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Beyond Repression and Resistance: Worker agency and corporatism in occupied Nanjing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2021

JOSHUA H. HOWARD Open the ORCID record for JOSHUA H. HOWARD [Opens in a new window]
JOSHUA H. HOWARD*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Mississippi Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In the aftermath of the Nanjing Massacre, one way in which Wang Jingwei's Reorganized National Government sought to impose social order was to implement a corporatist labour strategy. Inspired by European fascist theory and building on the pre-war Nationalist-Government labour legislation, corporatism sought to prevent union autonomy, stifle class-based sentiment, and undermine the pursuit of class interests whether on the part of capitalists or of workers. It aimed to ensure government control and loyalty to the state, and promote production. An analysis of approximately 50 records of labour–capital disputes mediated by the Shehui yundong zhidao weiyuanhui (Social Movement Guidance Committee) during the early 1940s suggests that the Wang regime carved out a sphere autonomous from Japanese oversight and exerted state control over commercial associations and artisans employed in the handicraft sector. Even so, worker actions show that workers did not trust corporatism to provide social unity. Contrary to much of the Chinese historiography on occupied Nanjing that emphasizes either social repression or resistance, one finds that state authorities in most cases granted trade unions’ economic demands for higher wages. The state provided workers with a modicum of agency while pressuring commercial associations to accept worker demands. In response to inflation and to preserve their breadwinner status, male artisans actively participated in the arbitration process. Workers’ agency did not reflect an endorsement of Wang Jingwei's regime or of corporatism. It was a tacit form of consent as a means of survival.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 309 - 349
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Research was funded by a Harvard-Yenching Library Travel Grant, two summer grants from the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History Faculty Research Endowment, and the University of Mississippi's International Collaboration Grant, which the author gratefully acknowledges. The author would like to thank Timothy Brook, Giancarlo Falco, Michael Hoffheimer, Jiang Liangqin, Sophia Lee, Liu Shilong, Michael Strange, Noell Wilson, and the two anonymous Modern Asian Studies reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

References

1 Gianpasquale Santomassimo explores the ideological significance of corporatism, originally envisioned during the 1920s as part of a ‘third-way’ fascist alternative to liberalism and socialism. By the eve of the Second World War, corporations (worker and employer unions) no longer existed in a ‘mixed’ economy, class conciliation had given way to repressive labour regimes, while the original anti-capitalist sentiment was now stained by anti-semitism. See La terza via fascista: Il mito del corporativismo (Rome: Carocci, 2006), Chapter 6. For observations on the divergence between the rhetoric and reality of corporatism in fascist Italy as well as continued labour struggles between 1926 and 1936, see Foa, Vittorio, Per una storia del movimento operaio (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), 37, 122Google Scholar. In light of the dictatorship, economic depression, and high rates of unemployment, Paul Corner describes the Italian working-class attitudes towards fascist organizations as ‘resignation, the awareness of the lack of any immediate alternatives, and in some cases simple desperation’. See Corner, Paul, ‘Italy’ in Salter, Stephen and Stevenson, John, eds., The Working Class and Politics in Europe and America, 1929–1945 (London and New York: Longman, 1990), 162Google Scholar.

2 Perry, Elizabeth J., Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 106Google Scholar.

3 Effectively the second most powerful person in the Wang Jingwei government, Zhou Fohai administered many key posts: minister of finance, minister of foreign affairs, and general director of the Central Reserve Bank. See Xianwen, Zhang, Qingqiu, Wan, and Meizhen, Huang, eds., Zhonghua Minguo shi da cidian [Historical Dictionary of the Republic of China] (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 2002), 1019Google Scholar. See also Marsh, Susan H., ‘Chou Fo-hai: The Making of a Collaborator’ in Iriye, Akira, ed., The Chinese and the Japanese: Essays in Political and Cultural Interactions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 313Google Scholar.

