WEBVTT - Part Two: The Well Hung Warlord Who Tried to Conquer China 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:13.119 M what's starving my refugee population with zoid product. Jesus, Jesus, 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:18.479 what a mess. Oh my god, Fuck Chris, you gotta 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:20.320 you gotta pull me out of this tails. Then we're 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:24.920 on a starting on a terrible, terrible note. Here. Yeah, 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:29.520 we're it's okay, We're we're, We're We're back, Part two, 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:34.280 Part two, The Rise of the Working Class. We're we're back, 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.400 and we're back. We're back in warlords with hell fucking 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:40.440 everybody gotta dick the size of a bunch of coins, 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:46.600 just just a radi war criminal. And now we're gonna 0:00:46.600 --> 0:00:50.720 watch an awful part. Okay, good god, he does have 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:53.159 it coming. He does have it. I like his I 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.440 like his hotspah. But yeah, he's got it coming. Thrilled 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.160 to hear that we are going to fuck him up. 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:04.759 Let's go out, let's have his upants come first, We're 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:06.880 gonna first. We're gonna sunk up a lot of other people. 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:14.800 So yeah. On May nineteenth, a group of eight factory 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:18.240 delegates representing striking workers at a Japanese controlled cotton plant 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:20.520 in Shanghai met with their opposite number from the factory 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.000 to discussed the workers demands. A brawl broke out in 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:27.480 a Japanese foreman murdered a well established labor organizer, and 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:31.120 the resulting fight injured the other seven delegates. Now this 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:34.720 you know, for very obvious reasons, Piste off Shanghai's unions, 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:37.840 and ten thousand workers, which was at that point one 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.880 of the largest demonstrations of workers in Shanghai's history, showed 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:46.679 up to his memorial service. On Now, protesters marched on 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:49.080 a police station that had arrested some of their comrades 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:52.800 in and when they got to the station, the British 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:56.160 police opened fire into the crowd. When the slaughter was over, 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:58.800 ten Chinese men, women, and children lay dead on the 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:03.640 street to Shanghai. Another fifty were wounded. This moment, on 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:08.320 this crowded street in Shanghai changed everything. Budgin, the great 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:13.639 Chinese novelist and anarchist, wrote this description of a student's 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:18.040 reaction to the slaughter in Shanghai. Quote at the entrance 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.400 to Yunon Road, he saw the child who had been 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:24.240 killed a short while before, he thought about half an 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:26.959 hour ago. The crowd was marching peacefully towards the police 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.400 station to ask the police to set free students who 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.960 have been unjustly arrested. They thought the police were human 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:36.440 beings endowed with reason and human sympathy, that human blood 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:41.760 flood in their veins. They thought that uniforms and weapons 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:45.320 could not have destroyed their human nature. But reality proved 0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.519 they were bloodthirsty beasts. On the most crowded street of 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.560 the city, they deliberately slaughtered on armed people. For this, 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:55.120 there was no precedent in Chinese history. The imperialist depression 0:02:55.160 --> 0:02:57.720 that had endured for so many years ached like a 0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:01.640 deep wound in his heart. He's gold Inwardly, he felt 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:04.360 the time for patience was over. He felt he wanted 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:07.120 to spill his blood, to sacrifice his young life, that 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:09.200 he might show then not all among his people were 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:11.840 lambs that allowed themselves to be led without resistance to 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:14.959 the slaughter. He looked again at the corpse of the 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:19.160 murdered child. His eyes shone with fire. His whole body 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:23.799 began to burn, as though on fire. His heart beat violently. Now, 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:25.560 I think this is a feeling that all of us 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:30.000 know now, just the sheer, breathtaking rage of seeing the 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:33.359 police murder a child, seeing a child's corpse lying dead 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:37.760 on the pavement, And that is that is now a 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:42.280 universal thing for sure, and I want to pause on 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:44.760 that feeling for a second. I want to pause on 0:03:44.800 --> 0:03:47.400 the rage, on the grief, on the sort of the 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.040 raw and mounting horror of the realization at the copsmer 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:53.640 kids in the street. And I want you to hold 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:56.520 