 46 
 
 47 
 
 Notes to Chapter 3 301 
 
 be its goal. See “Fakan ci,” Geming 1 (July 1927), where the journal’s goal was 
 stated to be the defense of the “sacred term revolution” (shenshengdi geming 
 mingci). We should recall that by the mid-twenties the word revolution had 
 such prestige that all groups wanted to claim it for themselves. The Guomin- 
 dang itself suppressed revolution in the name of revolution. For a critical 
 discussion of this tendency, see Hu Hua, “Shehui mingci shiyide jieshi” (Pref- 
 ace to the explanation of social terminology), Geming 28 (December 1927). 
 The version used here is the reprint in Lang Xingshi, ed., Geming yu fan- 
 geming (Revolution and counterrevolution) (Shanghai: Minzhi shuji, 1928), 
 pp. I-19. 
 
 Ibid., p. 1. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 2-3. 
 
 Ibid., p. 9. 
 
 P.-J. Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, trans. and with an introduction by 
 Richard Vernon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979). An added attrac- 
 tion might have been that Proudhon saw in federation not just an answer to 
 tyranny but, pointing to mass agitation in France, also a way to save the people 
 “from their own folly” (p. 62). 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 “Xianjin gemingzhi yiyi,” 19. 
 
 Geming 24 (December 1927): 97-101. 
 
 Li Shizeng, “Jiquan yu junquan” (Centralization and the equal distribution of 
 sovereignty), Geming 61 (September 1928): 1-7, especially p. 3. 
 
 For the discussions that are the sources of these comments, see Li Shizeng, 
 “Fenzhi hezuo wenti” (The question of divided-governance cooperation), Ge- 
 ming 31—32 and 36 (February—March 1928); Han Nan, “Shehui sixiang shi 
 shangde liangda zhengzhi sichao” (Two great currents in the history of social 
 thought), Geming 37 (March 1928); Han Nan, “Fenzhi hezuo yu Zhonguo” 
 (Divided-governance cooperation and China), Geming 66 (October 1928); Xiu 
 Ping, “Fenzhi hezuo yu zhuanzheng jiquan” (Divided-governance cooperation 
 and despotic centralism), Geming 35 (March 1928). These ideas were signifi- 
 cant enough to provoke a prolonged controversy, which was published as 
 Fenzhi hezuo wenti Iunzhan (Controversy on divided-governance coopera- 
 tion), which we have been unable to locate. 
 
 li, “Jiquan yu junquan,” pp. 3—s. 
 
 Li, “Fenzhi hezuo wenti” (the version used here is from Geming yu fangeming, 
 pp. 20-24). Li also acknowledged that the term fenzhi hezuo was originally 
 Zhang Puquan’s; see p. 22. 
 
 This was a reference to the Left-Guomindang, which opposed the scheme. 
 Li, “Jiquan yu junquan,” pp. 5—6. 
 
 Ji Ying, “Guanyu fenzhi hezuo” (On divided-governance cooperation), Geming 
 45 (June 1928): 134-37, especially p. 136. 
 
 William J. Duiker, Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei: Educator of Modern China, p. 87. This 
 essay was originally published in Xin Jiaoyu (New Education) 4.3 (March 
 1922). For a reprint see Gao Pingshu, comp., Cai Yuanpei jiaoyu lunji (Collec- 
 tion of Cai Yuanpei’s discussions of education) (Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu 
 chubanshe, 1987), pp. 334-36. 
 
48 
 49 
 
 b1e) 
 SI 
 
 §2 
 53 
 54 
 55 
 
 56 
 
 57 
 
 Notes to Chapter 4 302 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Duiker, Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei, pp. 87-89. Also see Zhou Tiandu, Cai Yuanpei zhuan 
 (Biography of Cai Yuanpei) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1986), pp. 267-79; 
 and A. Linden, “Politics and Education in Nationalist China: The Case of the 
 University Council, 1927—1928,” Journal of Asian Studies 27.4 (August 1968): 
 763-77. 
 
 See Gao Pingshu, Cai Yuanpei, pp. 437-39. 
 
 Quoted in Zhou Tiandu, Cai Yuanpei zhuan, pp. 268—69, from an interview 
 originally published in Shanghai’s Xin minbao (Daily News) on April 12, 1928. 
 It might be noted here that Cai was personally acquainted with the labor 
 university at Charleroi, where his son had been enrolled as an engineering 
 student and where he had given a speech titled “China's Renaissance” in 1923. 
 Quoted in Yeh Wen-hsin, “The Alienated Academy,” pp. 452-53. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 453, 454. 
 
 For a discussion see Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism, chap. 4. 
 Ibid. For a discussion of Wu’s ideas on class and class conflict in the late 1920s, 
 see Arif Dirlik, “The Revolution That Never Was.” 
 
 Laoda zhoukan (Labor University Weekly, hereinafter LDZK) 3.1 (March 1, 
 1930): 9. 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 4 The Structure of Labor University: 
 Physical Plant and Curriculum 
 
 The General Development of Labor University |Laoda gaikuang, hereinafter 
 LDGR) (Shanghai: Guoli laodong daxue, 1929), pp. 1-2, the brief history by the 
 university secretary general. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 2-3. 
 
 Bi Xiushao, “Wu xinyang wuzhengfu zhuyi de gianqian houhou” (An account 
 of my anarchist beliefs), in Ge Maochun et al., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang, 
 2:1030—31. 
 
 Cai Yucong, “Zhongguo shehuixue fazhan shi shangde sige shiqi” (Four peri- 
 ods in the development of Chinese sociology), Shehui xuekan (Sociology 
 Journal) 2—3 (April 1933). 
 
 See the entry under “Laodong daxue” (Labor University), in Zhongguo xue- 
 sheng she, ed., Quanguo daxue tujian (Pictorial album of universities in all 
 China) (Shanghai: Liangyou chubanshe, 1933), pp. 69—71; also LDGK, pp. 2-3. 
 Zhao Shaoxiang, “Kangzhan gian Zhongguo daxue jiaoyude xin fangxiang, 
 1927-1937” (New directions in Chinese higher education before the war, 
 1927—1937) (Master’s Thesis, Chinese Culture College, Taipei, 1973), pp. 75— 
 76. 
 
 The People’s College of Shanghai (commonly known as Shanghai University) 
 had served as an institutional front for the Guomindang-communist united 
 front for the previous years. After 1923 it came under strong communist 
 influence. It was shut down in 1927 when the united front broke apart. Yeh 
 Wen-hsin has described Labor University as a “purified” Guomindang version 
 of Shanghai University. For a discussion of this college see Yeh, “The Alien- 
 ated Academy,” chap. 7. Also see Wang Jiajiu, ed., Shanghai daxue 1922-27 
 
IO 
 II 
 
 12 
 13 
 14 
 15 
 
 16 
 17 
 
 18 
 19 
 20 
 21 
 22 
 
 23 
 
 24 
 25 
 26 
 27 
 
 28 
 
 29 
 
 30 
 31 
 32 
 33 
 34 
 
 35 
 
 Notes to Chapter 4 303 
 
 (The People’s College of Shanghai, 1922-1927) (Shanghai: Shanghai Shehui 
 kexueyuan chubanshe, 1986); Huang Meizhen, ed., Shanghai daxue shiliao 
 (Historical materials of the People’s College of Shanghai) (Shanghai: Fudan 
 Daxue chubanshe, 1984). 
 
 Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 69-71. 
 
 LDZK 3.1 (March 1, 1930): 12. Also see Zhu Baikang, “Laodong daxuede 
 qiangian houhou” (Reminiscences of Labor University), Dushu zazhi (Read- 
 ers’ Magazine), 1.1 (November 1931): s. 
 
 Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 70-71. 
 
 National Labor University General Conditions (Guoli laodong daxue gai- 
 kuang) (Shanghai: Laodong daxue, 1931), p. 1. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 70-71. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 9-10, 14, 26—27. 
 
 LDZK 3.2 (March 8, 1930): 4—s. 
 
 National Labor University First Anniversary Commemorative Volume (Guoli 
 Laodong daxue zhounian jiniankan) (Shanghai, 1928), lists the development 
 plans for new disciplines and departments. Hereinafter cited as First Anniver- 
 sary Volume. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 4-5. 
 
 Guoli Laodong daxue, Guoli Laodong daxue guicheng (National Labor Univer- 
 sity regulations) (Shanghai: Laodong daxue, 1927), “Organizational Guide- 
 lines of the College of Industrial Labor,” p. r. 
 
 Zhao Zhenpeng, “Laodong daxuedi huiyi,” p. 57. 
 
 Ibid., p. 57; LDGK, p. 18. 
 
 Zhao Shaoxiang, “Kangzhan qian Zhongguo daxue,” pp. 47—48. 
 
 Zhu Baikang, “Laodong daxuede,” p. 6. 
 
 National Labor University Regulations, section on industrial labor college, 
 pp. 4-9, and section on agricultural labor college curriculum, pp. 1—4. 
 
 Ibid., section on industrial labor college, pp. 12—13, and section on agricultural 
 labor college curriculum, pp. 5—6. 
 
 Ibid., section on industrial labor college, p. 13. 
 
 LDZK 3.2 (March 8, 1930): 3—S. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 3-4. 
 
 An example of Laoda’s version of this kind of “labor literature” can be seen ina 
 piece written by one of its professors, “The Returning Journey” (Gaizheng), by 
 Guan Yanwan, published in Labor University Anthology (Laoda luncong) 
 (Shanghai: Guoli laodong daxue, 1929). 
 
 Guoli Laodong dauxue yuekan (National Labor University Monthly) 1.8 (No- 
 vember 1930), Special Issue on Labor Literature, pp. 1-2. 
 
 See Chang-tai Hung, Going to the People (Cambridge: Harvard East Asian 
 Monograph, 1986), for this folk literature movement. 
 
 Zhao Zhenpeng, “Laodong daxuedi huiyi,” p. 58. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 31-32. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 32—33. 
 
 LDZK 3.2:4-5. 
 
 LDZK 3.2:4—5; LDGK, pp. 32-38; National Labor University Development, 
 (Guoli Laodong daxue xiaokuang) (Shanghai, 1929), pp. 18—22. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 18-26. 
 
36 
 37 
 
 38 
 39 
 40 
 41 
 42 
 43 
 
 Ad 
 45 
 
 46 
 
 47 
 
 48 
 
 49 
 50 
 Sir 
 52 
 
 53 
 54 
 55 
 56 
 
 57 
 
 Notes to Chapter 4 304 
 
 National Labor University Development, pp. 12—16. 
 
 National Labor University Regulations, section on agricultural labor college, 
 pp. I—2. 
 
 LDZK 3.0:0. 
 
 LDZK 3.9 (April 26, 1930): 2-3. 
 
 Ibid., p. 2. 
 
 Ibid., p. 2. 
 
 Ibid., p. 2. 
 
 Guoli Laodong daxue yuekan 1.7 (October 1930). Among the titles were 
 “Plans and Methodology for a Survey of Hangzhou Social Enterprises,” “Penal 
 Institutions in Hangzhou,” “Survey of Hangzhou Municipal Administration,” 
 “Social Enterprises under the Provincial Guomindang Headquarters,” “Report 
 on the Visit to Social Enterprises under the Bureau of Civil Administration,” 
 and “Labor Education in Hangzhou,” all by Lu Guoxiang; “Social Education in 
 Hangzhou,” “Relief Work in Hangzhou,” and “Social Enterprises under the 
 Bureau of Reconstruction,” all by Feng Hefa. 
 
 TED ZIG 2kO23% 
 
 The Nanjing field trip report can be found in LDZK 2.30—31, joint issue 
 (December 1, 1929): 10-15, and LDZK 2.32 (December 8, 1929), for part 2. 
 LDZK 3.1:15 published a report on the students’ visit to Wuxi to investigate 
 the local agricultural labor college and mass education college; LDZK 3.6—7 
 (April 12, 1930): 17, reported on the Laoda Labor Education Investigation 
 Corps’ preparation for survey field trips covering local organs. 
 
 See Dirlik, “The Revolution That Never Was,” on the Guomindang-anarchist 
 contradictions; on the complaint against the Party Doctrines course and in- 
 structors, see Zhuanji wenxue (Biographic Literature) 326 (July 1989): 48. 
 LDZK 3.6—7:9; Theodore H. Chen, “Education in China, 1927—1937,” in Paul 
 K. T. Sih, ed., Strenuous Decade: China’s Nation-Building Efforts, 1927-1937 
 (Jamaica, N.Y.: St. John’s University Press, 1970), p. 306. 
 
 See, for example, the “political reports” as summarized in LDZK 3.3 (March 
 15, 1930): 1, and 3.5 (March 29, 1930): 5—6. 
 
 LDZK 3.6-7:9. 
 
 First Anniversary Volume, “Divisional Report,” pp. 5, 7. 
 
 Ibid., p. 15. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” p. 7; LDZK 3.15 (June 7, 1930): 1—5, for the text of this 
 lecture. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” pp. 9—10, 13. 
 
 LDZK 2.30—31 (December 1, 1929): 2-3; LDZK 2.33:6—7. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” pp. 10-11. 
 
