Democracy and Organisation in the Chinese Industrial Enterprise (1948–1953) (Contemporary China Institute Publications)

Originally published in 1976, this book examines how a new system of factory management was implemented in China after the liberation of 1948-9. At that time, the Chinese Communist Party attempted to integrate a commitment to broad participation in management by industrial workers with a rigid system of control deriving from the Soviet Union. The integration was not accomplished successfully and the events of the period 1948-53 discussed by Dr Brugger set the stage for the rejection of the Soviet model in the mid-1950s. The focus of the book is broadly political and sociological rather than economic, and the author examines closely the political background against which economic change was introduced. This book formed part of a growing genre of writing which rejected earlier assumptions of an uncritical acceptance in China of models of industrialism imported from the Soviet Union.