RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593
THE POLITICIZATION OF CHINESE CRAFT ORGANIZATION IN POST WORLD WAR II HONG KONG

EUGENE COOPER*

In a private communication to John Stewart Burgess, to which Burgess refers in his 1928 work, The Guilds of Peking, the well-known Chinese economist, Ch'en Ta takes note of three characteristics of the modern industries of the time:

1. that modern industries often came into existence by a process of amalgamation of previously distinct, independent crafts.

2. that this synthetic structure often made it difficult to achieve unity between the various constituent craftsmen in a given industry in pressing for their demands as a unified working class (Burgess, 1928:223).

3. that it was often difficult to overcome provincial feeling in organizing workers from different native places into a unified working class (Ibid:227).

The process of amalgamation of independent crafts into a single industry is one which Marx noted as characteristic of the early stages of European capitalist development from the middle of the 16th to the last third of the 18th century. This process resulted in a mode of production that Marx called “manufacture”, the archetypal example of which was carriage-making in which the wheelwright, carpenter, upholsterer, and blacksmith came together in a single enterprise to produce carriages, each coming to specialize in the production of carriage parts (Marx, 1967:1:336 ff.).

Manufacture arose as a mode of production in the Chinese art-carved furniture industry in the 1920's, as the result of just such a process of amalgamation which brought rural temple carvers together under the same roof with carpenters and painters in what became urban Shanghai and Canton-based carved furniture factories.

* Dr. Cooper is Lecturer in Sociology in the University of Hong Kong. This article first appeared as a paper read to the Symposium on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the Politicization of Asian Folk Culture, held at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting in New York City, March 25, 1977.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593
168

C. MARTIN WILBUR

Su, Sing Ging; The Chinese Family System. New York, International Press, 1922.

Tang, Chi-yu; An Economic Study of Chinese Agriculture. No place, no pub., 1924. (Cornell University Ph.D. Thesis.)

Tayler, J. B.; See: Malone, C. B., and Tayler, J. B.

Tsu, Yu-yue; The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy; a Study in Mutual Aid. New York, Columbia, 1912.

Tyau, Min-ch'ien (Ed); Two Years of Nationalist China. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1930.

Werner, E. T. C.; China of the Chinese. London, Pitman, 1920. Werner, E. T. C.; Descriptive Sociology: or Groups of Sociological Facts, Classified and Arranged by Herbert Spencer. Chinese; Compiled and Abstracted upon the Plan Organized by Herbert Spencer. London, Williams and Norgate, 1910. (Folio no. 9 of series).

Wilhelm, Richard; A Short History of Chinese Civilization. (Translated by Joan Joshua). New York, Viking, 1929.

Williams, Edward T.; China Yesterday and Today. New York, Crowell, 1923.

Williams, Edward T.; A Short History of China. New York, Harpers, 1928.

Yen, James Y. C.; New Citizens for China. No place, Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement, 1929 (Reprint. Yale Review, vol. 18, No. 2)

II. USEFUL WORKS NOT CITED.

Brenan, Bryon; "The Office of District Magistrate in China" (Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 32, 1897-98, p. 36-65).

Chen, Ta; "Socio-economic Conditions in Two Chinese Villages” (Chinese Economic Monthly, vol. 2, no. 5, 1925, p. 11-23).

Chiao, C. M. and Buck, John L.; "The Composition and Growth of Population Groups in China" (Chinese Economic Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, 1928, p. 219-235),

"Chinese Clans and Their Customs" (Chinese and Japanese Repository, vol. 3, no. 23, 1865, p. 281-284).

Dickinson, Jean; Observations on the Social Life of a North China Village. (Chien Ying, Wu Ching Hsien) Oct.-Dec. 1924. Peking, Yenching, no date.

Fang, Fu-an; Chinese Labour; an Economic and Statistical Survey of the Labour Conditions and Labour Movement in China. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1931.

Gamble, Sidney D., and Burgess, John S.; Peking; a Social Survey. New York, Doran, 1921.

Halhoun, Gustov; "Contributions to the History of Clan Settlement in Ancient China” (Asia Major, vol. 1, 1924, p. 76-111, 587-623).
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v
229

p. 60. Day, Peasant Cults, pp. 107-108.

p. 60. Burgess, J. S., The Guilds of Peking, New York, 1928, p. 179.

p. 69. A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, Hong Kong, 1960, p. 138.

p. 69, Maugham, W. Somerset, On a Chinese Screen, London, 1922, p. 138.

p. 70. Broomhall, Marshall (ed.), Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission, with a Record of the Perils and Sufferings of Some Who Escaped, London, 1901, p. 8.

p. 74. Burkhardt, V. R., Chinese Creeds and Customs, Hong Kong, 1953-58, Vol I, p. 106.

p. 81. Ball, Things, p. 75.

p. 86. Ibid. p. 668.

p. 90. Williams, S. Wells, Middle Kingdom, Vol I, p. 340.

p. 92. Ibid.

p. 93. Doré, Researches, Vol V, p. 533.

p. 94. Ibid, p. 535.

p. 97. Ball, Things, pp. 499-500.

p. 101. Barnett, K. M. A., The Peoples of the New Territories' in Braga, J. M. (ed.) The Hong Kong Business Symposium, Hong Kong, 1957, p. 265.

p. 102. Hashimoto, Mantaro J., The Hakka Dialect, London, 1973, pp. 1-2, p. 109. Obraztsov, Sergei, (translated by MacDermott, J. T.) The Chinese Puppet Theatre, London, 1961, pp. 27-28,

p. 110. Dolby, William, 'The Origins of Chinese Puppetry'. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1978. Vol XLI. Part 1, pp. 109-110.

p. 112. Spencer, Cornelia, Made in China: the Story of China's Expression, London, 1947, p. 122.

p. 114. Burkhardt, Creeds and Customs, Vol I, p. 13.

p. 114. Clemens, John, Discovering Macau: a Visitor's Guide, Hong Kong, 1972, p. 121.

p. 114. Werner, Dictionary, p. 503.

p. 117. Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842: the History of Hong Kong Prior to British Arrival, Hong Kong, 1963, p. 83.

p. 118. Peplow and Barker, Around and About, pp. 4-5.

p. 122. Ride, Lindsay, "The Old Protestant Cemetery in Macao', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong, Vol III, 1963, p. 14.
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