Saturday, January 10, 2026: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Marshfield Room (Palmer House Hilton, Third Floor)
Session Organizer: Yaowen Dong, University of Memphis
Chair: Lei Duan, Sam Houston State University
Papers:
“Amateur” and “Professional” Musical Culture in Socialist and Post-Socialist China
Ling Zhang, Purchase College, State University of New York
From “the Hundred Names (Baixing)” to “the Mass (Qunzhong)”: The Evolving Politics of the Multitude in Socialist China
Yaowen Dong, University of Memphis
Technocracy and/in Revolution: The Public Administration Efficiency Movement in Republican China, 1927–37
Ye Lin, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Performing After Hours: Workers’ Cultural Production at the Margins of Factory Labor in Socialist China
Feifan Li, University of Chicago
Comment:Lei Duan, Sam Houston State University
Session Abstract
This panel investigates the evolving vocabularies, concepts, and nomenclatures that have shaped China’s sociopolitical and cultural landscapes from the Republican era to the present day. By examining metaphors, ideological terms, and cultural labels, the panel interrogates how linguistic frameworks have both articulated and contested the dynamics of state control, collective identity, and individual agency.
Lin Ye explores the role of technocrats in the Nationalist Party (GMD) during the Nanjing Decade, focusing on the 1933 Public Administration Efficiency Movement led by Gan Naiguang. It argues that the GMD’s attempt to prioritize expert-driven governance clashed with its revolutionary ideology, ultimately undermining the movement. The study also suggests that both the GMD and CCP grappled with the tension between ideological loyalty and technocratic efficiency, revealing their parallel approaches to revolutionary governance.
Li Feifan focuses on workers’ after-hours (yeyu) cultural production—particularly drama and performance—in socialist China, focusing on its development during the Great Leap Forward in 1958. It explores why these non-productive activities were legitimized during a time of intense labor demands and how workers experienced them within the structured environment of state-run factories. Drawing on archival materials from Shanghai, the study reveals how such cultural practices enriched everyday life and fostered new forms of social interaction within the collective workplace.
Ling Zhang investigates the transformation of amateur music-making as a site of cultural resistance and identity formation. From the socialist promotion of grassroots musical expression to post-socialist revivals of “red” songs by retirees, Zhang traces how amateur musicians challenged professional hierarchies and reclaimed public spaces. Highlighting examples from socialist documentaries and post-1980s guitar bands, the paper underscores the enduring significance of amateur musical culture as both a historical legacy and a contemporary act of defiance.
Yaowen Dong explores the evolving conceptualizations of the multitude in 20th-century China, comparing the traditional term Baixing with socialist-era notions of Renmin and Qunzhong. Dong argues that despite revolutionary ideals of mobilization, the masses were often framed as passive and apolitical, reflecting persistent paternalistic governance. This tension reveals the ideological continuities and contradictions underlying mass politics in China’s socialist movement.
Together, these papers reveal how revolutionary ideals, cultural practices, and political discourse have shaped and contested the interplay between the individual and the collective in China, offering a nuanced perspective on complex sociopolitical landscape.
Paper Abstracts
Technocracy and/in Revolution: The Public Administration Efficiency Movement in Republican China (1927–1937)
Lin Ye (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
This paper examines the evolving role of technocrats in the Nationalist Party (GMD) during the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937), focusing on the Public Administration Efficiency Movement (xingzhengxiaolv yundong). After seizing power in 1927, the Nationalist government prioritized state-building to counter both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Japanese encroachment. Central to this effort was the efficiency of the government. Beginning in 1933, Gan Naiguang—a University of Chicago-trained political scientist from Wang Jingwei’s faction—assembled a group of non-partisan scholars to spearhead the Public Administration Efficiency Movement: not only did these scholars advice governance with their expertise, but also directly served as technocrats. Through examining the writings of these technocrats and the history of the movement itself, this study demonstrates a red versus expert dilemma in the Republican China—how the GMD’s embrace of “expert” governance collided with its own “red” revolutionary ideology. While technocrats improved governing capacity, their detachment from party creed and popular welfare sparked concerns within the party and finally led to the unexpected failure of the movement. Looking at the usually underestimated governance of the GMD closely, this study proposes a new perspective to understand the relation between the GMD and the CCP: rather than as the diametric opposites, the two parties were parallel revolutionary competitors who formed policies in dialogue with each other as the red versus expert dilemma anticipated a similar challenge faced by the CCP several decades later.