 See LDZK 4.4 (September 29, 1930): 21-24, for this biographic sketch. A 
 Chinese rapporteur’s notes of his speech were published in LDZK 4.7 (October 
 20, 1930): 16-18; an English summary version was included in the next 
 section of this chapter. Also see LDZK 4.9 (November 3, 1930): 6—7, for Laoda’s 
 efforts in publicizing this speech in the local press. 
 
 Ge Yigiang, “Bilishi huaqiao feizhi bupingdeng tiaoyue yundong” (The cam- 
 paign to terminate Sino-Belgian unequal treaties among overseas Chinese in 
 Belgium), Jinan xuebao (Jinan University Journal) 2 (1990). 
 
58 
 59 
 60 
 
 61 
 
 62 
 63 
 64 
 65 
 
 66 
 
 67 
 68 
 69 
 7O 
 Wi 
 72 
 73 
 
 74 
 75 
 76 
 77 
 
 78 
 
 Vv) 
 
 80 
 81 
 82 
 
 Notes to Chapter 4 305 
 
 LDZK 2.27 (November 4, 1929): 4-5. 
 
 LDZK 2.36 (January 11, 1930): 13. 
 
 LDZK 4.1 (September 8, 1930): 6. On Chen’s book Collected Essays on Labor 
 (Shanghai, 1934), and the 1Lo activities in China, see Ming K. Chan, Histo- 
 riography of the Chinese Labor Movement, 1895—1949 (Stanford: Hoover 
 Institution Press, 1981), pp. 16—17. 
 
 Guoli laodong daxue zhoukan (National Labor University Weekly), no. 46 
 (December 17, 1928): 28. 
 
 TD AKGO RSS. 
 
 Ibid., p. 6. 
 
 LDZK 3.5:6. 
 
 On the Guomindang’s efforts to enhance its legitimacy through extended 
 claims to revolutionary heritage, see Winston Hsieh, Chinese Historiography 
 on the 1911 Revolution (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1975); LDZK 
 Bees 
 
 Zhuo, “Shanghai Guoli Laodong daxuexiao qingzhu yijiuerba niande wuyi 
 jiede dianli he zhuci” (The ceremonies and commemorative speeches in the 
 celebration of May Day, 1928, at the National Labor University in Shanghai}, 
 Pingdeng (Equality) 11 (June 1928): 12-14. 
 
 LDZK 3.10 (May 1, 1930): 1-4. 
 
 LDZK 3.11 (May 8, 1930): 2. 
 
 bide pas 
 
 Ibid., p. 3. 
 
 Ibid., p. 3. 
 
 nD AKea rere rise 
 
 On the Guomindang’s labor laws and industrial legislation as part of the 
 regime’s labor control mechanism, see Ming K. Chan, “The Visible Hand: 
 Guomindang Policy and Control of Organized Labor during the Nanking 
 Decade” (Paper prepared for the Australian Association for Asian Studies 
 Biannual Conference, Adelaide, May 1984). 
 
 LGD AKER Ore 
 
 Ibid., pp. 2-4. 
 
 LDZK 3.11 (May 10, 1930): 7. 
 
 Wu Baoyi, “Biguo laodong daxue gingxing gaikuang” (General account of the 
 Belgian Labor University), in Laoda luncong. 
 
 Gao Pingshu, Cai Yuanpei nianpu (Chronology of Cai Yuanpei) (Beijing: 
 Zhonghua shuju, 1980), pp. 73-74. 
 
 For discussions of labor education in Belgium, see Henri deMan, “Workers’ 
 Education in Belgium,” International Labor Review, 6.4 (October 1922): 527— 
 45; and M.-T. Nisot, “Workers’ Education in Belgium,” International Labor 
 Review 24.1 (July-December 1931): 55—74. 
 
 deMan, “Workers’ Education,” pp. 5 30—32. 
 
 LDZK 4.7 (October 20, 1930): 16-18. 
 
 See deMan, “Workers’ Education,” and Nisot, “Workers’ Education in Bel- 
 gium.” For Ruskin College see Al Nash, Ruskin College: A Challenge to Adult 
 and Labor Education (Ithaca: Cornell University, New York State School of 
 Industrial and Labor Relations, 1981). 
 
83 
 84 
 
 85 
 
 CoN NM 
 
 Io 
 
 you 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 15 
 
 Notes to Chapter 5 306 
 
 deMan, “Workers’ Education,” pp. 339-43; Nash, Ruskin College, pp. 24-26. 
 For a critique by an anarchist involved, see Lu Han, “Zhongguo qingong 
 jianxue chuyide taolun” (A discussion of an opinion on China’s diligent-work 
 frugal-study) Geming 99 (June 15, 1929): 271-77, especially p. 273. 
 
 See the attack on the university in the highly respected Guowen zhoubao 
 (Guowen Weekly) 7.16 (April 28, 1930), “Lun daxue jiaoyu zhi heli hua” (On 
 rationalization of university education), pp. 4—6. The author criticized that 
 “despite its label as a university, its [Laoda’s] students were only of high school 
 academic caliber.” It was ridiculous, he observed, that Laoda should absorb the 
 precious public resources it did, its cost being second only to Tongji Univer- 
 sity. 
 
 5 Labor University Faculty and Scholarship 
 
 First Anniversary Volume, p. 24. 
 
 These faculty-staff data are from: “Faculty-Staff List, Fall 1928” (Jiaozhiyuan 
 minglu) included in First Anniversary Volume, “Faculty, Staff, and Students,” 
 pp. 1-14; “National Labor University 1929 Fall Semester Faculty-Staff Direc- 
 tory” (Guoli Laodong daxue shiba niande shangxueqi quanti jiaozhiyuan yi- 
 lan) included in The General Development of Labor University (Laoda gai- 
 kuang, also cited as LDGK) (Shanghai: Laodong daxue, 1929); National Labor 
 University Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931) (Guoli laodong daxue zhi- 
 jiaoyuan lu), compiled and published by the Registry of Labor University, in 
 April 1931; “The Lists of Staff/Faculty, Fall Semester 1931” (Zhiyuan, jiao- 
 yuan minglu), included in National Labor University General Conditions 
 (Shanghai, 1931). 
 
 “Faculty-Staff List, Fall 1928,” pp. 1, 4, 6; “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory,” pp. 1, 
 5, 6; LDZK 4.2 (September 15, 1930): 1. 
 
 “Faculty-Staff List, Fall 1928,” pp. 1, 5, 9; “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory,” pp. 1, 
 Ty WD 
 
 “Faculty-Staff List, Fall 1928,” pp. 1, 9. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 1, 8. 
 
 “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory,” pp. 1, 12. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 8, 13. 
 
 National Labor University Developments, p. Vii. 
 
 National Labor University General Conditions, section on regulations and 
 rules, p. 44, “Terms of Service for Staff and Faculty.” 
 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), faculty section, pp. 1-4. 
 
 LDZK 2.26 (October 29, 1929): 2-3. 
 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), staff section, pp. 9, 10, 15; faculty sec- 
 tion, pp. 14-16. 
 
 Ibid., faculty section, pp. I, 9. 
 
 On these two French-related institutions, see Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 107— 
 10, 173-75; Jon W. Huebner, “L’Université L’Aurore, Shanghai, 1903-1952,” 
 Papers on Far Eastern History 40 (September 1989): 133—49. On French ties to 
 modern Chinese education, see Ruth Hayhoe, “Catholics and Socialists: The 
 Paradox of French Educational Interaction with China,” in Ruth Hayhoe and 
 
16 
 
 17 
 
 18 
 19 
 
 20 
 
 21 
 yD) 
 23 
 24 
 25 
 26 
 
 27 
 28 
 29 
 30 
 31 
 
 32 
 
 33 
 
 34 
 35 
 
 36 
 
 37 
 
 38 
 
 39 
 
 Notes to Chapter 5 307 
 
 Marianne Bastid, eds., China’s Education and the Industrialized World: Stud- 
 ies in Cultural Transfer (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1987), pp. 97-119. Also 
 see Y. C. Wang, Chinese Intellectuals and the West, pp. 180, 372-75, for the 
 dominant pattern of American-educated scholars in Chinese higher educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Chen Zhesan, Zhonghua minguo daxueyuan zhi yanjiu (Taipei: Taiwan 
 Shangwu yinshuguan, 1976), p. 186; Zhu Baikang, “Laodong daxuede,” p. 11. 
 “Faculty-Staff List, Fall 1928,” pp. 1-3, 9, 12; “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory,” 
 pp. I-2. 
 
 LDZK 3.14 (May 31, 1930): 7. 
 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), staff section, pp. 7, 9-11; faculty sec- 
 tion, p. 4. 
 
 Chen Zhesan, Zhonghua minguo, p. 185; LDGK, “Historical Sketch,” p. 2; 
 “Chronology,” pp. 1-4. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” pp. 2-3. 
 
 See n. 3 above; LDGK, “Chronology,” pp. 1, 6. 
 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), staff section, p. 6; “List of Staff/Faculty, 
 Falleno gi capa: 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” p. 3. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 4, 8. 
 
 LDGK, “Divisional Report,” pp. 18-19. 
 
 Ibid., p. 19. 
 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), staff section, p. 7. 
 
 “Lists of Staff/Faculty, Fall 1931,” pp. 6, 10, 14. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” p. 13. 
 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), staff section, p. 8; “Lists of Staff/Faculty, 
 Fall 1931,” p. 6. 
 
 “Faculty-Staff List, 1928,” p. 5; LDGK, “Chronology,” p. 4; First Anniversary 
 Volume, “Divisional Report,” pp. 24, 27; Guoli Laodong daxue zhoukan (Na- 
 tional Labor University Weekly), No. 46 (December 17, 1928): 29. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” pp. 3-5, 7, 11; First Anniversary Volume, “Divisional 
 Report,” pp. 22, 24. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” pp. 2, 8. 
 
 First Anniversary Volume, ‘Divisional Report,” p. 25; LDGK, “Chronology, 
 p. 10, “Divisional Report,” 28. 
 
 First Anniversary Volume, “Divisional Report,” p. 25; LDGK, “Divisional 
 Report,” p. 28; “Faculty-Staff List, 1928,” p. 4. 
 
 Firsi Anniversary Volume, “Divisional Report,” p. 25; LDGK, “Chronology,” 
 p. 11, “Divisional Report,” p. 14; LDZK 2.26 (October 28, 1929): 2; LDZK 4.2 
 (September 15, 1930): 1; Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), faculty section, 
 p. 1; “Lists of Staff/Faculty, Fall 1931,” p. 12. 
 
 First Anniversary Volume, “Divisional Report,” p. 25; LDGK, “Chronology,” 
 p. 11, “Divisional Report,” p. 14; LDZK 4.2:1; LDZK 3.1 (March 1, 1930): 7. 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), faculty section, p. 1; “Lists of Staff/ 
 Faculty, Fall 1931,” p. 12. 
 
 LDGK, “Divisional Report,” p. 14; LDZK 4.2:1; Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 
 1931), faculty section, p. 1; “Lists of Staff/Faculty, Fall 1931,” p. 12. 
 
40 
 
 42 
 43 
 da 
 45 
 46 
 47 
 48 
 49 
 50 
 51 
 52 
 53 
 
 54 
 
 55) 
 56 
 
 Sf 
 58 
 
 59 
 60 
 
 61 
 
 62 
 
 63 
 64 
 
 Notes to Chapter 5 308 
 
 LDGK, “Divisional Report,” p. 20; LDZK 4.1 (September 8, 1930): 5; Faculty- 
 Staff Directory (Spring 1931), faculty section, p. 4; “Lists of Staff/Faculty, Fall 
 1931,” p. 14. 
 
 “Faculty-Staff List, 1928,” p. 8; LDGK, “Chronology,” p. 11, “Divisional Re- 
 port,” p. 21; Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), faculty section, p. 4; “Lists 
 of Staff/Faculty, Fall 1931,” p. 14. 
 
 “Faculty-Staff List, 1928,” p. 8; LDGK, “Divisional Report,” p. 20; LDZK 4.1:5; 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), faculty section, p. 4; “Lists of Staff/ 
 Faculty, Fall 1931,” p. 14. 
 
 LDGK, “Divisional Report,” p. 28. 
 
 Ibid., p. 28; LDZK 2.21 (September 23, 1929): 9; Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 
 1931), faculty section, p. 9. 
 
 LDZK 2.21:9; LDZK 3.1:7; Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), faculty sec- 
 tion, p. 9. 
 
 LDGK, “Divisional Report,” p. 28; Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), fac- 
 ulty section, p. 9; “Lists of Staff/Faculty, Fall 1931,” p. 15. 
 
 Xu Shanguang and Liu Jianping, Zhongguo wuzhengfu zhuyi shi (History of 
 Chinese anarchism) (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1989), p. 285. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 333-34, 338. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 324-25, 336, 355—60. 
 
 Zheng Peigang, “Wuzhengfu zhuyi zai,” p. 206. 
 
 Arif Dirlik, “The Revolution That Never Was.” 
 
 Letter to Ray Jones from Zhigong, in Asian-American Library, University of 
 California at Berkeley, H. Mark Lai Collection, Box 21. Also see the “Faculty- 
 Staff List, Fall 1928,” and “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory.” 
 