onto those emotions because there's been an enormous effort to 0:03:56.520 --> 0:03:59.600 get Westerners to think that Chinese people are fundamentally different 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:03.320 than they are, That Chinese people are inherently authoritarian, that 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.360 we're all bound by a sort of traditional Confucian hierarchy 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:08.600 that we all follow reflectively, that that it's baked into 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:10.640 our culture, and even at the most extreme cases, are 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:13.840 genetics at a level that makes us fundamentally different than 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:17.960 the quote unquote freedom loving people of the West. And 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.400 I want you to think about that student staring at 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:25.520 a child's corpse in a bloody street in Shanghai, and 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:27.120 I want you to think about how he felt the 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.680 same despair, the same grief, the same rage that we do. 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:34.680 And I want you to remember this single lesson without 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:38.839 which you cannot understands what is about to happen. They're 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:44.680 like us, and they fought like hell immediately after two 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.119 hundred thousand workers joined the larger general strike in Shanghai's history. 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:52.560 The next day, the communist labor organizers founded Shanghai's General 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:55.719 Labor Union, or the g l U. Hundred and seventeen 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:59.680 unions join. Almost immediately, every part of Shanghai society moves. 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:03.160 Chinese business owners so outraged at the imperialist murders that 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:05.840 for a second the class abandoned them, contributed to the 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:08.880 strike funds, and took those streets themselves. So did Shanghai 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:13.760 is incredibly powerful organized crime gangs, the Green and Red gangs. 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:16.599 We're we're going to get into more of them. A 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:20.240 bit um. Chong Jung Chong and Chong Ju Ling sent 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.080 troops to suppress the uprising, but even their troops couldn't 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:25.040 hold the city against the power of the entirety of 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:28.680 Chinese Shanghai. A new force had taken the stage of 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.880 Chinese history, the Chinese working class, and had driven all 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:33.960 other classes into the streets and pitched them into open 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:37.080 battle with the police and the warlords. It had in 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:41.039 a single day, transformed Shanghai from the playground of the British, French, 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:49.680 Japanese imperialist into the capital of the Chinese working class. Now, yeah, Robert, 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:51.080 I don't I don't know if you if you've read 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:54.240 anything about Shanghai, there's anything about any large city that 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:59.360 was written by a British dude before about They inevitably 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.920 call any sort of large city in the East that 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:07.640 the Paris of the Orient. Now Shanghai is one of 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:11.800 the cities that's famously called this and on mat the 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:16.080 meeting of those words changed completely. This uprising Shanghai, you know, 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.599 did finally become the twentieth centuries Paris in that after 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:21.560 made the thirtieth it was to go into full scale 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:26.480 armed revolt five more times. The twentieth century. Shanghai's working class, Yeah, 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:28.600 in every way, the equal, even the superiors of the 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:32.080 Parisian mobs would single handedly drive the warlords and nationalists 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:36.400 and the communist alike from the city. Yeah, yeah, there, 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:39.960 it is incredibly impressive. Yeah, they just had no idea 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:42.400 any of this had happened. Actually, yeah, it's it's it's 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:45.880 really this is one of like sort of the lost 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:47.640 stories of the twentieth century, which is which is the 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:53.600 story of Shanghai. Just Shanghai becoming indisputedly the world's great 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:55.760 revolutionary city in the way that sort of Paris was 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.279 in the ninetdreds. And this is because it starts because 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:01.920 of fucking pop kills a kid, yep. And and I 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:05.039 think and I think that's a as an entry point. 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:07.839 It is helpful because you know, there there there's a 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:11.480 tendency to sort of to to turn this whole period 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:13.760 into something that was like inevitable by class forces or 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.160 whatever that you know, this is some kind of weird 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:18.720 historical object or that like the communists from behind all 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.880 of this, and it's like no people, people, people go 0:07:21.880 --> 0:07:24.320 on strike, people in the streets because they watched, like 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:27.240 they sold the physical bodies of children in the streets 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.240 that have been killed by the police. Yeah, and these 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.160 had all been people who had been dealing with um 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:35.840 Jung and his bullshit and the other warlords and the 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.600 violence and brutality that they carried out for a while. 