Performing After-hours: Workers’ Cultural Production at the Margins of Factory Labor in Socialist China
Feifan Li (The University of Chicago)
This paper focuses on workers’ after-hours (yeyu) cultural production at the margins of productive factory labor in socialist China. After-hours recreational activities referred to a set of cultural practices in the socialist industrial workplace quite different from contemporary invocations of “amateur” art. Workers’ drama and performance were highly structured activities conducted in the time and space of their work unit and thus distinct from both production time on the shopfloor and private time at home. Through archival documents from Shanghai, this paper delves into the rise of workers’ after-hours drama and performance activities in 1958, when such recreational activities received heightened attention and underwent state reorganization. Why were workers’ cultural activities—not necessarily conducive to productive labor—granted increased legitimacy during the Great Leap Forward, a period usually associated with a collective mania for production? How did factory workers experience drama and performance activities led by the active members of their workplace, when factory production was taking up more and more of their waking time? What exactly were workers’ after-hours cultural practices in socialist China, when they were at once distinct from professional drama and performance and not inferior? Drawing on performance scripts and investigation reports from state factories in Great Leap Forward Shanghai, this paper examines how after-hours cultural production at the margins of factory labor placed the value of drama and performance in the sensorium of workers’ everyday life and created new possibilities of sociality in the collective workplace.
“Amateur” and “Professional” Musical Culture in Socialist and Post-socialist China
Ling Zhang (SUNY Purchase College)
This paper examines the transformation of amateur music-making in socialist and post-socialist China, focusing on its role in blurring the boundaries between professionalism and amateurism while fostering cultural resistance against elitist control of creative expression. During the socialist era, the masses were encouraged to participate in music creation alongside trained cultural workers. Amateur musicians performed folk and revolutionary songs in factories, communes, workers’ clubs and cultural palaces, embodying collective zeal and rhythm. Documentaries such as China! (1965) by Felix Greene and Land of Dawn (1967) by Toshie Tokieda captured these vibrant scenes, paralleling similar movements in global socialist and leftist contexts.
The 1985 Chinese film Roadside Guitar Band (dir. Chang Yan) reflects a shift as amateur guitarists challenge cultural norms of professionalism and societal prejudices through original compositions, asserting youthful creativity. However, the post-1990s transition to capitalism, marked by privatization and widespread layoffs, diminished working-class amateur music-making. Since the 2000s, retirees have revived these traditions in urban parks, performing “red” songs with instruments such as saxophones and drums, evoking sonic memory and China’s socialist legacy. This article explores how amateur musical practices, from 1980s guitar bands to contemporary elderly ensembles, articulate social identities, foster community, and reclaim commodified public spaces. By challenging hierarchies between professionalism and amateurism, these practices embody cultural resistance. Employing an interdisciplinary lens across cinema and media, sound, and historical studies, this research underscores the enduring impact of China’s amateur musical culture and its parallels with global traditions of collective music-making.
From “The Hundred Names (Baixing)” to “The Mass (Qunzhong)”: The Evolving Politics of the Multitude in Socialist China
Yaowen Dong (The University of Memphis)
This paper examines the politics of “the masses” in 20th-century China. Since the early 20th century, Chinese leftist intellectuals and CCP revolutionaries have employed various terms—such as Baixing, Renmin, and Qunzhong—to conceptualize the multitude subject to governance. This study compares the traditional concept of Baixing, rooted in the Spring and Autumn Period, with its reinterpretation within the socialist movement’s mass politics. It explores the ideological implications of Baixing, Qunzhong, and Renmin as reflected in the writings of socialist thinkers such as Wu Han, Guo Moruo, and Mao Zedong. I argue that, despite the apparent ideological shift within 20th-century socialist consciousness, the characterization of the governed as passive, silent, apolitical, and often suffering—embedded in the concept of Baixing—largely persisted in the socialist notion of Qunzhong. This passive and apolitical framing of the governed often clashed with the revolutionary ideals of mobilization and agency while simultaneously reinforcing the paternalistic approach of the state.