 The authors are indebted to Prof. Alain Roux for information on Harry Howard 
 based on British Foreign Office records (FO13946—F1351/10, Feb. 3/5, 1929). 
 Xu Shanguang and Liu Jianping, Zhongguo wuzhengfu zhuyi shi, pp. 285, 287; 
 also see Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), for Guo’s return in 1931. 
 
 See the new 1929 curriculum as listed in LDGK. 
 
 See, for example, the criticism of Laoda in Geming 30 (November 20, 1927): 
 305-7, “China’s Labor University of Four Years Ago.” 
 
 Geming 99 (June 15, 1929): 272-73. 
 
 Geming 82 (January 27, 1929), “Urgent Notice of the Publisher.” 
 
 Zhao Zhenpeng, “Laodong daxuedi huiyi,” p. 58. 
 
 On Tao’s historical scholarship and his role in the debate on the nature of 
 Chinese society, see Arif Dirlik, History and Revolution (Berkeley: University 
 of California Press, 1978). 
 
 On Chen's scholarship see Ming K. Chan, Historiography of the Chinese 
 Labor Movement, 1895—1949, p. 7. Also see the dedication page of Chen 
 Zhenlu’s Overview of Labor Problems (Laodong wenti dagang) (Shanghai: 
 Daxue shudian, 1934), pp. ii, 3. 
 
 For this important series of statistical reports on Shanghai labor conditions see 
 Ming Chan, Historiography of the Chinese Labor Movement, 1895-1949, pp. 
 33, 201-3. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” p. 11. 
 
 “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory,” 16. 
 
65 
 
 66 
 67 
 68 
 
 69 
 
 70 
 
 71 
 
 72 
 73 
 
 74 
 
 US 
 
 76 
 
 Vi 
 78 
 79 
 80 
 
 81 
 82 
 
 83 
 
 84 
 
 85 
 
 86 
 
 Notes to Chapter 5 309 
 
 Biographical information on Sun Hanbing is from Zhuanji wenxue (Biographi- 
 cal Literature) 315 (August 1988): 134—36; and also Fudan daxue zhi (Gazette 
 of Fudan University), vol. 1 (1905—1949) (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 
 1985], 498-506. 
 
 LDZK 2.25 (October 21, 1929): 7. 
 
 Zhao Zhenpeng, “Laodong daxuedi huiyi,” p. 58. 
 
 Laoda lIuncong. This 1929 commemorative volume included twenty-eight 
 scholarly essays by Laoda professors and students, plus a collection of twenty- 
 five speeches by prominent intellectuals, social scientists, and Guomindang 
 leaders such as Lu Xun, Da Jitao, Chen Hansheng, and Tao Xisheng. 
 
 E-tu Zen Sun, “The Growth of the Academic Community 1912—1949,” in 
 John K. Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker, eds., The Cambridge History of 
 China, vol. 13: Republican China 1912-1949, part 2 (New York: Cambridge 
 University Press, 1986), p. 393. 
 
 Fudan daxue, Fudan daxue yilan (The Fuh-Tan Banner) (Shanghai: Fudan 
 daxue, 1937), pp. 21-31; and “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory.” 
 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931); and “Lists of Staff/Faculty, Fall Semes- 
 ter 1931.” 
 
 Fudan daxue yilan, p. 31. 
 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931), and Fudan daxue zhi, pp. 278, 485, 499, 
 on the Fudan training of Sun, Zhang, and Yu. 
 
 Daxia daxue yilan (Great China University Catalogue, 1934-35) (Shanghai: 
 Daxia daxue, 1935), see ‘“Faculty-Staff List for 1934-35,” pp. 26—38. 
 
 H. G. W. Woodhead, ed., The China Yearbook 1933 (Shanghai: The North 
 China Daily News & Herald, 1933), p. 421. 
 
 Guoli Jinan daxue mishuchu, ed., Zhanhou zhi Jinan: Ershi niandu dier xueqi 
 Guoli Jinan daxue yilan (Jinan University after the war: General catalogue of 
 the National Jinan University, second semester, 1931-32) (Shanghai: Jinan 
 daxue, 1932), “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory”; Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 
 1931). 
 
 Zhanhou zhi Jinan, faculty list for second semester, 1931-32; Fudan daxue 
 yilan, pp. 21-31; Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931). 
 
 Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 41—45. 
 
 Zhanhou zhi Jinan, p. 2. 
 
 Jiaotong daxue xiaoshi, 1896—1949 (A history of Communications University, 
 1896—1949) (Shanghai: Jiaoyu chubanshe, 1987), pp. 213-14, 221. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 225-31. Also, Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 65—68. 
 
 They were Kang Weinong, Pan Qidong, Chen Liuguan, and Jin Xiaozong. 
 Faculty-Staff Directory (Spring 1931). 
 
 Ibid., and “Lists of Staff/Faculty, Fall Semester 1931.” 
 
 On Tongji’s German influence and development, see Weng Zhiyuan, ed., Tong- 
 ji daxue shi (A history of Tongji University). Vol. 1: 1907—1949 (Shanghai: 
 Tongji daxue chubanshe, 1987); Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 62—64. 
 
 See Huebner, “L’Université L’Aurore,” pp. 173-75 on the archconservative 
 style of Aurora. 
 
 See Jessie G. Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges, 1850-1950 (Ithaca: 
 Cornell University Press, 1971), pp. 204-70; and Ka-che Yip, Religion, Na- 
 
87 
 
 88 
 
 89 
 
 90 
 gI 
 
 92 
 
 93 
 
 94 
 
 95 
 96 
 
 Notes to Chapter 6 310 
 
 tionalism and Chinese Students: The Anti-Christian Movement of 1922-27 
 (Bellingham, Wash.: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington Uni- 
 versity, 1980), for these twin movement-campaigns. 
 
 See Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges, pp. 229, 233, on Laoda founders’ 
 critical stance toward foreign missionary domination of Chinese education on 
 both anti-imperialism and anti-religion grounds. 
 
 On St. John’s westernized atmosphere and “unpatriotic” public image, see 
 Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 193-96; Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges, 
 pp. 213, 248, 277; and its fiftieth anniversary commemorative volume, St. 
 John’s University, 1879-1929 (Shanghai: St. John’s University, 1929). 
 
 On Shanghai Baptist College’s student body and their affluent life on and off 
 campus, see Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 176—80; and the students’ yearbooks, 
 The Shanghai, vol. 11 (1926), and The Shanghai, 1934 Annual (Shanghai: 
 Shanghai College, 1926, 1934). 
 
 See the four sets of Laoda faculty-staff directories listed in n. 2 of this chapter. 
 Republic of China, Ministry of Education, Ershiyi niandu quanguo gaodeng 
 jiaoyu tongji (Statistics on higher education in China, 1932) (Nanjing: Jiaoyu 
 bu, 1933), p. 57, table 33. 
 
 Fudan daxue zhi, pp. 252, 255, 501. 
 
 On Great China University’s founding and nationalistic stance, see Quanguo 
 daxue tujian, pp. 119-22; and Daxia daxue yilan. 
 
 See Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 111-14; Guanghua daxue shi zhounian jinian 
 ce (Commemorative volume on the tenth anniversary of Guanghua Univer- 
 sity) (Shanghai: Guanghua daxue, 1935), p. 1. 
 
 Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 75-77. 
 
 Fudan daxue zhi, p. 459. Chen Wangdao, Fudan’s Chinese department chair- 
 man and professor, also served as Shangda’s provost. Ibid., pp. 22-24, 39-50. 
 Also see Lu Yao, Zhongguo wu zhengfu zhuyi shi gao (A draft history of 
 Chinese anarchism) (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1990}, p. 308, which 
 lists Chen and five other prominent men of letters who had also taught at 
 Laoda: Zhu Guanggian, Hu Yuzhi, Xia Mianzun, Ye Shengtao, and Feng Zikai. 
 
 6 Laoda Students, Organizations, 
 Campus Life, and Politics 
 
 Zhu Baikang, “Laodong daxuede,” p. 6. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 5—6. 
 
 Zhao Zhenpeng, “Laodong daxuede huiyi,” p. 57; Chen Biao, “Laodong 
 daxuede laodong shenghuo” (Labor life in Labor University), Xuesheng zazhi 
 (Students’ Magazine), 15.3 (March 1928): 82. Also see National Labor Univer- 
 sity Developments, pp. 31—49, for the three accounts of campus life written 
 by Laoda students, one from each of the colleges. On their summer jobs, see 
 LDZK 4.1 (September 8, 1930): 4—5, 21. 
 
 Chen Zhenlu, Xiandai laodong wenti luncong (Anthology of contemporary 
 labor problems) (Shanghai, 1933); Laogong jiaoyu (Labor education) (Shang- 
 hai, 1936); Laodong wenti dagang (Overview of labor problems) (Shanghai, 
 1934); and Zhou Zidong et al., eds., Sanshi niandai Zhongguo shehui xingzhi 
 
So ON AM 
 
 IO 
 
 12 
 13 
 
 14 
 
 T5 
 
 16 
 
 17 
 18 
 
 19 
 
 20 
 21 
 22 
 
 Notes to Chapter 6 311 
 
 lunzhan (Debates on the nature of Chinese society during the 1930s) (Shang- 
 hai: Zhishi chubanshe, 1987), see the interview with Feng Hefa, pp. 128—31. 
 National Labor University General Conditions (1931), p. 3. 
 
 Ibid., p. 3. 
 
 Ibid., p. 4. 
 
 Ibid., p. 4. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 4-5. 
 
 LDGEK, p. t. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 22.6 (June 1930): 243; also see the second section in chapter 7 of 
 this book for details. 
 
 National Labor University General Conditions (1931), p. 7. 
 
 Appendix tables A.1 and A.2 were tabulated from data in the First Anniver- 
 sary Volume (1928), “Directory of Faculty and Students,” pp. 14-31; table A.3 
 from data in National Labor University Developments (1930), p. viii; tables 
 A.4—A.6 from data in National Labor University General Conditions (1931), 
 “List of Faculty and Students,” pp. 18-43. Appendix figures were originally 
 published as follows: figures A.1 and A.2 in First Anniversary Volume (1928); 
 figures A.3—A.6 in LDGK. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” p. 3. The university also rejected the recommendation 
 from the provincial governor of Guangdong for the admission into Laoda of 
 some students; see LDZK 4.2 (September 15, 1930): 9. 
 
 See the report by Zheng Ruogu, university secretary and professor of educa- 
 tion, LDZK 2.21 (September 23, 1929): 3. 
 
 According to the entries listed under Feng’s name in G. W. Skinner and 
 Winston Hsieh, eds., Modern Chinese Society: An Analytical Bibliography, 
 vol. 2: Publication in Chinese 1644-1969 (Stanford: Stanford University 
 Press, 1973), Feng wrote four books and edited eleven articles between 1930 
 and 1937. Of these, three books were published during 1932—35 by the Dawn 
 Bookstore in Shanghai, which was cofounded by Sun Hanbing, Feng’s eco- 
 nomics teacher at Laoda. Four of his articles were published in the monthly 
 journal Chinese Village (Zhongguo nongcun) in 1934 and 1937. This journal 
 was also published by the Dawn Bookstore (see chapter 4 on this important 
 leftist publishing link with Laoda faculty). As for Xu, Skinner and Hsieh, 
 ibid., listed two books and eight articles published between 1933 and 1962 
 under his name. 
 
 LDZK 4.14 (December 9, 1930): 9; LDZK 2.33 (December 14, 1929): 5, 9. 
 Zhu Baikang, “Laodong daxuede,” pp. 12-13. 
 
 “The Cooperative Movement in the USSR” (translated); “Social Enterprises 
 under the [Hangzhou] Bureau of Reconstruction”; “The Relations between 
 Hours of Work and Climate”; “Brief Biography of American Sociologist Dr. 
 Hayes” (in two parts), and “General Discussion on Rural Sociology.” See Guo- 
 li laodong daxue yuekan (National Labor University Monthly) 1.1 (1929); 1.3, 
 1.4, 1.7, 1.9 (1930); and 2.3 (1930). 
 
 LDZK 4.9 (November 3, 1930): 12—15; 4.10 (November 10, 1930): 39-43. 
 The Fuh-Tan Banner, p. 31. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 22.8 (August 1930): 93-103; also see Guoli laodong daxue 
 yuekan, 1.1, 1.2 (1929); 1.7 (1930); LDZK 2.33:8, 11. 
 
23 
 
 24 
 25 
 
 26 
 27 
 28 
 29 
 30 
 31 
 
 32 
 33 
 34 
 35 
 36 
 37 
 38 
 39 
 40 
 41 
 42 
 43 
 44 
 45 
 
 46 
 47 
 48 
 49 
 50 
 51 
 52 
 53 
 
 54 
 55 
 56 
 Si; 
 
 Notes to Chapter 6 312 
 
 LDZK 2.21 (September 23, 1929); 2.26 (October 29, 1929); 2.30-31 (Decem- 
 ber 1, 1929); 3.9 (April 26, 1930). 
 
 See Guoli laodong daxue yuekan, 1.4 1.5 (1930). 
 