4 ‘Jinling quanshu’ bianji chuban weiyuanhui, Jinling quanshu bing bian dang'an lei [Complete books of Nanjing, bing type, archival category] (hereafter ‘JLQS’), vol. 39 (Nanjing: Nanjing chubanshe, 2010), 689 (originally in Shizheng gongbao, vol. 50, p. 13, laws and regulations) ‘Shehuibu Shehui yundong zhidao weiyuanhui zhanxing zuzhi tiaolie [Provisional organizational regulations for the Ministry of Social Affairs Social Movement Guidance Committee]’, 14 May 1940.

5 For a preliminary investigation of the Sheyunhui's activities in the rural periphery of Nanjing, see Wu Xiaotao, ‘Dongyuan yu kongzhi: Wangwei zhengquan nonghui yanjiu: yi yuan Wangwei zhengquan Nanjing tebieshi wei lie [Mobilization and controls: research on the farmers’ association of the false Wang Jingwei regime—a case study of the former false Wang Jingwei regime Nanjing special municipality]’ in Nongye kaogu [Agriculture and Archaeology] (June 2007): 32–34. Wu argues that, despite the Japanese military's land grabs, the Sheyunhui fulfilled a progressive function by organizing Farmers Associations, which in turn managed land reclamation, model farms, and orchards, and established information offices to help illiterate peasants to read contracts and write letters.

6 For a pioneering and conceptually sophisticated study of collaboration and state making in the Lower Yangzi, see Brook, Timothy, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. For an excellent overview of recent Chinese scholarship on wartime collaboration and occupation politics, see Serfass, David, ‘Occupation Japonaise et collaboration chinoise: tendances historiographiques récentes [The Japanese occupation and collaboration: recent historiographic trends]’ in Revue historique, no. 680 (April 2016): 941–966CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Toby Lincoln, for example, finds that Chinese elites and officials continued to manage urbanization as they had done prior to the outbreak of war. Lincoln minimizes the Japanese occupation. An absence of the Japanese in the archival records and the press suggests to Lincoln that ‘it was Chinese who were primarily responsible for the rapid recovery and continued urbanization of Wuxi’. Japanese inability to prevent the smuggling of silk cocoons to Shanghai or to exert a monopoly over silk production are testimony to the ‘limits of occupation’. By his own account, Lincoln acknowledges that the Japanese-backed Central China Sericulture Company bought up to 70 per cent of dried cocoons and controlled a dozen silk filatures in Wuxi. In terms of urban management, Lincoln shows that Chinese officials took an active role in guiding urban renewal during the late 1930s, but it is unclear how urban planning developed during the remaining years of the war and to what extent the Japanese military clashed with Chinese civilian leaders over resources (electricity, coal, and rice). Lincoln, Toby, Urbanizing China in War and Peace: The Case of Wuxi (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2015), 14, 129, 145Google Scholar.

8 Zanasi, Margherita, Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 218CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Genfu, Zhang, ‘Lun Wangwei zhanshi jingji tongzhi [A discussion of the Wang puppet regime's wartime economic controls]’ in Jianghai xuekan, no. 3 (1996): 127–133Google Scholar. Zhang shows that the New China Policy did provide more autonomy for the Wang regime to control material resources with the establishment of the National Merchant Control Counsel and the Material Control Review Committee in March 1943 along with subsidiary committees overseeing rice, cotton, flour, and other materials. But the Japanese military often interfered in the implementation of economic controls. Furthermore, Japanese advisers and liaison officials embedded in the Wang regime's economic organizations vetted all major economic decisions. Zhang characterizes the RNG's wartime economic controls as a form of colonial economy.

