ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some preliminary observations about the characteristic style of collective worker action in May 1989 and speculate about its implications for the future. To understand the impact of inflation upon Chinese families and upon worker mentality, some 59 percent of the average family budget is used to purchase food alone. In the late 1970s, the Chinese worker aspired to own a wristwatch, a foot-powered sewing machine, a name-brand bicycle, and a transistor radio. Purchasing power and commodity ownership are important features of the reform era in the minds of workers, but housing conditions continue to be a source of frustration for urban families. Individual workers who challenge official malfeasance are highly vulnerable to retaliation by the named officials—no new housing or a shift to low-paid work in a "service company." Collective pressures are brought to bear with the old tools of the late Mao era: soldiering, deliberate breaking or loss of machines and tools, grumbling, gossip, cursing.
