Vanduyn Washington 0250E 2
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Building Socialist Shanghai: Workers’ New Villages and the Socialist Right to the City Matthew Van Duyn A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2020 Reading Committee: Madeleine Yue Dong, Chair R. Kent Guy Glennys Young Program Authorized to Offer Degree: History i ©Copyright 2020 Matthew Van Duyn ii University of Washington Abstract Building Socialist Shanghai: Workers’ New Villages and the Socialist Right to the City Matthew Van Duyn Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Madeleine Yue Dong History This dissertation uses changes in Shanghai’s urban geography as a lens to study the processes and meanings of urban revolution for the daily lives of workers in the 1950s. Using a large body of archival documents, I focus especially on the construction of so-called Workers’ New Villages, and particularly Caoyang New Village in Shanghai’s Putuo District, which in 1951 became the first such model socialist community constructed in China. These New Villages were ambitious plans to provide industrial workers and their families with comfortable, hygienic, and modern housing with easy access to services such as food markets, schools, and cultural centers, as well as transportation services to the factories where they worked. These projects were intended to use spatial reorganization as way of serving both the daily needs of workers and the new industrial goals of the People’s Republic of China—two projects which the political rhetoric of the time suggested were inextricable from each other. While by most accounts the construction of New Villages in Shanghai failed to solve Shanghai’s housing shortages in the iii 1950s, they represented a self-conscious effort to use a combination of material construction and ideological training to shape an idealized notion of the working class that would loyally contribute to national goals for industrial production. I demonstrate that during the Maoist period the Chinese revolution was constantly vacillating between models of building socialism that highlighted the importance of state planning and those that emphasized the bottom-up mobilization of the masses. Despite claims to the contrary, neither of these approaches ever truly encouraged the poor and working classes to organize their own communities. iv Acknowledgements While it is a cliché that dissertations are collective efforts, that cliché is undeniably true. First, I would like to thank my committee for their unfailing support and guidance. Seminars and independent studies with Madeleine Yue Dong inspired me to shift my field of study to the twentieth century and she was kind and flexible to take me on as a student after my comprehensive exams. As an advisor and mentor, she has pushed me to ask difficult questions in new ways and her guidance has shaped my intellectual trajectory. The care she has shown for me and her other students is inspiring. I have always known that I can count on her for professional and personal support. I initially came to UW to work with Kent Guy and he was a wonderful advisor throughout my first few years of graduate school. He dealt with my shift away from Qing history with grace and has continued to be an involved mentor, providing critical support and feedback at every step of the way. Glennys Young pushed me to think comparatively in seminars and has always given me insightful comments on my writing. I am particularly grateful for her support and feedback in the final stages of the dissertation process. The faculty of the history department as a whole has been welcoming, inspiring, and instrumental in my scholarly development. I would particularly like to thank George Behlmer, Patricia Ebrey, Lynn Thomas, Margaret O’Mara, Purnima Dhavan, Elena Campbell, Anand Yang, Vicente Rafael, Devin Naar, Joel Walker, and Jordanna Bailkin. As Administrators, Tracy Maschman Morrissey, Lori Anthony, Jeri Park, Josh Apfel, and Eric Johnson have been a pleasure to work with. Outside of my department, I would also like to thank Chris Hamm, Daniel Abramson, James Lin, Elizabeth Simmons-O’Neil, and Carrie Matthews. My research was generously funded by a US Student Program Fulbright Fellowship, which enabled me to spend three months completing language study in Harbin and nine months v in Shanghai conducting research. In Harbin (and elsewhere), all of my Chinese teachers deserve immense praise, but I would especially like to thank Guo Rongli. Our conversations about Chinese urbanism did not just improve my language skills, but also helped shape my historical and conceptual understandings. In Shanghai, Jiang Jin at East China Normal University was a welcoming host and an insightful commenter. This dissertation would not have been completed without her. I also thank the staff of the Shanghai Municipal Archives. The history department was generous with providing grants to support short research trips in the spring of 2016 and 2017. A China studies writing fellowship in my last quarter provided a break from teaching and gave me the space to finish revising and defend. My fellow graduate students and friends have been crucial to my intellectual and personal development. This dissertation is impossible to imagine without them. First, conversations inside and outside of seminars with Zeng Xiaoshun, He Qian, Lily Schatz, and Peyton Canary were instrumental to my understanding of Chinese history. Kathy Morrow and Dylan Suher deserve special recognition for their friendship and for letting me sleep on their couch as I looked for an apartment in Shanghai. Thank you also to friends and colleagues I met in China for the shared meals and insightful conversations, especially Joshua Sooter, Matt Haugen, MJ Engel, Benjamin Kindler, Wan Weiwei, Paulina Hartono, Christopher Hart, Lily Chen, Charlie Argon, and Zhu Yuhang. At UW and beyond, Roneva Keel, Michael Reagan, Arna Elezovic, Adrian Kane, Symbol Lai, Katia Chaterji, Anna Nguyen, Patrick Lozar, Emily Anderson Hall, and Matt Cotton have been wonderful graduate student colleagues and friends. Conversations over drinks with Michael Aguirre and Ryan Archibald have both revived me and pushed me to produce more politically engaged scholarship. Britta Anson, Jesse Meredith, and Jen Meredith (and Waylon!) vi have supported me and made me feel at home in countless ways. Brian Platt continues to provide a model for intellectual engagement outside of the academy. Reading Capital with him and Mary Anne Henderson forever altered my worldview. Mary Anne has been a friend and comrade in so many adventures, both serious and otherwise. Kevin McKenna has helped me have a fuller and more joyful life inside and outside of grad school. Bradley Horst was a wonderful roommate and has continued to be a friend like none other. Outside of “school,” Meghan Devlin, Yani Robinson, Mike Hernandez, Brynn Roth, Lisa Honsberger, Astor Kidane, Travis Mann, Garrick Diamond, and Alexa Polaski have given me joy and new perspectives in Seattle. James Aisenberg, Lisa Hoffman-Kuroda, Carrie Zaner, Lillie De, Rayla Bellis, Emma Silverley, Nate Silverley, Peter Peltier, and Chis Spears have been friends, chosen family, and comrades for the entirety of my adult life. Thank you all. My last acknowledgements are reserved for my immediate family, my loving parents, Mary Ann and Don, my sister and bother-in-law, Sarah and Brian, and now Rosie, who I cannot wait to meet. Thank you for your unwavering support and love every step of the way. This dissertation is dedicated to my partner Sophia Posnock, who inspires me with her grit, conscience, and humor. She has been loving and supportive in ways I cannot put into words, but I say without hesitation that this never would have been completed without her (and E). Finally, I write these acknowledgments as the people of Seattle, as well as cities around the United States and world are rising up against racist police violence and fascism. My research has been inspired by such struggles to reclaim, and forever change urban space—warts and all. It is impossible to know what the future will hold, but I have never felt more hopeful than when in a crowd of the bravest individuals imaginable as they stand united around causes of justice and solidarity. BLM. vii Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE: Modernist Planning in Communist China: Shanghai’s New Villages in the Genealogy of International Planning Thought ..............................................................................20 CHAPTER TWO: Bureaucratic Utopianism: The Planning and Construction of Shanghai’s New Villages .........................................................................................................................................75 CHAPTER THREE: The Rise of Cellular Urbanism and the Last Gasps of Planning: Danwei Housing and Satellite Towns in the Context of Deepening Revolution, 1953-1959 ...................121 CHAPTER FOUR: “To Serve Production, To Serve the Laboring People:” The Politics of Socialist Space and Working Class Experience in a Chinese New Village ................................160 CHAPTER