9 The key reference work on Occupied Nanjing is Jing Shenghong, Nanjing lunxian ba nian shi (1937 nian 12 yue 13 ri zhi 1945 nian 8 yue 15 ri) [The Eight-year History of Occupied Nanjing, 13 December 1937 to 15 August 1945] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2005). Besides narrating the political history of occupied Nanjing and the changes in Japan's orientation towards Nanjing, Jing's two volumes offer ample evidence of the social-control paradigm. He documents Japan's military and spy presence in the aftermath of the Nanjing Massacre, the subjugation of the population through sexual slavery (‘comfort women’), the imposition of economic controls, and the appropriation of Chinese property and resources. Also, he discusses the controls exerted on the media and education system. Jing's chapters on economic subjugation and the growing impoverishment of the Nanjing populace, however, rely on documentation from the late 1930s and tread lightly on the years of the Wang Jingwei regime. Recent surveys of Nanjing's urban history echo Jing Shenghong's approach and use much of the same source material. See, for instance, Yang Yingqi et al., eds., Nanjing tongshi: Minguo juan [Survey History of Nanjing: Republican Era] (Nanjing: Nanjing chubanshe, 2011); and Bei, Xia and Pan, Deng, eds., Nanjing bainian chengshi shi, 1912–2012 di wu ce gongnongye juan [A Century of Nanjing Urban History, 1912–2012, Vol. 5, Industry and Agriculture] (Nanjing: Nanjing chubanshe, 2014)Google Scholar. A recent collaborative effort between mainland Chinese and Taiwan-based scholars has uncovered new source material, but chapters concentrating on everyday life in occupied regions and on economic plunder and controls continue to focus on the late 1930s. In part, the focus on destruction and repression in the aftermath of the Nanjing Massacre is an extension of the exhaustive research undertaken by Nanjing University researchers on the Massacre that led to the 55-volume publication under the general editorship of Zhang Xianwen, ed., Nanjing datusha shiliao ji [Collection of Source Material on the Nanjing Massacre] (Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, Fenghuang chubanshe, 2005–07). But one suspects that the Wang Jingwei period is still too sensitive a topic, thus it is safer and simpler for researchers to imply that mechanisms of social control and repression continued throughout the early to mid-1940s. See Ma Junya, ‘Riwei zai Jing Hu Hang lunxianqu de jingji lüedai yu kongzhi [Japanese collaborationists’ economic plunder and economic controls in the areas of occupied Nanjing, Shanghai and Hangzhou]’ and Zhang Tongle, ‘Lunxianqu de Zhongguo minzhong shenghuo [Chinese people's livelihoods in the occupied regions]’ in Zhang Xianwen and Zhang Yufa, eds., Zhonghua Minguo zhuantishi di 12 juan [Specialized History of the Chinese Republic, Vol. 12] (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 2015), chs 3, 6. There is recognition of these imbalances. Zang Yunwu's recent state-of-the-field article on occupied China notes that research on economic controls has been strong, as has research on the establishment and key figures of the Wang regime, but that ‘research on cultural and social history of the occupied regions has consistently been lacking’. See Yunwu, Zang, ‘Kangri zhanzheng shiqi de lunxianqu yanjiu shuping [Review of research on the occupied zones during the Anti-Japanese War]’ in Zhonggong dangshi yanjiu, no. 9 (2015): 104, 106Google Scholar. One important corrective to this trend is Pan Min's study of local power structures in central and southern Jiangsu. She finds that, after the rural pacification campaign that began in 1941, the Wang regime operated more independently from Japanese control and was able to impose fairly strong sway over county-level governance in southern Jiangsu by establishing an intelligence network, setting up the neighbourhood-watch system (baojia), and influencing personnel decisions at the provincial and county levels. Despite exerting a degree of control over grassroots society, Pan concludes that the Wang regime failed to gain authority because it had an insufficient military capacity, lacked a cohesive party organization, and had no social basis. Min, Pan, Jiangsu Ri-wei jiceng zhengquan yanjiu, 1937–1945 [Research on the Japan-puppet Regime at the Local Level in Jiangsu, 1937–1945] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2006)Google Scholar.

10 Jing, Nanjing lunxian ba nian shi, 187.

11 Ibid., 188.

12 Ibid., 183.

13 Ibid., 192.

14 Ibid., 196.

15 Ibid., 476; and Zhang Xianwen, Zhang Lianhong and Wang Weixing, eds., A History of the Nanjing Massacre, trans. Michelle LeSound and Kan Liang (Nanjing: Nanjing University Press, 2015), 329–330.