 Chen Biao, “Laodong daxuede laodong shenghuo” (Labor life in Labor Univer- 
 sity) Xuesheng zazhi (Students’ Magazine) 15.3 (March 1928): 83. 
 
 Ibid.; LDZK 3.2 (March 8, 1930): 13; 3.3:13. 
 
 LDZK 3.3:13; 3-10:15—16. 
 
 EDAKGR nar 
 
 Ibid., pp. 14-15. 
 
 Guoli laodong daxue zhoukan, no. 46 (December 17, 1928): 23-28. 
 
 Guoli Laodong daxue zuzhi guicheng yilan (National Labor University hand- 
 book on organization rules) (Shanghai, 1930), pp. 11-12, 36-38. 
 
 LDZK 3.1 (March 1, 1930): 14-15. 
 
 LD AKeSe2) aUAe 
 
 LED ZKe2 Beto: 
 
 LDZK 2.23 (October 8, 1929): 2. 
 
 LDZK 2.25 (October 21, 1929): 7-8. 
 
 Ibid., p. 9. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 10-11. 
 
 TD AKG wan se 
 
 Ibid., p. 9. 
 
 LDZK 2.26 (October 28, 1929): 11. 
 
 LDZK 4.8 (October 28, 1930): 3. 
 
 LDZK 4.14 (December 8, 1930): 13. 
 
 Ibid., p. 14. 
 
 LDZK 4.5 (October 6, 1930): 12; 4.7 (October 20, 1930): to—11; 4.6 (October 
 13, 1930): I. 
 
 LDZK 4.8 (October 27, 1930): 5; 4.9 (November 3, 1930): 3. 
 
 LDZK 3.2:13—14; 3.5:15; 3-8:9. 
 
 LDZK 2.26 (October 28, 1929): 10-11. 
 
 LDZK 2.23 (October 8, 1929): 13. 
 
 LDZK 4.6:4. 
 
 LDZK 2.36 (January 1930): 11. 
 
 LDZK 2.24 (October 15, 1929): 7—11. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 9-10. According to Statistics of Shanghai 1933 (compiled and pub- 
 lished by the Shanghai Civil Association, Shanghai, 1933), “Public Health,” 
 p. 6, there were 819 reported cases of typhoid, with 49 deaths; and 4,291 cases 
 of cholera, with 298 deaths, in greater Shanghai in 1929. In addition, 
 1,516,092 antityphoid vaccine injections and another 133,406 anticholera 
 injections were given in this metropolis of about 4 million people during the 
 same year. For further background on public.health development in Shanghai, 
 see K. L. MacPherson, A Wilderness of Marshes: The Origins of Public Health 
 in Shanghai, 1843—1893 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987). 
 LDZK 2.24:8. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 7-10. 
 
 Ibid., p. ro. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 8—9. 
 
58 
 59 
 60 
 61 
 62 
 63 
 64 
 65 
 66 
 67 
 68 
 69 
 70 
 71 
 Dh 
 133 
 74 
 75 
 76 
 a 
 78 
 
 uw 
 
 80 
 81 
 82 
 83 
 84 
 85 
 86 
 87 
 
 88 
 89 
 90 
 OI 
 Qg2 
 93 
 94 
 95 
 
 Notes to Chapter 6 313 
 
 Ibid., pp. 10-11. 
 
 LDZK 3.6—7:19—20. 
 
 Ibid., p. 20. 
 
 LDZK 3.11 (May 10, 1930): 20. 
 
 LDZK 3.3:13—14. 
 
 Guoli laodong daxue zhoukan, 46 (December 17, 1928): 32-34. 
 
 LDZK 2.23 (October 8, 1929): 11-12. 
 
 Ibid., p. 12. 
 
 LDZK 2.24 (October 15, 1929): 24-25. 
 
 LDZK 3.5:16—17. 
 
 Ibid., p. 17. 
 
 Guoli laodong daxue zhoukan, no. 46, pp. 34-35. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 12-19. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 16-17. 
 
 LDZK 3.5:16. 
 
 TD) AKA TO As 
 
 Guoli laodong daxue zhoukan, no. 46, p. 22. 
 
 Zhou Zidong et al., Sanshi niandai Zhongguo, pp. 128-31. 
 
 LDGK, “Chronology,” p. 3. 
 
 Fudan daxue zhi, p. 500. 
 
 Guan Guoxuan, “Shixue jia Shen Yunlong xiansheng shengping” (The life of 
 historian Mr. Shen Yunlong), part I, Biographic Literature 308 (January 1988): 
 gl. 
 
 Jiang Jun, “Lu Jianbo xiansheng zaoniandi wuzhengfu zhuyi xuanquan huo- 
 dong jishi” (An account of Mr. Lu Jianbo’s anarchist activities in his youth), in 
 Ge Maochun et al., eds., Wuzhengfu zhuyi sixiang, 2:1016, 1018—19, for 
 these activities. 
 
 Geming 71 (November 18, 1928): 31-32; 68 (October 29, 1928): 388. 
 
 Ibid., no. 71, p. 33. 
 
 Ibid., no. 71, pp. 165—69. 
 
 Ibid., no. 71, pp. 28-30. 
 
 “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory.” 
 
 LDZK 2.23:5. 
 
 LDZK 2.24:6. 
 
 Ibid., p. 4; the data on this arrested student came from the 1928 list of Laoda 
 students, p. 18. 
 
 Ibid., p. 12. 
 
 LDZK 2.25:5-7. 
 
 LDZK 2.36:74. 
 
 LDZK 4.9 (November 3, 1930): 4-5; 4.14:1S. 
 
 LDZK 2.24:12-13. 
 
 LDZK 3.9:1; 3.8:9. 
 
 LDZK 3.14 (May 31, 1930): 8. 
 
 LDZK 3.10:5. The Xiaozhuang Normal School was established by the noted 
 progressive educator Tao Xingzhi in March 1927 with special emphases on 
 teacher training and village renewal. It became a key component in the rural 
 education movement in the late 1920s. For a recent study of Tao, see Hubert 
 
96 
 97 
 98 
 
 99 
 100 
 
 omer Aun PW bv 
 
 lal 
 ° 
 
 12 
 13 
 14 
 15 
 16 
 7 
 18 
 
 19 
 20 
 21 
 22 
 
 23 
 24 
 25 
 26 
 27 
 
 Notes to Chapter 7 314 
 
 O. Brown, “American Progressivism in Chinese Education: The Case of Tao 
 Xingzhi,” in Ruth Hayhoe and Marianne Bastid, eds., China’s Education and 
 the Industrialized World: Studies in Cultural Transfer (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. 
 Sharpe, 1987). 
 
 LDZK 3.10:9—10. 
 
 LDZK 4.14:18. 
 
 Wang Min, comp., Shanghai xuesheng yundong dashiji (Chronology of the 
 Shanghai student movement) (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 1985), p. 104. 
 Ibid., pp. 131-33, 155-56. 
 
 Ibid., p. 130. 
 
 7 Labor Education Programs and 
 Outreach Activities 
 
 Zhao Zhenpeng, “Laodong daxuede huiyi,” p. 58; LDZK 2.25 (October 21, 
 1929): 13. 
 
 LDGK, p. 56. 
 
 LDZK 2.21 (September 23, 1929): 7. 
 
 LDZK 2.23 (October 8, 1929): 8—10. 
 
 LDGK, p. 57. 
 
 LDZK 2.26 (October 28, 1929): 2. 
 
 LDZK 2.27 (November 4, 1929): ro. 
 
 LDGK, p. 52. 
 
 Ibid.; LDZK 2.27:10. 
 
 LDZK 2.27:10; LDGK, p. 53; also see the “1929 Faculty-Staff Directory,” pp. 
 10, 18, for their Laoda training. 
 
 LDZK 2.27:10—11; LDGK, p. 55. 
 
 LDZK 2.32 (December 12, 1929): 16—18; 2.27:10—I1. 
 
 LDGK, p. 55. 
 
 LDZK 3.5 (March 29, 1930): 10-11. 
 
 Ibid., p. 11. 
 
 LDGK, p. 65. 
 
 LDZK 2.25 (October 21, 1929): 13-15. 
 
 These two lists are included in the undergraduate student list for fall 1928 in 
 First Anniversary Volume, “Faculty, Staff, and Students,” pp. 15—31; and 
 “The List of Students, Fall Semester 1931,” National Labor University Gen- 
 eral Conditions (1931). 
 
 EIDAKGRO 52.5% 
 
 The item was quoted in LDZK 4.1 (September 8, 1930): 21. 
 
 LDZK 2.27 (November 4, 1929): 23; LDGK, pp. 58—60. 
 
 See Guoli Laodong daxue zuzhi guicheng yilan, pp. 85—86, for the regula- 
 tions of the school for the masses; LDGK, p. 69. 
 
 TD AKEy D723 
 
 LDZEK 3.3 (March 15, 1930): 15. 
 
 LDZK 3.9 (April 26, 1920): 11. 
 
 LDZK 3.6—7 (April 12, 1930): 12. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 11-12. 
 
28 
 29 
 30 
 
 31 
 32 
 33 
 34 
 35 
 36 
 37 
 38 
 39 
 40 
 41 
 42 
 43 
 44 
 45 
 46 
 47 
 48 
 49 
 50 
 51 
 52 
 53 
 54 
 55 
 56 
 57 
 58 
 59 
 60 
 61 
 62 
 63 
 64 
 65 
 
 66 
 67 
 
 Notes to Chapter 7 315 
 
 LDZK 3.10 (May 1, 1930): 11. 
 
 LDZK 2.27:23; LDGK, p. 61. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 6, 61; National Labor University Regulations also included the 
 charters of these pre-1929 adult schools; and also see First Anniversary 
 Volume, p. 3, and “Divisional Report,” pp. 66—7o0. 
 
 LDZK 2.27:20—21. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 21-22. 
 
 Ibid., p. 22. 
 
 Guoli Laodong daxue zuzhi guicheng yilan, pp. 88—89. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 54-55, 61. 
 
 LDZK 3.10:16—17; 3.6—7:13. 
 
 LDZK 3.12 (May 17, 1930): 8. 
 
 Ibid., p. 8. 
 
 LDZK 2.27:25—26; LDGK, “Divisional Report,” pp. 54-63. 
 
 LDZK 3.5:11; 3.9:14; 3.10:10—-11; 3.11:10—I1; 3.12:12—13. 
 
 TD AKe a7 Ae 
 
 Ibid., p. 15. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 15-16. 
 
 LDZK 2.26:7-8. 
 
 LDZK 3.8 (April 19, 1930): s. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 62-63. 
 
 LDZK 3.8:5; 3.9:8—10. 
 
 LDZK 3.15 (June 7, 1930): 9-10. 
 
 GD AKES 8 H5e 
 
 LDZK 2.26:11—12; LDGK, pp. 57-58. 
 
 LDZK 2.26:12—13; 2.30—31 (December 1, 1929): 9. 
 
 LDZK 2.30—31:9—10. 
 
 LDZK 2.26:13—14. 
 
 LDZK 3.8:5. 
 
 LDZK 2.27:24—25; LDGK, pp. 63—64. 
 
 LDZK 3.8:5. 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 3-5. 
 
 LDZK 2.23:9; 3.5 (March 29, 1930): 10-12. 
 
 EDAKGBE ORS. 
 
 LDGK, p. 64. 
 
 LDZK 2.33 (December 14, 1929): 16—17. 
 
 Chen Biao’s account was published in National Labor University Develop- 
 ments, pp. 47—48. Also see LDZK 2.23 (October 8, 1929): 2-3. 
 
 LDZK 2.33:17—18. 
 
 LDZK 3.6—7:12, 17. Chen Biao’s essay titled “Research on Soviet Education” 
 was included in Labor University Anthology (Shanghai, 1929); also see his 
 other essay, “Labor Life in Labor University,” published in the Students’ 
 Magazine 15.3 (March 1928). Chen published General Survey of Labor Edu- 
 cation in Other Countries (Geguo laodong jiaoyu gaiguan) (Shanghai: Shiji 
 
68 
 69 
 70 
 71 
 72 
 73 
 74 
 vi) 
 76 
 
 77 
 
 78 
 79 
 
 80 
 
 81 
 
 82 
 
 83 
 
 84 
 85 
 
 86 
 87 
 
 Notes to Chapter 7 316 
 
 shuju, 1930), while still a student at Laoda. Professor Zheng Ruogu wrote the 
 preface to this book; the preface was published in LDZK 3.6—7:22-23. 
 Ibid., pp. 17-18. 
 
 BDZK 3 10trs. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 14-15. 
 
 LDZK 4.14 (December 8, 1930): 14. 
 
 LDZK 3.6—7:17. 
 
 LDZK 3.15 (June 7, 1930): 9—10. 
 
 LEI DYA 6 o es ae 
 
 Ibid., p. 20. 
 
 LDZK 4.10 (November 10, 1930): 8—24, reprinted the report of this Laoda 
 High School Suzhou field trip. 
 
