Title: "Red silk"
Description: "Red Silk" is a social history of China's Communist-led revolution viewed through the lens of the Yangzi Delta silk industry. The dissertation focuses on the changing relationships among silk workers, factory owners, and party cadres as they struggled to survive, resist, and participate in the experiments of the 1950s. Based on research in municipal archives in Shanghai and Wuxi, and interviews with former workers and managers, the dissertation explains the ways in which the processes of negotiation and contestation conditioned the development of Chinese socialism in its first decade. The silk industry provides an excellent context for exploring the complexity and contingency of the Chinese revolution. Silk filatures were relatively large enterprises employing young women under a brutal, patriarchal labor regime. In contrast, most silk weaving factories were small-scale and mainly employed privileged, male artisans. Comparing the experiences of filature workers, silk weavers, and their employers in the early years of Communist Party rule highlights the variable influences of gender, locality, factory regime, and inherited practices on the reception and manipulation of revolutionary politics in this important export industry.

The core chapters focus on the period of "New Democracy" from 1949 to 1952, comparing the experiences of Shanghai silk weavers and Wuxi filature workers as they attempted to advance their interests in the context of the party's policies. In both cases, policy implementation was conditioned by the legacies of war and economic crisis and the actions of workers and employers. Whereas Shanghai silk weavers were able to advance their interests by means of independent but well-connected unions, filature workers saw few improvements in their lives, and found their past tactics de-legitimized in the context of employer-dominated unions and party-led political campaigns. Neither outcome can be explained in terms of the ideology or vision of the Communist Party leadership without reference to developments preceding the seizure of power and the subsequent actions of workers, employers, and local officials. In this view, the aspirations and actions of social groups were as important in shaping the development of Chinese socialism as political ideology or the plans and visions of party leaders.