16 Cited in Jing, Nanjing lunxian ba nian shi, 198. Original quote in Kaiyuan, Zhang, Eyewitnesses to Massacre, American Missionaries Bear Witness to Japanese Atrocities in Nanjing (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 325Google Scholar.

17 Jing, Nanjing lunxian ba nian shi, 200, 683.

18 Lipkin, Zwia, Useless to the State: ‘Social Problems’ and Social Engineering in Nationalist Nanjing, 1927–1937 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 82–83Google Scholar.

19 Jing, Nanjing lunxian ba nian shi, 13.

20 Ibid., 15–19.

21 Xia and Deng, eds., Nanjing bainian chengshi shi, 77–79.

22 Ibid., 77.

23 Jing, Nanjing lunxian ba nian shi, 677.

24 Ibid., 683.

25 M. Searle Bates; Nanking International Relief Committee, Crop Investigation in the Nanking Area and Sundry Economic Data: A Report of Inquiries Conducted (Shanghai: Mercury Press, 1939), 24.

26 M. Searle Bates; Nanking International Relief Committee, The Nanking Population: Employment, Earnings and Expenditures: A Survey (Shanghai: Mercury Press, 1939), 10.

27 Ibid., 13.

28 Ma, ‘Riwei zai Jing Hu Hang lunxianqu de jingji lüedai yu kongzhi’, 210.

29 Jing, Nanjing lunxian ba nian shi, 678.

30 Xia and Deng, eds., Nanjing bainian chengshi shi, 78, 80.

31 Yang et al., eds., Nanjing tongshi: Minguo juan, 415.

32 Xia and Deng, eds., Nanjing bainian chengshi shi, 79–80. Parks Coble suggests the Japanese exercised direct military management over munitions related production, especially in northern China, whereas the military entrusted Japanese companies to control light industries prevalent in central China. Coble, Parks M., ‘Japan's New Order and the Shanghai capitalists: conflict and collaboration, 1937–1945’ in Barrett, David P. and Shyu, Larry N., eds., Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 141Google Scholar.

33 Yang et al., eds., Nanjing tongshi: Minguo juan, 416. Similar trends are evident in the protracted nature of returning Shanghai enterprises to full Chinese control or cooperative management after Japanese military management. Huang Meizhen, ed., Riwei dui Huazhong lunxianqu jingji de lüeduo yu tongzhi [Japanese Puppet Government's Economic Plunder and Rule over Occupied Central China] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2005), 410–416.

34 Nanjingshi dang'anguan bian, Shenxun Wang wei hanjian bilu [Records of the Trials for the Wang (Jingwei) Puppet Traitors] (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1992), 418.

35 Huang, Riwei dui Huazhong lunxianqu jingji de lüeduo yu tongzhi, 418–419.

36 Xia and Deng, eds., Nanjing bainian chengshi shi, 82.

37 Nanjing Municipal Archives (henceforth ‘NMA’) 10020022077(00)0001 (22 March 1941).

38 NMA 10020022077(00)0008, pp. 85–94. ‘Sanshi nian gongren jiating shenghuofei zhishubiao [1941 worker household cost-of-living index]’, 5 August 1941.

39 NMA 1002022077(00)0007, p. 79, ‘Nanjing tebie shi Andingmen qu gongren shenghuo diaocha biao 30 nian 5 yue 10 ri-20 ri [Survey of workers’ livelihood at Nanjing special municipality Andingmen district, 10–20 May 1941]’. NMA 10020022077(00)0010, pp. 117–136, ‘Gongren jiating shenghuofei zhishu diaocha biao’, 22–31 July 1942. It seems unlikely that Nanjing workers could afford to be active consumers in the leisure market, especially patronage of tea houses, restaurants, and opium dens, which by contrast flourished in Suzhou after the occupation. The boost to consumerism was helped by the Wang regime's designation of Suzhou as provincial capital and its relative social and economic stability. See Jen-shu, Wu, Jiehou ‘tiantang’: Kangzhan lunxianhou de Suzhou chengshi shenghuo [‘Paradise’ After Disaster: Urban Life in Suzhou after the Anti-Japanese War Occupation] (Taibei: Taida chuban zhongxin, 2017)Google Scholar.