 For the larger picture of the ymcA/ywca’s labor welfare ventures in China, 
 see Dorothy Yin-yee Ko, “Social Reformism in Action: The yMca-Ywea and 
 the Chinese Labor Conditions, 1917—1927” (seminar paper, History Depart- 
 ment, Stanford University, July 1979); also see Ming K. Chan et al., Xianggang 
 yu Zhongguo Gongyun huigu (Perspectives on the Hong Kong and Chinese 
 labor movements) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee, 
 1982), pp. 64—68; Shirley Garrett, Social Reformers in Urban China: The 
 Chinese Y.M.C.A., 1895—1926 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970); 
 and Ming K. Chan, Historiography of the Chinese Labor Movement, pp. 6, 
 46-48. 
 
 Dorothy Ko, “Social Reformism in Action,” p. 6. 
 
 See Augusta Wagner, Labor Legislation in China (Beijing: Yenching Univer- 
 sity, 1938), for the ymca/ywca’s contribution in this area. 
 
 On the Chinese Labor Corps and the ymca labor education program in France 
 during World War I, see Chen Sanjing, Huagong yu Ouzhan (Chinese labor 
 and the European war) (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1986), pp. 125-31. 
 
 See Howard Boorman, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, 
 2:52—54, for James Yen’s career in mass education; Lutz, China and the 
 Christian Colleges, pp. 284, 290, 295; and also Sidney D. Gamble, Ting 
 Hsien: A North China Rural Community (Stanford: Stanford University 
 Press, 1968, reprint), which provides a detailed study in English on Yen’s rural 
 experiment. 
 
 This was according to a 1929 survey conducted by the Shanghai Municipal 
 Social Affairs Bureau. See Republic of China, Ministry of Industry, Zhongguo 
 laodong nianjian 1932 (China labor yearbook, 1932) (Nanjing, 1933), pp. 149— 
 57- 
 
 Quanguo daxue tujian, pp. 176—80; The Shanghai, vol. 11 (1926), p. 2; The 
 Shanghai, 1934 Annual, p. 293. Also see Lutz, China and the Christian 
 Colleges, pp. 110-11, 178. 
 
 The Shanghai, vol. 11 (1926), p. 175. 
 
 Hujiang daxue, Hudong gongshe yilan, 1928—29 (Shanghai Baptist College 
 Yangtsepoo Social Center, annual report, 1928-29) (Shanghai: Hujiang 
 daxue, 1929), p. 1. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 2-3. 
 
 Dorothy Ko, “Social Reformism in Action,” p. 16. 
 
88 
 89 
 90 
 gI 
 92 
 93 
 94 
 95 
 96 
 97 
 98 
 99 
 100 
 IOI 
 102 
 
 103 
 
 104 
 105 
 
 106 
 107 
 108 
 109 
 I1O 
 
 Notes to Chapter 8 317 
 
 Ibid., pp. 16-17. 
 
 Ibid., p. 17. 
 
 Ibid., p. 17 
 
 Ibid., p. 17. 
 
 The Shanghai, vol. 11 (1926), p. 181. 
 
 Ibid., p. 192. 
 
 Ibid., p. 183. 
 
 Ibid., p. 190. 
 
 Ibid., p. 191. 
 
 Ibid., p. 19. 
 
 Ibid., p. 194. 
 
 Ibid., p. 193. 
 
 Ming K. Chan, Historiography of the Chinese Labor Movement, pp. 13, 189. 
 The Shanghai, vol. 11 (1926), p. 193. 
 
 Ibid., p. 25; and Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges, pp. 167—68, 197; also 
 p. 202, which reports the rather low overall academic rating (C) of Shanghai 
 Baptist College. 
 
 The Shanghai, vol. 10 (1925), pp. 43-82, and Dorothy Ko, “Social Reformism 
 in Action,” pp. 13-14. 
 
 Dorothy Ko, “Social Reformism in Action,” p. 18. 
 
 Quoted in Herbert D. Lamson, Social Pathology in China (Shanghai: Com- 
 mercial Press, 1934), p. 214. 
 
 Daxia daxue yilan, pp. 11-12. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 11, 19—20. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 12, 20, 32. 
 
 Ibid., p. 19. 
 
 James C. Thomson, Jr., While China Faced West: American Reformers in 
 Nationalist China, 1928—1937 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969); 
 Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges, pp. 283—99. 
 
 8 Politics, Finances, and the Demise of Laoda 
 
 Duiker, Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei, pp. 89—90. 
 
 Xiao Chaoran, Beijing daxue xiaoshi 1898—1949 (A history of Beijing Univer- 
 sity, 1898—1949) (Shanghai: Shanghai Jiaoyu chuban she, 1981), pp. 156-57; 
 Zhou Tiandu, Cai Yuanpei, pp. 279-80. 
 
 Zhou Tiandu, Cai Yuanpei, pp. 280—85; Wu Fanhua, “Li Shizheng yu Beiping 
 daxue qu” (Li Shizheng and Beiping University District), Wenshi ziliao xuan- 
 ji (Beijing) 34 (1963): 13-29; Jiaoyu bu gongbao 1.10 (October 1929). 
 
 Zhou Tiandu, Cai Yuanpei, pp. 276—84; Duiker, Ts’ai Yuan-p’ei, pp. 89—90. 
 Allen B. Linden, “Politics and Education in Nationalist China: The Case of 
 the University Council, 1927-1928,” Journal of Asian Studies 27.4 (August 
 1968): 776; Chen Zhesan, Zhonghua minguo daxueyuan zhi yanjiu, provides 
 a detailed analysis of the University Council system and the causes for its 
 demise. 
 
 Jerome B. Grieder, Intellectuals and the State in Modern China (New York: 
 Free Press, 1981), p. 275; Zhao Zhenpeng, “Laodong daxuede huiyi,” pp. 58— 
 
10 
 II 
 12 
 13 
 14 
 15 
 16 
 17 
 18 
 19 
 20 
 
 Dat 
 aD) 
 23 
 24 
 25 
 26 
 27 
 28 
 
 29 
 30 
 
 31 
 32 
 33 
 34 
 35 
 
 36 
 37 
 
 Notes to Chapter 8 318 
 
 59; Gao Siting, “Guomindang zhengfu tongzhi jiaoyu shiye gaishu” (A gen- 
 eral account of education under the Guomindang regime), in Wenshi ziliao 
 xuanji 87 (April 1983): 140—47; also see Y. C. Wang, Chinese Intellectuals 
 and the West, pp. 180, 363, 372-75, on the influence of American-educated 
 elites in Chinese education. 
 
 Chen Zhesan, Zhonghua minguo, pp. 185, 187, 191-93. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 22.6 (June 1930): 243; LDZK 4.1 (September 8, 1930): 13. 
 LDZK 3.15 (June 7, 1930): 1, 6, for Laoda’s announcement, p. 28 for the 
 excerpt from Shen Bao. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 22.6 (June 1930): 243. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 243-44. 
 
 Ibid., p. 244. 
 
 LDZK 4.1 (September 8, 1930): 18. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 22.6 (June 1930): 244. 
 
 JE DVAK peut 
 
 Ibid., p. 2. 
 
 Ibid., p. 2. 
 
 Ibid., p. 2. 
 
 Ibid., p. 2. 
 
 Fu Qingshi, “Yi Peijide shengping ji wannian zaoyu” (The life and later years 
 of Yi Peiji), Zhuanji wenxue (Biographical Literature) 34.2 (serial no. 201) 
 (February 1979): 65; Jiaoyu zazhi 22.10 (October 1930): 124; also see Guoli 
 Zejiang daxue youlan (Overview of National Zhejiang University) (Hang- 
 zhou: Zejiang daxue, 1935), pp. 2-3. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 22.12 (December 1930): 121. 
 
 LDZK 4.7 (October 20, 1930): 7. 
 
 Ibid., also LDZK 4.4 (September 29, 1930): 1—2, for the text. 
 
 DAK AST Se 
 
 Ibid., pp. 8, 9. 
 
 LDZK 4.8 (October 27, 1930): 1-2. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 1-2. 
 
 Chen Zhesan, Zhonghua minguo, pp. 186-87, 191, 194. Chiang Monlin, 
 Tides from the West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), pp. 149, 199. 
 Also Zhonghua jiaoyujie (Chinese Education Circle) 19.1 (July 1931): 27-38, 
 for the wave of the Chinese university student unrests during 1930, and p. 29 
 for Jiang Menglin’s complaint against Laoda. 
 
 LDZK 4.9 (November 11, 1930): 2. 
 
 Zhu Baikang, “Laodong daxuede,” pp. 6—8; Jiaoyu zazhi 23.12 (December 
 1930): I19—20. 
 
 LDZK 4.4 (September 29, 1930): 4. 
 
 Ibid., p. 5. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 5—6. 
 
 LDZK 4.6 (October 13, 1930): 3. 
 
 LDZK 4.5 (October 6, 1930): 12; also see LDZK 4.6:1, for the text of this 
 manifesto issued on October 5, 1930. 
 
 LDZK 4.5:12-13. 
 
 LDZK 4.7:10. 
 
38 
 39 
 40 
 41 
 42 
 43 
 44 
 45 
 
 46 
 
 47 
 
 48 
 
 49 
 
 50 
 51 
 52 
 53 
 
 54 
 S35) 
 
 56 
 57 
 
 58 
 
 59 
 60 
 61 
 62 
 63 
 
 64 
 65 
 
 Notes to Chapter 8 319 
 
 Ibid., p. ro. 
 
 Ibidsaps 3 
 
 LDZK 4.8 (October 27, 1930): 5. 
 
 TR) AKG ARS 12) 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 22.11 (November 1930): 126. 
 
 LDZK 4.10 (November 10, 1930): 43. 
 
 Zhu Baikang, “Laodong daxuede,” pp. 2-13. 
 
 Wang Jingqi, while on home leave as China’s minister to Belgium, visited 
 Laoda and delivered a lecture on April 28, 1930, at the weekly assembly on 
 Charleroi Labor University as the example for Laoda to follow. See LDZK 
 BRU 7A 
 
 National Labor University General Conditions (1931), p. 7; also see the 
 appendix for Wang’s inaugural speech at Laoda. 
 
 The full version of the song is included in National Labor University General 
 Conditions (1931), front section. Wang’s diplomatic career and personal ties 
 with Li Shizeng are vividly recalled in the wartime memoires of Wang’s 
 eldest daughter, Wang Changbao, Oufen suishiji (Recollections of the Euro- 
 pean crisis) (Nanjing, 1948; reprint, Taipei: Guanglong yinshuguan, 1962), 
 especially p. 219, where this song was sung. 
 
 Wang Min, Shanghai xuesheng, pp. 130-32; Jiaoyu zazhi 22.10 (October 
 1930): 124, 22.11: (November 1930): 126. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 23.8 (August 1931): 257, carries the Shishi xinbao (China Times) 
 July 4 report on Wang and the June 12 report on the admissions ban. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 23.8 (August 1931): 257. 
 
 Ibid., p. 258; and Wang Min, Shanghai xuesheng, p. 131. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 23.8 (August 1931): 258. 
 
 National Labor University General Conditions, p. 7; Jiaoyu zazhi 23.8 (Au- 
 gust 1931): 258. 
 
 National Labor University General Conditions, p. 7. 
 
 On the political career of Yi, see Howard L. Boorman, ed., Biographical 
 Dictionary of Republican China (New York: Columbia University Press, 
 1967), 3:54-56. 
 
 Zhao Zhengpeng, “Laodong daxuede huiyi,” p. 59. 
 
 Ou Yi’s political downfall, financial irregularities, and the museum scandal, 
 see Zhao Zhenpeng, ibid., p. 59; and Fu Qingshi, “Yi Peijide,” pp. 64—70. 
 For example, see the speeches delivered at various ceremonies and weekly 
 assemblies by Laoda deans and administrators as reported in LDZK 4.1, 4.2, 
 and 4.4. 
 
 First Anniversary Volume, p. 2. 
 
 LDGK, p. 8. 
 
 Ibid., p. 8. 
 
 Ibid., p. 8. 
 
 Dagong Bao’'s misleading use of official budget figures and Laoda’s official 
 rebuttal can be found in LDZK 3.1:12; also see Guowen Zhoubao (National 
 News Weekly) 7.16 (April 28, 1930): 6. 
 
 Jiaoyu zazhi 22.5 (May 1930): 54. 
 
 Zhonghua Jiaoyujie 18.6 (June 1930): 80. 
 
66 
 
 67 
 68 
 69 
 70 
 71 
 2) 
 73 
 74 
 75 
 76 
 TH 
 78 
 79 
 80 
 
 81 
 82 
 83 
 
 84 
 
 85 
 
 86 
 87 
 88 
 89 
 
 90 
 QI 
 
 92 
 
 Notes to Chapter 8 320 
 
 Chen Zesan, Zhonghua minguo, pp. 194-96; Zhonghua jiaoyujie 19.1 (July 
 1931): 27-38; also see Colin MacKerras, “Education in the Guomindong 
 Period, 1928-1949,” in David Pong and Edmund S. K. Fung, eds., Ideal and 
 Reality: Social and Political Change in Modern China 1860-1949 (Lanham, 
 Md.: University Press of America, 1985), pp. 153-83. 
 
 LDZK 2.27 (November 4, 1929): 18. 
 
 National Labor University Developments, pp. xi—xii. 
 