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.800 And it just I guess seeing a dead kid, you know, 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:43.920 there is something like that that like you're just like, well, 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:46.800 this is too much, Like I've been putted too far, 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:48.720 We've all been pushed too far. It's time to fux 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:50.960 some ship up. Yeah. And the other thing about this 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:54.240 that I think is really important is that the they're 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:58.760 not killed by like Chinese police or Chinese soldiers. These 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.560 are originally it's a Japanese foreman and then it's it's 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:08.360 British police, and that part of it just like it 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:12.240 drives well, I mean, what we can you know, it 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:16.800 starts this revolt that just spreads like wildfire. And you know, 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.400 within a couple of days there's a huge protest another 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:22.560 city near Shanghai, and the British open fire into the 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.680 crowds with machine guns. They kill another eight people Jesus 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:27.840 and this, yeah, this brings more people in the street 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.040 with with it wasin three days, the revolt spreads to 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:33.880 the north and there's thirty thousand students and workers on 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:38.040 strike and Beijing. In nearby Tungin, there's two hundred thousand 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:40.800 people show up to a protest and Tungeon this is 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:44.080 the center of the power of the warlord armies and 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.679 it's there in August that the movement sees his first 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:52.200 real defeat uncture lyings armies working with British intelligence. And 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:55.960 this is this is another thing. So so there's a 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.040 complicated relationship between the imperialist powers and the various warlords 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:05.280 they'll they'll sort of back factions. Dru Lings very often 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:07.079 accused of being a sort of like a stooge of 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.640 the Japanese imperialists, and it's not quite true, like he 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:12.160 is supported by them, but he just sort of like 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:14.760 disobeys them. But the one thing that happens immediately is 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:17.840 at any time one of these strikes happens, like all 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:19.560 of the warlords and all of the sort of imperial 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:24.000 powers just like a lock step. And yeah, in August, 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:28.000 du Ling's armies and a certain group of white Russian 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:31.360 mercenaries with whom we are now all familiar, retake the 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:34.480 city and slaughter dozens of workers. But even this doesn't 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:37.240 stop the revolt, and it continues to spread into the south. 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:40.520 Um in the nationalist heartland and Guangzhou in the very 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:43.480 far south, were workers massed on the border with British 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.240 occupied Hong Kong. The workers of Hong Kong rush to 0:09:46.360 --> 0:09:49.959 join them. Now, now Hong Kong is somewhat unique among 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:53.480 Chinese cities in this period in that it's it's there. 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:55.360 There have been general strikes going on in Hong Kong, 0:09:55.720 --> 0:10:00.000 I mean since the eighteen hundreds UM, and just three 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:02.560 years before this there's something called there's there's a massive 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:06.680 seamen strike, and I found this sort of yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:08.000 I was, I was just I was just gonna go 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:14.600 past it. What I wrote that I knew was gonna happen. Yeah, yeah. 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.199 I found this this great description of it lipcom Thow, 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:19.600 which which I think is also useful to to understand 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:23.160 the effects of the later strikes. And so it goes 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.960 disaster for the bosses. Not only rail workers and Stevedor's, 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.480 but baker's, cooks, clerks, coolies and servants joined the strike. 