40 Zhang, ‘Lunxianqu de Zhongguo minzhong shenghuo’, 508.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., 509.

43 Ma, ‘Riwei zai Jing Hu Hang lunxianqu de jingji lüedai yu kongzhi’, 214.

44 Zhang X. et al., eds., A History of the Nanjing Massacre, 366.

45 B. F. Johnston, with Mosaburo Hosoda and Yoshio Kusumi, Japanese Food Management in World War II (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1953), 200.

46 Sheng, Zhang, Riwei guanxi yanjiu: yi Huadong diqu wei zhongxin [Research on Japan—Collaborationist Relations: A Focus on Eastern China] (Nanjing: Nanjing chubanshe, 2003)Google Scholar.

47 Zeng Fanyun and Wang Zuqi, ‘Lüelun Riwei dui Huazhong lunxianqu liangshi de lüeduo [Summary of the Japanese collaborators’ seizure of grain from occupied central China]’ in Yancheng shifan xueyuan xuebao [Yancheng Teachers Institute Journal], 37 no. 6 (November 2017): 21.

48 Zhang, Riwei guanxi yanjiu, 110.

49 Yang et al., eds., Nanjing tongshi, 412.

50 Zhang, Riwei guanxi yanjiu, 111.

51 Mark S. Eykholt, ‘Living the limits of occupation in Nanjing, China 1937–1945’ (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 1998), 195.

52 Ibid., 133. Zanasi, Saving the Nation, 217.

53 Zhang G., ‘Lun Wangwei zhanshi jingji tongzhi’ in Jianghai xuekan, no. 3 (June, 1996): 132.

54 Zhang, Riwei guanxi yanjiu, 138.

55 Henriot, Christian, ‘Rice, power, and people: the politics of food supply in wartime Shanghai (1937–1945)’ in Twentieth-Century China, 26, no. 1 (November 2000): 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 According to the 1939 survey undertaken by the International Relief Committee, 52 per cent of families could not live on current earnings. Some 66 per cent who relied on extra income depended on borrowing, usually from friends and relatives, or on savings. Also, proceeds from civilian looting followed the military looting of the previous year. Bates, The Nanking Population, 19.

57 Ibid., 13–14.

58 Eykholt, ‘Living the limits of occupation in Nanjing’, 127. The surge in women's participation in wage labour and the resulting conservative backlash was reflected in the weekly column, ‘Funü yu jiating [Women and family]’ in the Nanjing-government-sponsored paper, Zhongbao (Central Daily: summer and fall 1940).

59 Nankin Nihon shōkō kaigisho, ed., Nankin (Nankin: Dōsho, 1941), 24–26.

60 According to Bates's surveys conducted between November 1938 and January 1939, ‘in any given number of families one will now find only half as many men 20–29 years of age as in 1932’. Bates, The Nanking Population, 9.

61 For 1935 figures, see Lipkin, Useless to the State, 86. For 1938–44 figures, see JLQS, vol. 39, pp. 177, 578; vol. 40, p. 281; vol. 41, p. 463; vol. 42, p. 291; vol. 43, pp. 145, 769.

62 Bates, The Nanking Population, 14.

63 NMA 10020030191(00)0001, pp. 6–11.

64 NMA 10020030238(00)0002, pp. 17–24 (26 October 1940).

65 Zanasi, Saving the Nation.

66 Ibid., 108.

67 Ibid., 178.

68 Ibid., 125, 181.

69 Zanasi, Saving the Nation, 13.

70 Godley, Michael R., ‘Fascismo e nazionalismo cinese, 1931–1938: Note preliminari allo studio dei rapporti italo-cinese durante il periodo fascista’ in Storia contemporanea, 4, no. 4 (December 1973): 757Google Scholar.