 LDZK 4.1 (September 8, 1930): 1. 
 
 LDZK 4.2 (September 15, 1930): 10. 
 
 Ibid., p. 1. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 1-3. 
 
 LDZK 4.5:1. 
 
 LDZK 3.13 (May 24, 1930): 9; 3.14 (May 31, 1930): 4—S. 
 
 LDZK 4.4:5; 4.7:9. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 1-2. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 3-4, 20; LDZK 2.21 (September 23, 1929): 3. 
 
 LDGK, pp. 4-5. 
 
 LDGK, p. 5; LDZK 4.2:1; First Anniversary Volume, pp. 88—90. 
 
 LDGK, p. 8; LDZK 2.24 (October 15, 1929): 1; and First Anniversary Volume, 
 pp. 16-18. 
 
 LDGK, p. 5; LDZK 2.21:7, 48; and First Anniversary Volume, p. 70. The 1931 
 figure is from National Labor University General Conditions, p. 11. 
 
 LDZK 3.14 (May 31, 1930): 5—6. 
 
 LDZK 4.10 (November 10, 1930): 4. 
 
 The charter of this foundation is included in National Labor University 
 Regulations. 
 
 LDZK 3.1:12. The amount allotted for expansion of facilities at the Laoda 
 agriculture college was reported to be slightly over $20,000, and the monthly 
 budget was increased to $1,700 for the spring semester of 1930, yet many 
 other equipment and projects did not materialize due to lack of funds. 
 LDZK 3.10:5—6. 
 
 TD) 7AKea rate 
 
 Ibid., p. 1. 
 
 Pan Gongzhan, “Wusong kangRi zhanzheng yu Shanghaide jiaoyu” (The anti- 
 Japanese war in Shanghai and Shanghai education,” Xin Zhonghua (New 
 China), 1.2 (January 25, 1933): 33; Zhonghua Jiaoyujie 19.10 (April 1932): 
 127-28. 
 
 Zhonghua Jiaoyujie 19.11 (May 1932): 99. 
 
 John Israel, “Kuomintang Policy and Student Politics, 1927—1937,” in Albert 
 Feuerwerker et al., eds., Approaches to Modern Chinese History (Berkeley: 
 University of California Press, 1967), p. 290. On Dai Jitao’s ideological orien- 
 tation and views on the labor movement, see Lu Fangshang, Geming zhi zaiqi 
 (The revival of the revolution) (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1989), pp. 376—90; 
 and Herman Mast and William G. Saywell, “Revolution Out of Tradition: 
 The Political Ideology of Tai Chi-t’ao,” Journal of Asian Studies 34.1 (Novem- 
 ber 1974): 73-98. 
 
 Huang Fuqing, Jindai Zhongguo gaodeng jiaoyu yanjiu: Guoli Zhongshan 
 
93 
 
 94 
 
 95 
 
 96 
 97 
 
 98 
 99 
 
 100 
 IOI 
 102 
 103 
 104 
 105 
 106 
 
 Notes to Chapter 8 321 
 
 daxue (1924-1937) (A study of modern Chinese advanced education: Na- 
 tional Sun Zhongshan University in Canton) (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1988), 
 pp. 80-93; and Liang Shan, Li Jian, and Zhang Kemo, Zhongshan daxue 
 xiaoshi, 1924-1949 (A history of Zhongshan University, 1924-1949) (Shang- 
 hai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe, 1983), pp. 38-39; Hu Songping, Zhu Jiahua 
 nianpu (The chronological biography of Zhu Jiahua) (Taipei: Zhuanji Wenxue 
 chubanshe, 1958), pp. 9-83. Also see Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 
 437-43, for Zhu’s career. 
 
 Wang Lujun, “Kangzhan qianhou Zhu Jiahua dui jiaoyude gongxian” (Zhu 
 Jiahua’s contribution to education before and after the War of Resistance), 
 Chu Hai Journal 16 (1988), p. 278. (Shen Bao, July 17, 1932, reports the 
 Education Ministry’s arrangements for the transfer of Laoda students.) 
 
 On education budget payment levels, see ibid., p. 278, and Hu Songping, Zhu 
 Jiahua nianpu, pp. 26—28. On the transfer of funds, see Hu Songpin, p. 28. The 
 Ministry of Education’s official bulletin (4.13—14 [April 10, 1932]: 13) also 
 recorded its order to Laoda instructing it to issue diplomas to students who 
 had completed their studies by then as “graduates.” This seemed to be a 
 device to defuse student opposition to Laoda’s forced closure. 
 
 The figure for Tongji’s damage comes from Pan Gongzhan, “Wusong kangRi 
 zhanzheng,” p. 33; for the Gmp’s German connection see William C. Kirby, 
 Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), 
 especially pp. 40—43, 68, 203, on Zhu and Tongji. On Tongji as a model for the 
 Chinese education system, see Francoise Kreissler, “Technical Education as a 
 Key to Cultural Cooperation: The Sino-German Experience,” in Ruth Hay- 
 hoe and Marianne Bastid, eds., China’s Education and the Industrialized 
 World: Studies in Cultural Transfer (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1987), pp. 81— 
 96. On the French versus German alternatives in Chinese education, see 
 Ruth Hayhoe, ed., China’s Universities and the Open Door (New York: M. E. 
 Sharpe, 1989), pp. 15—18. 
 
 For Chu Minyi’s career, see Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 467—69. 
 Festschrift anldsslich des 25 jdhrigen Bestehens der Stantlichen Tung-Chi 
 Universitat zu Woosong, China (Shanghai: Tung-chi Universitat, 1932), pp. 
 iv—Vl. 
 
 Huang Fuging, Jindai Zhongguo, p. 91. 
 
 For Japanese-inflicted damages, see Festschrift, pp. vil, 22, 26—33. A short 
 historical sketch of Tongji can be found in Weng Zhiyuan, Tongji daxue shi, 
 pp. 1-71; and Zhao Zhenhuan, ed., Tongzhou gongji: Tongji daxue bashi 
 Zhounian jinianji (An anthology of photos and writings for the celebration of 
 the eightieth anniversary of Tongji University) (Shanghai: Tongji daxue chu- 
 banshe, 1988). 
 
 Festschrift, pp. i—ii. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 30-31. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 30-31. 
 
 Weng Zhiyuan, Tongji daxue shi, p. 63. 
 
 Ibid., p. 75; Zhao Zhenhuan, Tongzhou gongiji, p. 97. 
 
 Weng Zhiyuan, Tongji daxue shi, pp. 75—80, 93. 
 
 Ibid., pp. 101, 108—9. 
 
107 
 108 
 109 
 
 Ito 
 Itt 
 II2 
 
 Notes to Chapter 9 322 
 
 Ibid., pp. 121-22. 
 
 Zhao Zhenhuan, Tongzhou gongji, p. 109. 
 
 Zhu Huisen, ed., Dai Chuanxian yu xiandai Zhongguo (Tai Chi-tao and 
 modern China) (Taipei: Academia Historia, 1989), pp. 147—62, 448. 
 
 Ibid., p. 450; and Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, 3:204. 
 
 Zhu Huisen, Dai Chuanxian, pp. 450-51. 
 
 Theodore H. E. Chen, “Education in China, 1927—1937,” in Paul K. T. Sih, 
 
 ed., The Strenuous Decade: China’s Nation-Building Efforts, 1927-1937; 
 Y. C. Wang, Chinese Intellectuals and the West, pp. 373-74; and Zhuang 
 Kunming, “Kangzhan shigi Zhongguo gaodeng jiaoyu zhi yanjiu” (A study of 
 Chinese higher education during the War of Resistance) (Ph.D. diss., Chinese 
 Cultural Academy, Taipei, 1979), pp. 302—10. 
 
 9 In Retrospect 
 
 For a discussion see Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism, espe- 
 cially chap. 8. 
 
 Peter Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Workshops of Tomorrow, ed. Colin Ward 
 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1974), appendix. 
 
 See Qingong jianxue biandi huakai (Diligent-work frugal-study is flowering 
 everywhere) (Shanghai, 1958); and Qingong jianxue gaibianle xuexiaode mian- 
 mao (Diligent-work frugal-study has transformed schools’ visages) (Shanghai, 
 1958). These were published by different district committees of the Commu- 
 nist Party in Shanghai. For an explanation of the party work committee deci- 
 sions see Lu Ting-yi, Education Must Be Combined with Productive Labour 
 (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1958). 
 
 Xu Teli, “Laoli yu laoxin bingjin, shou he nao bingyong,” in Xu Teli wenji 
 (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1980), pp. 585-87. He Changgong’s 
 Qingong jianxue shenghuo huiyi (Reminiscences of diligent-work frugal-study 
 life) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1958), one of the most elaborate memoirs of 
 the movement, is an example of the publications to which we are referring. 
 These publications, and the role French-educated party leaders such as Xu Teli 
 and Wu Yuzhang involved in educational work played in the movements of the 
 late 1950s and the 1960s, might yield fruitful insights into the ideological 
 developments of the time, which have, too simplistically we think, been identi- 
 fied with Mao and a few other major political leaders. 
 
 Gongchan zhuyi laodong daxue (Nanchang: Jiangxi jiaoyu chubanshe, 1960). 
 Quanguo zhongxiaoxue gingong jianxue jingyan xuanpian (Experiences with 
 diligent-work frugal-study in elementary and middle schools around the coun- 
 try) (Beijing: Jiaoyu kexue chubanshe, 1982). 
 
 Lu Ting-yi, Education. 
 
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a 
 
 wp 
 
 
 
 " : : y 7 
 
 ie) 
 
 ine oumegeh ae 
 1 
 
 pint i A TPR i) 
 
Index 
 
 Academia Sinica, 68 
 
 After Work (Gongyu), 39—40 
 
 Althusser, Louis, 12 
 
 American Episcopalian St. John’s Uni- 
 versity. See St. John’s University 
 
 Anarchism. See Guangzhou anar- 
 chists; Hunan anarchists; Kropot- 
 kin, Peter; Li Shizeng; Liu Shipei; 
 Liu Sifu; Paris anarchists; Sichuan 
 anarchists; Wu Zhihui, Zhejiang 
 anarchists 
 
 Anti-Japanese National Salvation So- 
 ciety, 181 
 
 Association for Frugal Study in France 
 (LiuFa jianxue hui), 29 
 
 Aurora University, 84, 126, 147, 149, 
 174 
 
 Bailey, Paul, 30 
 
 Bajin (Li Feigan), 39, 51, 54—55 
 
 Balance (Hengbao), 18, 21, 27 
 
 Bao Keyong, 131 
 
 Bao Rong, 131 
 
 Baoshan Normal College, 216 
 
 Beijing: Anarchism in, 32 
 
 Beijing Higher Normal College. See 
 Beijing Normal University 
 
 Beijing Normal University (Beishida), 
 Z\Dy, TAT /,, TEX Tits} 
 
 Beijing University, 79, 135-36, 15S, 
 228-30 
 
 Beijing-Wuhan railroad strike, 39 
 
 Belgian Concession (Tianjin), 106 
 
 Belgian Labor University. See 
 Charleroi Labor University 
 
 Berlin Technical University, 127, 130, 
 103} 
 
 Bi Xiushao, 16, 39, 43, 51, 56; and La- 
 bor University, 57, 59, 132-34 
 
 Boxer Indemnity Fund, 107 
 
 Boxer Protocol, 107 
 
 Brown University, 218, 221 
 
 Cai Hesen, 31 
 
 Cai Yuanpei, 114, 145, 233, 234, 248, 
 273; and Labor University, 60-61, 
 72; and the work study program, 29; 
 conflicts of, with Li Shizeng, 228— 
 30; on educational reorganization, 
 66—68; on labor-learning, 34-35; re- 
 lations with the Guomindang of, 
 61-62, 228-30 
 
 Cai Yucong, 212 
 
 Cai Zhengya (T. Y. Tsha), 137, 148 
 
 Cao Shuyi, 143 
 
 Capital University, 228-29 
 
 cc Clique, 145, 262 
 
 Central Supervisory Committee (Guo- 
 mindang), 47 
 
 Central University, 79, 153, 212, 262 
 
 Charleroi Labor University, 4, 58, 84, 
 LOGO PLAS Ged A SBN; 
 compared to Laoda, 114-18 
 