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:34.079 The ruling class now had to cook its own food 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.640 and que to buy it. No clothes were washed, no 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:41.319 shirts were ironed. Ministers had to wander government buildings delivering 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:43.520 their own messages, but there was no one to carry 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:46.640 out their orders. The army was called out and commandeered 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:50.719 food and vehicles. Workers were pressed into forced labor. Was 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.559 their workforce disappearing. The boss has banned anyone from leaving 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:55.839 Hong Kong, which meant no one could visit the graves 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:59.400 of their ancestors in China, a fearful thing. A freedom 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.840 march against the band led to confrontation right and massacre 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:06.640 with a colony descending into dare we say it, anarchy, 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.640 government crumbling, and business losses mounting. Merchants lost five hundred 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:14.079 million dollars between the strike, a massive sum. The boss 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:18.840 is capitulated. Now that strike had had I think about 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.960 a hundred thousand people in it, and it pales in 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:29.000 comparison to what's going to happen now. Um on, this 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:30.640 is this is the beginning of what's called the Canton 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:36.360 Hong Kong strike. On June, British police officers open fire 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:38.800 into a crowd of a hundred and thirty thousands. They 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:44.120 killed fifty two people, Yeah, including four children younger than sixteen. Yeah, 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:48.280 this is this is this is surprise bastard imperialism. Yeah, 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:53.640 I mean yeah, it always finds its way in yep. Yeah, 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:56.560 And that is a very British thing, just firing into 0:11:56.559 --> 0:12:00.199 a crowd of thousands of people with yep. Yeah, they 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:06.240 did a lot of that. Um yeah, okay, totally scans yep. 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:09.840 And the workers in Hong Kong respond with the city's 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.640 longest general strike. Two fifty thou workers just they just 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:17.120 leave the city for guang Sho, which you know brings 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:18.760 all of Hong Kong ko a stand still. Because almost 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:21.040 their entire labor force it's just gone, like they did 0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:24.120 just leave. Um, there's further there's there's a kind of 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:26.600 yeah yeah, And the everything to do is there's this 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:29.880 board kott of British goods that reduces British revenue in 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:35.720 the city by forty and this last for sixteen months, 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:39.320 and the only reason Hong Kong survives is that, like 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:41.800 basically the only thing the UK government is doing in 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.400 this period is just shipping these massive bailout packages to 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:46.920 Hong Kong. Now, I know I mentioned earlier that there 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.000 was massive protests in Tungjin, and those are the first, 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:52.080 that's the first movement to go down after sort of 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.720 warlord truth movement to suppress it. But what's interesting about 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:57.520 what happens in the rest of the country is that 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.360 for the most part, these strikes aren't put down by 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:03.520 the warlords at all. And so to understand why, we 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:07.320 to look at sort of the class composition of these movements. UM, 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:10.320 at the beginning of of the May thirtie movement, which 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:11.920 is what this whole wave of unrest comes to be 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:16.280 known after the thirty massacre, you have a really solid 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:18.959 alliance of you know, everyone in Chinese society, and I mean, 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.240 like everyone is piste off about the British soldiers just 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:25.080 like slaughtering children in the street, and it produces this 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:28.800 really unwieldly alliance of workers, business owners, and organized crime 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:33.280 all sort of like fighting imperialism together. But like, okay, 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:35.959 that's not a coalition that has any shared interest other 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:39.680 than sort of just hatred of the British and you know, okay, 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:43.000 hatred of hatred of the perfidious albion is a powerful force, 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.040 but it's not enough to hold the political coalition together. 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:49.800 And especially because you know this this is the period 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:54.160 where like the general strike really enters into sort of 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:59.720 like the protest vocabulary of China's working class, and this 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:04.920 to just absolutely freak out the bosses. And then there's 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:06.080 a lot of there's a lot of things that are 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.120 very scary if if you're a boss in like Shanghai. 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:11.600 One of the other ones is the workers in Shanghai 0:14:11.679 --> 0:14:15.080 start organizing what's called the dog Beating Brigade, which is 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:17.520 this is this row of workers with axes who run 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:19.800 around beating up scabs and people who don't what labor 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:27.840 movements it rules. Yes, that's that's pretty rad. Dude with axes. 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.200 It's like, no, nope, you better suppote the labor movement. 