71 Costantini, G., ‘The corporative state’ in The China Law Review, 6 (1933): 80Google Scholar.

72 Zhongbao, ‘Faxisi dang kairu Luoma ershi zhou nian jinian: yijue gaishan laogong daiyu [Fascist Party commemorates the 20th anniversary of the March on Rome: resolution passed to improve workers’ livelihood]’, 27 October 1942, p. 2.

73 See, for instance, Zhongbao, ‘Gongchao pengpai zai Yingguo [Surging strike wave in England]’, 7 June 1942, p. 2; ‘Mei daigongchao yi chi: mei yue buxia erbai ci [US slowdowns increasingly ablaze: no fewer than 200 incidents per month]’, 28 September 1942, p. 2; ‘Su E shiliang ji gan quefa: ge di fasheng bagong yundong [Soviet Russia suffers severe grain shortage: strike waves occurring everywhere]’, 2 December 1942, p. 2.

74 David Barrett, ‘The Wang Jingwei regime, 1940–1945: continuities and disjunctures with Nationalist China’ in Barrett and Shyu, eds., Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932–1945, 103.

75 Chang Kai, ed., Zhongguo gongyunshi cidian [Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Labour Movement] (Beijing: Laodong renshi chubanshe, 1990), 505.

76 Ibid., 506.

77 Liu Mingda, ed., Zhongguo gongren jieji lishi zhuangkuang (1840–1949) [Historical Conditions of the Chinese Working Class], Vol. 1, no. 1 (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1985), 758–760.

78 The Act Governing the Settlement of Labour–Capital Disputes was initially given a trial basis for one year, which was then extended for another nine months and revised by the Lifayuan. Finally, the Nationalist Government issued the law on 17 March 1930. For the revised version and the original law, see Liu Mingda and Tang Yuliang, eds., Zhongguo jindai gongren jieji he gongren yundong [China's Modern Working Class and the Labour Movement], Vol. 8 (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe), 140–149. A copy of the act based on the original 1928 version was reissued by the Nanjing government's Ministry of Social Affairs Bulletin (1 June 1941), no. 19, published in Guojia tushuguan chubanshe bian, Shehuibu gongbao liangzhong [Two Types of Ministry of Social Affairs Bulletin] (Beijing: Guojia tushuguan chubanshe, 2011), 598–602.

79 Epstein, Israel, Notes on Labor Problems in Nationalist China (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1949), 71Google Scholar.

80 Ibid., 72.

81 Jing, Nanjing lunxian ba nian shi, 364.

82 For figures on union membership and shops, see NMA 10020030510(00)0014, pp. 68, 72–73 (17 June 1942).

83 NMA 10020030216(00)0006, ‘Nanjing tebieshi shuimuye zhiye gonghui zhiyuanzheng’, 11 December 1941.

84 NMA 10020030194(00)0001, p. 6 (29 August 1941).

85 NMA 10020030194(00)0003, p. 1 (14 November 1941).

86 NMA 10020030194(00)0001, p. 6 (29 August 1941).

87 Ibid.

88 According to ILO statistics, Shanghai had 286 strikes in 1940 of which 11 led to a shutdown of the entire industry. In addition, there were 71 ‘labour capital disputes’. The strikes and disputes involved 2,599 factories and shops, with some 120,722 participants. In 1941, there were 329 strikes in Shanghai with 137,620 participants. After the Japanese army occupied the International Settlement, the total number of labour protests diminished. According to the Shanghai International Settlement publication, Gongbuju nianbao, some 93 labour–capital disputes took place over the course of 1942. The disputes involved 230 factories and 10,026 workers. Qi Wu, Kang Ri zhanzheng shiqi de gongren yundong [The Labour Movement during the Anti-Japanese War of Resistance], reprinted in Liu Mingda and Tang Yuliang, eds., Zhongguo gongren yundongshi [History of the Chinese Labour Movement], Vol. 5 (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1998), 177, 194.

89 The Second Historical Archives guidebook indicates that it holds labour-dispute cases that might involve Nanjing, but the vast majority are records of disputes in Occupied Central and Northern China. These files were inaccessible, as they are in the process of being digitalized.