 Chen Biao, 156, 157, 158, 189, 201, 
 213 
 
 Chen Ceqi, 131 
 
Index 
 
 Chen Guorong, 131, 240 
 
 Chen Jinmin, 139, 142, 143 
 
 Chen Lifu, 145 
 
 Chen Qimin, 143 
 
 Chen Shiying, 130 
 
 Chen Wangdao, 42, 150 
 
 Chen Zhenlu, 136—37, 142 
 
 Chen Zongcheng, 107 
 
 Cheng Ganyun, 122, 127, 172, 238, 
 240, 253 
 
 Cheng Youheng, 130 
 
 Chesneaux, Jean, 40 
 
 Chiang Kai-shek. See Jiang Jieshi 
 
 Chiang Monlin. See Jiang Menglin 
 
 China Academy, 149, 150, 215-16 
 
 China Courier, 133 
 
 Chinese Laborers’ Journal (Huagong 
 zazhi), 33 
 
 Chinese Youth Party (Zhongguo qing- 
 nian dang), 174-75 
 
 Christian Civil Society, 221 
 
 Chu Minyi, 18, 23, 72, 84, 105—6, 263 
 
 Chu Xinong, 148 
 
 class struggle: anarchists on, 35, 38; 
 Labor University and, 58—61, 68—69 
 
 Cock-crow Society (Huiming she), 32 
 
 Columbia University, 133, 136, 138, 
 229 
 
 Commercial Press, 124, 137 
 
 Common People (Pingmin zhoukan), 
 139 
 
 Communications University (Jiaotong 
 daxue), 79, 123, 142, 144, 145-46, 
 148 
 
 Communist Labor University, 272 
 
 Communist Manifesto, 42, 139 
 
 Communist Party, 3, 6, 7, 8, 35-37, 
 108, 274; and anarchists, 52—53 
 
 Confucianism, 13, 20; Paris anarchists 
 on, 24-25 
 
 Conquest of Bread (Kropotkin), 27 
 
 Conscience Society (Xinshe), 32 
 
 Cooperative Education Society, 234 
 
 Cornell University, 127, 130, 136 
 
 Cu Jingnong, 150 
 
 Cultural Revolution, 3; and labor- 
 learning, 9-11, 26—27, 270-72 
 
 cultural revolution: Paris anarchists 
 on, 24-25 
 
 Dai Jitao, 104, 261, 262, 267 
 Daily Vacation Bible Schools, 221-22 
 
 334 
 
 Daoism, 20 
 
 Darwinism, 19 
 
 Dawn Bookstore, 137, 138 
 
 Dealy, J. G., 22 
 
 deCerteau, Michel, 269 
 
 Deng Hanzhong, 132 
 
 Deng Tianyu, 39 
 
 Deng Xiaoping, 11, 31, 174, 272 
 
 Deng Zhongxia, 40 
 
 Dewey, John, 231 
 
 Dijon University, 139 
 
 diligent-work frugal-study, 28-38, 133, 
 by />) 
 
 Diligent-Work Frugal-Study Associa- 
 tion (Qingong jianxue hui), 29 
 
 Diligent-work frugal-study program, 
 26—31, 39, 125, 132 
 
 Duan Qirui, 108 
 
 East Shanghai Commune, 218 
 
 Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi), 
 148 
 
 Esperanto, 83, 88, 134 
 
 “Factory for wanderers” (youmin), 72 
 
 Fan Dingjiu, 212 
 
 Fan Zhongyun, 141, 144 
 
 Fang Zhaogao, 130 
 
 Fangwandu Popular Education Experi- 
 ment Zone, 225 
 
 Federalism, 64—66 
 
 Federation of Anarcho-Communist 
 Comrades (Wuzhengfu gongchan 
 zhuyi tongzhi hui), 32 
 
 Federation of Shanghai Syndicates 
 (Shanghai gongtuan lianhehui), 40, 
 53 
 
 Federation of Young Chinese Anarcho- 
 Communists (Zhongguo shaonian 
 wuzhengfu gongchan zhuyizhe lian- 
 meng), 39 
 
 Fei Weizhong, 110 
 
 Feng Hefa, 138, 142, 156, 157, 173-74, 
 203 
 
 Feng Yanan, 131 
 
 Fields, Factories and Workshops of To- 
 morrow (Kropotkin), 27, 271 
 
 Free People (Ziyou ren), 40, 41, 49, 132 
 
 Free People Society, 40 
 
 French National Horticultural In- 
 stitute, 131 
 
Index 335 
 
 Fudan University, 174, 204, 212, 216, 
 266; relationship with Laoda of, 138, 
 
 139, 141-42, 143-44, 148-51 
 
 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 35 
 
 Garner, James Wilford, 138 
 
 Ge Gongzhan, 107 
 
 Gettell, Raymond G., 138 
 
 Gong Xiangming, 69, 98, I14, 131, 
 136, 232, 236, 238 
 
 Grave, Jean, 17, 51 
 
 Great China Commune, 224 
 
 Great China University, 142, 143, 148, 
 149-50, 174, 204, 223-25 
 
 Great Leap Forward, 270-72 
 
 Gu Bingyuan (Koo Ping Yuen), 221— 
 222 
 
 Guanghua University, 142, 143, 148, 
 149, 150, 174, 181 
 
 Guangxi University, 150 
 
 Guangzhou anarchists, 31-33, 39, 51 
 
 Guangzhou University, 150 
 
 Guo Xujing, 127, 132, 133 
 
 Han Shaogqi, 127 
 
 Han Yanmen, 128, 131 
 
 Hang Dongliu, 178 
 
 Hangzhou social survey, 98—101 
 
 Harvard University, 131, 136, 138 
 
 He Shangping, 127 
 
 He Shulun, 142 
 
 He Zhen, 18, 20, 21 
 
 Highlander School, 275 
 
 Hokkaido University, 131 
 
 Howard, Harry Paxton, 133 
 
 Hu Shi, 2, 67, 150 
 
 Hu Shuhua, 106, 127 
 
 Hu Yuezhi, 42 
 
 Hua Lin, 32, 47 
 
 Huang Ai, 39, 155 
 
 Huang Lingshuang, 32, 107, 128—29, 
 132—33, 136 
 
 Huang Shupei, 130, 131, 132 
 
 Huang Wenshan. See Huang Ling- 
 shuang 
 
 Hunan First Normal, 126 
 
 Hunan anarchists, 39, 42—43, 51, 52 
 
 Hunanese at Laoda, 126 
 
 Indiana University, 130 
 ‘Industrial Villages,” 271 
 Institut Franco-Chinois, 84, 125 
 
 Jiang Jieshi, 3, 44, 57, 139, 145, 239, 
 248 
 
 Jiang Menglin, 229-31, 237, 239, 240 
 
 Jinan University, 137, 142—45, 148 
 
 Jing Meijiu, 28 
 
 Journal of Chinese Students in Europe 
 (LuOu zazhi), 33 
 
 Koo Ping Yuen. See Gu Bingyuan 
 
 Kropotkin, Peter, 17, 19—20, 22, 34, 49, 
 51, 271; influence on Liu Sifu of, 33; 
 influence on Tokyo anarchists of, 27 
 
 Kuang Husheng, 42—43, 57, 72, 133 
 
 Kulp, Daniel, 218 
 
 Kung, H. H., 145, 249 
 
 Labor College (Laodong xueyuan), 37 
 
 Labor-learning: in anarchism and 
 Marxism, I1, 270; anarchist ad- 
 vocacy of, 26—28, 33-35, 41-42, 58— 
 61; anarchist practice of, 28, 29—31, 
 35-38, 42-43; in China, compared 
 to others, 113—18, 275; in Commu- 
 nist Party practice, 9-10, 271-73; in 
 Labor University, 58—61, 70-71, 78— 
 79; in the May Fourth Movement, 
 33-38; in Chinese revolutionary dis- 
 course, 2—3, 9-15, 270 
 
 Labor-learning mutual-aid groups 
 (Gongdu huzhu tuan), 35—36 
 
 Labor-learning mutual-aid movement, 
 3 5=3h7/ 
 
 Labor Research Association, 133 
 
 Labor Ten-daily (Laodong xunkan), 40 
 
 “Labor University,” 41—42 
 
 Labor University Anthology (Laoda 
 Iuncong), 140 
 
 “Laborism” (laodong zhuyi), 26—27, 34 
 
 Lamson, H. D., 219 
 
 Laozi, 20 
 
 Les Temps Nouveaux (New Times), 17 
 
 Li Banghuan, 141 
 
 Li Chongpu, 197 
 
 Li Dazhao, 36 
 
 Li Denghui, 149 
 
 Li Feigan. See Bajin 
 
 Li Guochang, 143 
 
 Li Ju, 131 
 
 Li Lianggong, 128, 180, 238, 240 
 
 Li Lisan, 31, 174 
 
 Li Munan, 130 
 
 Li Qianhua, 141 
 
Index 
 
 Li Shiquan, 110, 138, 141, 142, 150 
 
 Li Shizeng, 84, 125, 132, 231, 233, 234, 
 245, 248, 273; conflict of, with Cai 
 Yuanpei, 228—30; on federalism, 
 64—66; and Labor University, 6—7, 
 43, 57-58, 59, 72, 263; and “The 
 Meaning of Present-day Revolu- 
 tion,” 62—64; and the origins of Chi- 
 nese anarchism, 17; relationship to 
 the Guomindang of, 17, 47—57, 61— 
 66; on science and revolution, 18— 
 20, 24—26; and the University 
 Council, 66—68 
 
 Li Shuhua, 239-40 
 
 Li Wangying, 238 
 
 Li Xixian, 109, 187 
 
 Li Zongtong, 126, 230 
 
 Liang Bingxian, 32, 33, 51 
 
 Liang Qichao, 11 
 
 Lida College (Lida xueyuan), 42-44 
 
 Liege University, 130 
 
 Lin Sen, 145 
 
 Lin Xiqian, 142 
 
 Lin Xixian, 161 
 
 Literary Digest, 139 
 
 Liu Guoze, 164, 178 
 
 Liu Shipei, 18, 33; anti-modernism of, 
 20-22, 26—28; on labor, 26—28 
 
 Liu Shixin, 32, 51 
 
 Liu Sifu (Shifu): criticism of other an- 
 archists by, 48; and Guangzhou anar- 
 chism, 31—32; on labor and mutual 
 ads 
 
 Liu Songgu, 122 
 
 Louvain University, 131, 136 
 
 Lu Guoxiang, 99, 138, 156, 157, 162, 
 203, 212 
 
 Lu Han, 134 
 
 Lu Hanwen, 43, 57 
 
 Lu Jianbo, 39, 51 
 
 Lu Shaozeng, 123 
 
 Lu Xun, 104, 105 
 
 Lu Zhisang, 142 
 
 Luo Baoyin, 130 
 
 Lyon University, 128 
 
 Ma Chaojin, 145 
 Ma Chongjian, 148 
 Ma Chungu, 174 
 Ma Junwu, 150 
 
 Ma Xiangbo, 149 
 Ma Yatang, 130, 131 
 
 336 
 
 Ma Zhongjian, 144 
 
 Ma Zhongrong, 142 
 
 Mao Yibo, 39, 48 
 
 Mao Zedong, 3, 4, 36, 139; and labor- 
 learning, 9-11, 15, 16, 26-27, 270 
 
 March 18 Incident, 108—9 
 
 March 27 Uprising, 109 
 
 Marx, Karl, 4, 11, 69, 116 
 
 Marxism, 11; and anarchism, 23, 37, 
 270 
 
 May Day, 32; celebrations of at Laoda, 
 109-13 
 
 May Fourth Movement, 14, 27—38, 
 139, 154; Laoda commemorations 
 of, DrT—12 
 
 May Thirtieth Incident, 52, 150 
 
 “The Meaning of Labor University and 
 the Responsibility of Its Students” 
 (Cai Yuanpei), 60-61 
 
 Ministry of Education, 147, 148, 154 
 
 Model factory, 72 
 
 Modernism, 18—20 
 
 Mushakoji Saneatsu, 36 
 
 Mutual aid, 33, 34, 35-36, 138, 271 
 
 Mutual aid (Kropotkin), 19 
 
 Nancy University, 128, 131 
 
 Nanjing: anarchism in, 32 
 
 Nanking Decade, 9 
 
 National Association of the Mass Edu- 
 cation Movement, 217 
 
 National Committee for Workers’ Edu- 
 cation (Belgium), 115 
 
 National Customs Daily (Guofeng 
 ribao), 28 
 
 National Labor Congress, 53 
 
 National Southeast University, 144 
 
 Natural Justice (Tianyi bao), 18, 20— 
 Dy 27 
 
 New Continent (Xin dalu), 133 
 
 New Culture Movement, 28—38 
 
 New Era (Xin shiji), 17-21, 49, 62, 72 
 
 New Life Movement (Xin shenghuo 
 yundong): during the May Fourth 
 Movement, 35—37; of the Guomin- 
 dang, 224-25 
 
 “New politics” (xinzheng), 20 
 
 New village (xincun), 36 
 
 New World Society (Xin shijie she), 17 
 
 Northwest agricultural school. See 
 Northwest Institute of Agriculture 
 and Forestry 
 
< 
 
 Index 337 
 
 Northwest Institute of Agriculture and 
 Forestry, 263, 267 
 
 Ong Tsi-lung, 263 
 Ou Kexuan, 143 
 Ou Shengbai, 32, 51 
 
 Pan Gongzhan [Y. Y. Phen), 105 
 
 Pan Guangdan, 150 
 
 “Pan-laborism” (fanlaodong zhuyi), 27, 
 34 
 
 Paris anarchists, 6—7, 17—20; and the 
 Guomindang, 45, 47—49; and work- 
 study, 29—31; on education and rev- 
 olution, 23—26 
 
