Robert Cliver, "Red Silk: Class, Gender, and Revolution in China's Yangzi Delta Silk Industry" (Harvard UP, 2020)

New Books in Economic and Business History · Apr 27, 2022 · 1h 13m

Red Silk: Class, Gender, and Revolution in China's Yangzi Delta Silk Industry (Harvard UP, 2020) is a history of China's Yangzi Delta silk industry during the wars, crises, and revolutions of the mid-twentieth century. Based on extensive research in Chinese archives and focused on the 1950s, the book compares two very different groups of silk workers and their experiences in the revolution. Male silk weavers in Shanghai factories enjoyed close ties to the Communist party-state and benefited greatly from socialist policies after 1949. In contrast, workers in silk thread mills, or filatures…