90 A report on the candle industry noted that, by the early 1940s, the majority of Nanjing residents had switched to the use of candles, leading to a thriving business for candle merchants and a growing gap between supply and demand. By 1942, Nanjing's eight soap-and-candle workshops produced about 2,400 cases of candles per month. An additional 1,600 cases were supplied from Shanghai and Jiangsu province to meet an estimated monthly consumption of 4,000 cases (600,000 candles). ‘Nanjing zhi yangzhu zhizaoye [Nanjing's candle manufacturing industry]’, Minguo ribao, 7 April 1942, p. 4.

91 NMA 10020030498(00)0007 (18 December 1940).

92 Eykholt, ‘Living the limits of occupation in Nanjing’, 187.

93 NMA 10020030315(00)0020, p. 106 (10 March 1943).

94 NMA 10020030279(00)0016, p. 112 (9 September 1941).

95 ‘Xiranye zhigong yaoqiu jia xin [Laundry and dye workers demand wage increase]’, Minguo ribao, 21 August 1942, p. 3.

96 NMA 10020030238(00)0014, p. 195 (12 September 1941).

97 NMA 10020030320(00)0004 (21 August 1944).

98 NMA 10020030315(00)0014 (23 September 1942).

99 NMA 10020030343(00)0003, p. 17 (29 November 1942).

100 Ibid., p. 20 (8 December 1942).

101 NMA 10020030343(00)0002, pp. 13–15 (12 December 1942).

102 NMA 10020030343(00)0003, p. 24 (29 December 1942).

103 NMA 10020030207(00)0013, p. 97 (2 September 1942).

104 Ibid., pp. 100–101 (4 August 1942).

105 NMA 10020030207(00)0014, p. 106 (14 September 1942).

106 NMA 10020030207(00)0016, pp. 125–129 (25 September 1942).

107 NMA 10020080154(00)0003, p. 34 (16 August 1944).

108 NMA 10020080154(00)0004, p. 40 (24 August 1944).

109 NMA 10020080263(00)0015, p. 141 (22 April 1944).

110 Ibid.

111 NMA 10020030343(00)0012, p. 67 (28 August 1942).

112 NMA 10020030238(00)0014, ‘Chuli Laozi Zhengyi anjian baogaobiao’, 12 September 1941; 10020030178(00)0002, p. 23 (22 January 1943).

113 NMA 10020030238(00)0006, p. 88 (6 May 1941).

114 ‘Bannianlai ben jing gongzi zhi bianqian [Changes in wages in the capital over the past half year]’, Minguo ribao, 12 August 1942, p. 4.

115 ‘Chubanye chanye gonghui zai qing zengjia gongzi [Publishing industrial union again requests a wage increase]’, Minguo ribao, 22 March 1942, p. 3.

116 NMA 10020030320(00)0013, p. 69 (10 May 1945).

117 NMA 10020030349(00)0002; NMA 10020030343(00)0012, p. 73; NMA 10020030510(00)0023, pp. 140–141; NMA 10020030343(00)0019, p. 96; NMA10020080154(00)0003, p. 34.

118 NMA 10020030343(00)0002.

119 For passive resistance in the transport sector, see Jing, Nanjing lunxian ba nian shi, 1090.

120 Ibid., 1144–1145. Jiang Shaoxing, Yu Xiang, and Xu Yan, eds., Nanjing diqu kang Ri zhanzhengshi (1931–1945) [History of the Anti-Japanese War in the Nanjing Region, 1931–1945] (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2015), 334–335.

121 ‘Neutral collaboration’ is one of several typologies proposed by Rings, Werner, Life with the Enemy: Collaboration and Resistance in Hitler's Europe, 1939–1945, trans. Brownjohn, J. Maxwell (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), 73Google Scholar.

122 Nanjingshi dang'anguan bian, Shenxun Wang wei hanjian bilu, 678, 801. Ding's references to central-government ‘orders’ are backed up by communications he had with Chen Lifu starting in January 1942. See ibid., 699, 813.

123 Pepper, Suzanne, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle 1945–1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 111–112Google Scholar.