The January Storm of 1967: from representation to action and back again

Book section

The mass mobilisation phase of the Cultural Revolution began as a student movement on the campuses of Beijing’s universities and middle schools in the summer of 1966. However, under the direction of cadre work teams, the movement quickly degenerated into a crisis over political representation. After a fight to a stalemate, the withdrawal of the work teams triggered a new stage of direct but also violent political action that paralysed Chinese Communist Party and state administrations by the end of the year. Worker mobilisation in Shanghai led to the usurpation of the municipal government in early 1967, signalling a new phase in the movement. The so-called January Storm (一月风波), a dramatic wave of rebel power seizures in which workers figured prominently, swept the country. Its apogee was the declaration of the Shanghai People’s Commune in early February; yet its denouement came only a few weeks later, when the rebel workers agreed to reorganise as a ‘revolutionary committee’, uniting forces with some of the cadres they had dispossessed as well as local military leaders. The January Storm thus marks an unresolved dilemma in the Party’s history: the Cultural Revolution originated in a crisis over the Party’s role in political representation, which the Maoist leadership sought to overcome through the direct political action of students and workers with the nominal aim of self-rule. But the Party’s monopolisation of power deprived rebel workers of the resources necessary to build and sustain a lasting alliance. When the coalition quickly collapsed, Party leaders gradually reverted to the flawed mechanism of representation through delegation that triggered the initial crisis. This essay focuses on labour’s role in the rise and fall of the Shanghai People’s Commune through the question of labour’s representation in the People’s Republic of China.

Authors: Thornton, PM

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Made in China Journal
• Host title: Proletarian China
• Journal: Landscapes of Chinese Labour
• Chapter number: 41
• Publication date: 2021-12-01
• Acceptance date: 2021-02-19
• Language: English
• Keywords: SBTMR