The Challenge to Traditional Labor Rights and Policies in China from 1911 to 1949: Some Cultural, Historical, Human Rights and Criminological Perspectives

Abstract

The aim of present paper is to explore in terms of the traditional Chinese labor rightsand policies from 1911 to 1949. The paper highlights to analyze the impacts of traditionalsocial security in China from 1911 to 1949 using the cultural, historical, human rights,and criminological perspective. Through the process, the present study provides howChinese social security system has the process for transformation and developmentbetween Nationalist and Communist Party. The findings of present study provided that from the 1920s to the late 1940s severallaws of factory and labor were promulgated by the warlord-controlled Beijinggovernment, the Nationalist Government as well as by the Communist Government. Theambitious provisions of much of this labor legislation could not be successfully enforcedas long as internal political disturbances and foreign invasion obstructed China’sindustrialization process. A poor nation could not afford to implement labor legislationmodelled on western approaches to labor and welfare predicated on high levels ofindustrialization and much higher level of standards. The policy and practice of social welfare implemented by the Chinese Communists intheir base areas were among the most important early attempts to implement modernsocial welfare. As a result, the scope of social welfare measures was enlarged fromprimarily helping the destitute to meeting the on-going needs of workers, farmers andcadres. Yet here too there was a substantial gap between model legislation and reality. The CCP took a number of significant steps to advance social welfare rights forworkers. Yet communist efforts under various versions of the proletarian line to givepriority to labor’s welfare sometimes provide not only impractical, but even counterproductive to finally realising laborers’ right. In particular, we have noted thedanger that labor policies would greatly privilege industrial workers over peasants.