On the Periphery of the Socialist Factory: Rural People and Migrant Labor in China, 1958–99

Labor and working-class life in China’s state-owned factories have received much scholarly attention, from studies on political authority and management of factories, the discrimination faced by women workers, to worker protests and workplace democracy. Less has been written on rural workers, a group that contributed significantly to the construction and operation of these factories without gaining the same political status and social benefits that urban workers possessed. My paper focuses on rural people in the state-owned factory, from the era of state socialism through the economic reforms.

Using oral history and factory newspapers from a steel mill in the southwestern city of Chengdu, this paper considers the experiences of rural people who left their homes for work opportunities and improved conditions in the city, including rural workers who eventually obtained urban status and temporary contract workers. It examines how this labor regime of rural versus urban affected the lives of rural women married to workers as well as their children, who were not legally allowed to relocate to the city. It looks at how factory authorities and urban workers perceived and treated rural people in the factory, how factory housing assignments and professional opportunities excluded rural people, and how those with rural origins were cast as second-class citizens and placed on the margins of an urban industrial community. By extending my discussion into the economic reform period, when state-owned factories were allowed to engage in profit-generating activities, especially subcontracting and commercial exploitation of rural contract workers, this paper explores the continuity between the socialist and the reform era in its arrangement of rural labor. Ultimately, I demonstrate how the history of rural workers in the socialist factory warrants much greater attention than is currently the case.