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:32.560 If you want to keep a strike going, you're gonna 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:36.200 need a couple hundred dudes with axes. Yeah. Yeah, that's 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:38.640 that's a lesson people should be taking for the general 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:42.320 strike we should have and I don't know tomorrow or whatever. Yeah, 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:45.720 And I think, frankly, like the fact that we no 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:49.240 longer have people have have a dog beating brigades with 0:14:49.240 --> 0:14:51.640 with axes is like a real reason for the decline 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.560 of the American of the sort of organized American working class. Well, 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:57.520 bad pitch here, but we're gonna have to change the 0:14:57.600 --> 0:14:59.640 name because Americans are not going to get on board 0:14:59.640 --> 0:15:02.120 anything called the dog beating brigade. And that's true. We 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:05.680 called the bat absolutely, Yeah, I think we I think 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:10.720 you can get people back on the door. Yeah, but 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:14.640 you know, is dogs is angry about the dog beating brigade. 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:20.600 I mean that's fair. It's a different culture. Okay, don't worry. 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:23.760 They only beat people, not dogs. Yeah, they're not beating people. 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:25.640 They're not like or they're not beating dogs. They're not 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:31.360 like Hitler. They're beating people, which is also like hitler um, 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:33.640 but in a good way, all right, I don't, I've 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:39.880 I've I've lost the thread. Now. Now, a big reason 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:41.680 for the sort of level of militants and for the 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:44.280 level of organization that the workers of Shanghai have is 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:47.600 because both the Communists and the Nationalist Party have allied 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.760 with Shanghai's powerful Green Gang. Now, the Green Gang is 0:15:52.560 --> 0:15:56.080 the single best organized political force in Shanghai by a 0:15:56.280 --> 0:15:59.760 very significant margin. Um. Most of what they're sort of 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:02.040 fame is four is the fact that they control Shangha 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:03.760 has opium trade. And you know, that makes them a 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:06.920 lot of money. But in terms of organizational strength, the 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:10.280 real power lies in their control over the workplace. The 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:14.320 Greek Gang controls almost every shop floor in Shanghai, and 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:15.680 you know the ones that don't control tend to be 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:19.920 controlled by other gangs. And you know when when when 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:21.960 I say they control the shop floor, what I mean 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:24.080 is that they're almost completely in control of the hiring 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.200 and firing process to the point where did you even 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:29.360 come to Shanghai in the first place? Right, And this 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:31.320 is important because Shanghai is the city that's like sev 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:35.080 immigrants from other parts of China. So it's it's it's 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:37.560 based almost entirely on migrant workers. And to even get 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:40.680 into the city, you have to have someone who's in 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:44.320 the gang to like vouch for you. And you know, 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:46.400 once once, once you have someone that like a foeman 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:48.120 to vouch for you, you have you have you have 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:49.760 a friend vouch for you with the foreman, and they 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:51.960 can hire you. But but this, this whole process means 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:55.680 that almost the entire working class in Shanghai is like 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:57.960 affiliated with one of these gangs, particularly the Green Gang. 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.280 And it's sort of interesting. You can see attempts to 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.440 sort of like defame some of these workers that that 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:07.040 people will go be like, oh, they're they're affiliated with 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:10.600 the gangs. And it's like literally every worker in Shanghai 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:13.000 is affiliated something stept with a gang because that's the 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.360 only way you can get a job, and this gives 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:18.960 them an enormous amount of political power on top of show. 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:21.080 Now the wealth reabled extract from Chinese workers in the 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:25.560 opium trade, and they're significant enough that a big part 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:28.679 of communist organizing and Shanghai becomes like infiltrating these gangs 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:31.200 because the communists, you know, very quickly figure out that 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:32.800 if you can't part of it. If you're not like 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:34.760 part of the gangs, you can't get a job and 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:37.320 you can't do any labor organizing. So so they turned 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:42.000 into the strategy of like organizing the gang foreman, because 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:44.359 the gang foreman can just like boot everyone out of 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:48.040 a shop and like start a strike. And this this 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:53.399 really kind of weirdly and surprisingly actually works and the 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:55.120 communists are able to win over like a good number 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:56.840 of four men. And this is this is one of 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.000 the sort of the basis of organized labor in the city. 