 Paulun, Erich, 264 
 
 Peasant Movement Training Institute 
 (Nongmin yundong jiangxi suo), 37 
 
 Peng Renquan, 39 
 
 Peng Xiang, 106, 128, 179, 187, 238, 
 239, 253 
 
 Peng Xuepei, 105 
 
 People’s College of Shanghai (Shanghai 
 daxue), 37, 73, 150, 255, 266, 267 
 
 People’s Republic of China, 271-75 
 
 People’s Tocsin (Minzhong), 40, 47 
 
 People’s Vanguard (Minfeng), 39, 174 
 
 People’s Vanguard Society (Minfeng 
 she), 39 
 
 People’s Voice (Minsheng), 32 
 
 Pootung Model Village, 221-22 
 
 Potts, Francis H., 150 
 
 Progress Society (Jinhua she), 32 
 
 Proudhon, P.-J., 63—66 
 
 Qian Culing, 142, 144 
 
 Qian Zhongnan, 148 
 
 Qin Hanzhang, 140, 206—7 
 
 Qinghua (Tsinghua) University, 79, 
 136 
 
 Rand School of Social Science, 4 
 
 Reclus, Elisée, 17, 19, 133 
 
 Reclus, Jacques, 133 
 
 Ren Haozhang, 178 
 
 René, Alain, 139 
 
 “Reorganization,” 47 
 
 Republic Daily (Minguo ribao), 139 
 
 Revolution (Geming zhoubao), 41, 57— 
 58, 62, 132—34, 176 
 
 “Revolution of all the people” (quan- 
 min geming), 47 
 
 Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmeng 
 hui), 7, 17, 19, 48 
 
 Ruskin College, 4, 117, 275 
 
 Russian Revolution, 4 
 
 St. John’s University, 147, 150 
 
 Sea of Learning (Xuehui), 28 
 
 Shanghai: anarchism in, 38—44 
 
 Shanghai Baptist College (Hujiang 
 daxue), 147, 212, 218—23 
 
 Shanghai College of Law and Political 
 Science, 143 
 
 Shanghai Daily News, 148 
 
 Shanghai Finance University, 74, 266 
 
 Shanghai Federation of Students, 139 
 
 Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Educa- 
 tion, 142 
 
 Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Social 
 Affairs, 148, 164 
 
 Shanghai University. See People’s Col- 
 lege of Shanhai 
 
 Shanxi: anarchism in, 27 
 
 Shao Yuanchong, 105, 107 
 
 Shen Chang, 130 
 
 Shen Ka Hong (Shenjiaxiang) School, 
 221 
 
 Shen Mingban, 130 
 
 Shen Yunlong, 181 
 
 Shen Zhongjiu, 7, 42, 51, 57; criticism 
 by of the Guomindang, 49—51; and 
 Labor University, 58, 73, 127, 128, 
 132, 133; and syndicalism, 39—40 
 
 Shen Zuru, 170, 176, 178 
 
 Shenbao, 124, 148 
 
 Sheng Xugong, 143 
 
 Shifu. See Liu Sifu 
 
 Sichuan anarchists, 39—40, 51 
 
 Sino-Belgian Treaty of Amity and 
 Commerce, 106 
 
 Sino-French Educational Association 
 (HuaFa jiaoyu hui), 29, 30 
 
 Snow, Edgar, 139 
 
 Society for the Study of Socialism 
 (Shehui zhuyi jiangxi hui), 17-18, 
 20 
 
 Society for the Study of Syndicalism 
 (Gongtuan zhuyi yanjiu hui), 39 
 
 Soong, T. V., 145, 248, 262 
 
 Sorbonne University, 131, 132, 136 
 
 Spring Festival (Jingzhe), 40 
 
 Spring Thunder (Chunlei), 41 
 
 Star Movie Studio, 204 
 
Index 
 
 Su Lezhen, 130 
 
 Su Rugan, 131 
 
 Sun Benwen, 105, 128 
 
 Sun Hanbing, 130, 131, 132, 157, 174; 
 role at Fudan and Laoda, 141, 142, 
 143, 144, 149; scholarship of, 138— 
 39 
 
 Sun Ke, 145, 237 
 
 Sun Letao, 163 
 
 Sun Lianggong, 87, 139 
 
 Sun Quanfang, 75 
 
 Sun Yat-sen. See Sun Zhongshan 
 
 Sun Zhongshan, 7—8, 17, 19, 46, 62, 
 173, 237, 248; commemoration of, 
 at Laoda, 101-3; interpreted by anar- 
 chists, 62—66 
 
 Syndicalist movement (China), 32, 38— 
 41 
 
 Ta Kung Po (Dagong bao), 259 
 
 Tan Yankai, 249 
 
 Tan Yifan, 184, 187, 191, 196, 207, 
 i), Hes} 
 
 Tang Renchu, 130 
 
 Tang Ying, 127, 130, 146, 265 
 
 Tao Xingzhi, ror 
 
 Thomas, Albert, 106, 133 
 
 Three Peoples Principles, 6—8, 46, 49, 
 I10I—13, 180, 198; and anarchism, 
 56, 57, 62—66. See also Sun 
 Zhongshan 
 
 Tokyo Agricultural University, 148 
 
 / Tokyo anarchists, 7, 17-18, 26-28 
 
 Tokyo Technical University, 130 
 
 Tolstoy, Leo, 22; and “laborism,” 26— 
 Dp sy 
 
 Tong Qingzang, 142 
 
 Tongji University, 79, 106, 144; rela- 
 tionship to Laoda of, 146—47, 263- 
 65, 266, 267 
 
 Toulouse University, 131 
 
 Touraine, Alain, 41 
 
 Truth Society (Shishe), 32 
 
 Union of Young Laborers (Laogong 
 gingnian hui), 40 
 
 Université Franco-Chinoise, 84, 126 
 
 University Council (Daxue yuan), 67— 
 68, 145, 227—230, 251 
 
 University of Berlin, 130, 136 
 
 University of Chicago, 137 
 
 University of Michigan, 136 
 
 338 
 
 University of Washington, 129, 130, 
 131, 136, 137, 138 
 
 Valentin, Edmond Frangois, 139 
 Vandervelde, Emile, 106, 115—17 
 Village Institutes (Turkey), 275 
 Voitinsky, Gregory, 36 
 
 Wan Chongxin, 129, 141, 144 
 
 Wan Suxin, 138 
 
 Wang Baiqun, 145, 149 
 
 Wang Fengjie, 128, 137 
 
 Wang Guangqi, 36 
 
 Wang Jianmin, 175—76 
 
 Wang Jingqi, 106, 114, 119, 245-47 
 
 Wang Jingwei, 105, 149, 263 
 
 Wang Ruofei, 31 
 
 Wang Weigan, 193 
 
 Wang Zuru, 131 
 
 Ward, Colin, 271 
 
 Wei Eshou, 131 
 
 Wei Huilin, 54 
 
 West Shanghai Twenty-two Society, 
 225 
 
 Whampoa Military Academy, 134 
 
 World Society (Shijie she), 29 
 
 Wu Shuge, 131 
 
 Wu Songnie, 141, 142, 144, 149 
 
 Wu Tiechong, 145 
 
 Wu Yuzhang, 31 
 
 Wu Zhigang, 54, 55, 133 
 
 Wu Zhihui, 7, 25, 132, 149, 248, 273; 
 on education and revolution, 18—20, 
 23-26; and Labor University, 43, 
 57-58, 59, 263; and the origins of 
 Chinese anarchism, 17; relationship 
 to the Guomindang of, 17, 47—57, 
 61—62; and “revolution of all the 
 people,” 69; and work-study pro- 
 gram, 30 
 
 Wuhan University, 79, 155 
 
 Wuxi survey, 214-15 
 
 Xia Kangnong, 232 
 
 Xiaozhuang School, 1o1 
 
 Xiong Mengfei, 127, 128-29, 140, 208, 
 DID 
 
 Xiong Zhongmin, 177 
 
 Xiong Zirong, 137, 138, 141, 215-16 
 
 Xu Dixin, 156, 174 
 
 Xu Maoyong, 174 
 
Index 339 
 
 Xu Shifeng, 122 
 
 Xu Teli, 31 
 
 Xu Xing, 20, 22; and Liu Shipei’s uto- 
 pia, 26—27 
 
 Yan Enzuo, 142 
 
 Yan Yangchu (James Y. C. Yen), 217—18 
 
 Yan/an Period, ro 
 
 Yang Jian, 130 
 
 Yang Jinghui, 131 
 
 Yang Yunjiong, 143 
 
 Yangtsepoo Center, 218—20 
 
 Yao Jingzhou, 130 
 
 Yao Youfan, 130 
 
 Ye Fawu, 110-11, 131, 136, 142, 143 
 
 Ye Shengtao, 42 
 
 Yen, James Y. C. See Yan Yangchu 
 
 Yi Gengfu, 102-3, 104, 112, 236, 237 
 
 Yi Hongtu, 170, 172 
 
 Yi Keyi, 108 
 
 Yi Peiji, 58, 73, 119, 273; aS president 
 of Laoda, 126—29, 133, 155, 165; 
 problems of, 230-44, 248-61 
 
 YMCA/YWCA, 216-23 
 
 Young China Association (Shaonian 
 Zhongguo xuehui), 36 
 
 Young Laborers’ Ten-daily (Laogong 
 qingnian xunkan), 40 
 
 Yu Songhua, 142, 148 
 
 Yu Zhongbiao, 171 
 
 Yuan Zhenying, 32 
 
 Yun Daiying, 33, 36 
 
 Zhang Dongsun, 150 
 
 Zhang Ji, 18, 47, 48, 56 
 
 Zhang Jingjiang, 17, 18, 47, 72, 234 
 Zhang Mojun, 107 
 
 Zhang Nong, 240 
 
 Zhang Puquan. See Zhang Ji 
 
 Zhang Xingbai, 72, 127 
 
 Zhang Xinrong, 143 
 
 Zhang Yousan, 70-71, 131, 137—38, 
 I41I—43, 149, 216, 231, 235 
 
 Zhang Yuanruo, 128, 131, 132 
 
 Zhang Yunfu, 143 
 
 Zhang Zhizhong, 175, 176 
 
 Zhang Zuolin, 55 
 
 Zhangzhou: anarchism in, 32—33 
 
 Zhao Shaohou, 139 
 
 Zhao Shiyan, 31 
 
 Zhejiang anarchists, 39—40, 49, 51, 52, 
 13) 
 
 Zhejiang University, 79, 99, 123, 142 
 
 Zheng Ganyun, 187 
 
 Zheng Hongnian, 143 
 
 Zheng Jiajun, 127 
 
 Zheng Peigang, 32, 43 
 
 Zheng Ruogu, 101, 136—37, 141, 187, 
 212-13, 216, 231 
 
 Zheng Tonghe, 142 
 
 Zheng Yougu, 122 
 
 Zheng Zhigang, 206 
 
 Zhonghua (China) University, 228—29 
 
 Zhonghua (Chung Hwa) Bookstore, 
 124 
 
 Zhongshan University, 155, 261, 262 
 
 Zhou Bangshi, 178, 196, 241 
 
 Zhou Changxian, 176-77 
 
 Zhou Enlai, 30, 31, 174 
 
 Zhou Fohai, 105 
 
 Zhou Xiaoan, 141 
 
 Zhou Yutong, 42 
 
 Zhu Fan, 206, 207 
 
 Zhu Jiahua, 261-68 
 
 Zhu Shikang, 130 
 
 Zhu Tongjiu, 122, 138, 141, 142, 143, 
 187, 235 
 
 Zhu Zhenjiang, 122 
 
Arif Dirlik is Professor of History at Duke 
 University. His publications include Revolution 
 and History: Origins of Marxist Historiography in 
 China, 1919-1937 (1978, 1989); The Origins of 
 Chinese Communism (1989); Anarchism in the 
 Chinese Revolution (1991). He is editor, with 
 Maurice Meisner, of Marxism and the Chinese 
 Experience: Issues in Contemporary Chinese 
 Socialism (1990). 
 
 Ming K. Chan is a member of the History 
 Department, University of Hong Kong, and 
 Coordinator, Hong Kong Documentary Archives, 
 Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His 
 publications include Historiography of the Chinese 
 Labor Movement, 1895—1949 (1981); Perspectives 
 on the Hong Kong and Chinese Labor Movement 
 (1982); Dimensions of the Chinese and Hong Kong 
 Labor Movement (1986), and The British Sunset in 
 Hong Kong (1989) (all in Chinese). He is editor, 
 with David Clark, of The Hong Kong Basic Law: 
 Blueprint for “Stability and Prosperity” under 
 Chinese Sovereignty? (1991). 
 
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 
 
 Chan, Ming K. 
 
 Schools into fields and factories : anarchists, the Guomindang, 
 and the National Labor University in Shanghai, 1927—1932 / 
 Ming K. Chan, Arif Dirlik. 
 
 Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 
 
 ISBN 0-8223-1154-2 
 
 1. Lao tung ta hsueh (China) 2. Working class—Education 
 (Higher)—China—Case studies. 3. Education, Higher— 
 China—Philosophy—History—2oth century. 4. Anarchism— 
 China—History— 20th century. 5. Higher education and 
 state—China—History—2oth century. I. Dirlik, Arif. 
 
 Il. Title. 
 
 LGS51.S385C47 I991 
 
 378.51—dc20 91-7379 CIP 
 

 
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