THE CHINESE WORK-STUDY MOVEMENT: THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL EXPERIENCE OF CHINESE STUDENTS AND STUDENT-WORKERS IN FRANCE, 1913-1925.

摘要

The Chinese work-study movement in Europe in the early 20th century has been studied by various historians as a component of larger entities such as the early Chinese communist movement but never in its own right. This dissertation, making use of recently published material and sociological data not previously applied to the subject, attempts to avoid the pitfalls of fragmentation and partialistic approaches, and to present, instead, a relatively comprehensive and integrated history of the movement with a special emphasis on its most politically significant period from 1921-5; i.e. on the "diligent-work frugal-study" phase.; The dissertation begins by tracing the origins of the "work-study" idea and its evolution in the thought of people such as Li Shizeng and Cai Yuanpei, and in organizations such as the Society for Frugal Study in France. Following a description of the impact of World War I and the May Fourth movement on the movement, the study discusses the dramatic intellectual, social and physical changes which the movement underwent in 1919-2, and examines the socio-economic context of these changes, their results and the responses of the participants. The general failure to cope successfully with the new and difficult social and fiscal conditions is analyzed particularly with reference to the volatile situations in 1921.; The latter part of the study focuses on the process of political radicalization which settled within the movement after 1921. This process was not simply a result of ideological predisposition but a function of the interaction of ideology and experience, i.e. the impact ideology had on the student-workers' hardships and vice-versa. The emergence of the three major ideological formations: the anarchists, the communists and the ultra-nationalists, also had much to do with the weakening of the "moderate" center in and after 1921. The concluding chapters discuss the struggles among these groups through an examination of the works of people such as Cai Hesen, Zhou Enlai and Zeng Qi, and positions adopted by the organizations they represented, notably the European Branch of the Chinese Communist Youth League and the Chinese Youth Party.