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:01.960 But but this also means that even within the sort 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:04.680 of communist unions, the gangs have like a decent level 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:07.160 of influence because you know, the reliant on gang members 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.520 to sort of bring people in. Now, at the beginning 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:12.760 of the conflict, this works in organized labor's favor because 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:15.480 you know, both both the gangs and the and the 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:17.560 communists and like the labor organizers are all pulling on 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:19.280 the same side, and that means they could just like 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.479 pull everyone out of work. But as as the stricks 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:26.399 go on, the largely communist control general labor union grows 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.040 more and more powerful, and the Green Gang looks at 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.480 this it starts to get worried about like you know, 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:35.479 organized labor creating an independent base of power, which is 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:38.280 a real threat to the control of the workplace, and 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:43.320 they start looking for allies that put the strikes down. Now, 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:47.280 Chinese business owners had initially like backed the protests, but 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:49.320 you know, because they were piste off that the British 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:52.840 were shooting people. But they very quickly realized that letting 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.720 letting workers have unions is extremely bad for them, even 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:02.040 if those unions were temporarily targeting foreign owners. Yeah. So 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:04.840 so one one of their major complaints is that there's 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:07.320 there's a strike. You know, one of the strikes is 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:09.560 going on is at this like Japanese own power plants, 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:12.040 but because the power plants, they like they can't be 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:14.760 run by scab workers. This cuts off businesses. This cuts 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:17.800 off like power to Chinese businesses too. The business owners 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.640 get piste off and they get together with the Green Gang. 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.480 They're trying to like start ending the strikes. Um The 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.000 gang like storms the offices of the g l U 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:28.359 with like knives and iron bars and just like beats 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:30.960 the crap out of a whole bunch of the GILU organizers. 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:33.600 And they're able to just like destroy the headquarters, and 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:37.120 they also start to sort of like exert their influence 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:39.280 over the workforce to like bring people back to work. 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:43.119 And this eventually is able to do what the British 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:45.240 government in the warlords couldn't, which is bring the strike 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:47.159 to an end by forcing the GLU to sort of 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:49.840 like settle with the Japanese government over conversation for like 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:54.280 the original death of the labor organizer and a very 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:59.320 similar process, although in Hong Kong it's more Chinese business 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:03.680 owners acting the British then it is organized crime, like 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.879 just beating the crap out of people. But there's a 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:08.840 very similar thing plays out in Hong Kong. And after 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:12.119 sixteen months to strike ends, and it's kind of a 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:17.159 disaster because after this the Brits just like later in 0:20:17.200 --> 0:20:20.199 Hong Kong to a fortress, almost all British social policy 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:23.320 for the next really hundred years specifically designed to make 0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:27.240 sure that this this kind of strike never happens again. Yeah, 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.480 it seems like um I could name some other governments 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:31.720 that took a little bit of a leaf out of 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:34.680 their book in that regard, yep. And there's actually there's 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:36.320 a fun a lot of fun I say fun but 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:40.720 there there's an interesting thing about this where Shanghai, Hong 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:44.439 Kong is basically the place where like most riot tactics 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:47.360 are produced, are like like police anti riot techniques are produced. 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:50.360 So there there's another bunch of riots in n seven 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:53.840 and what the British police does against those riots are 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:56.960 like that. That's where that's like the template for all 0:20:57.040 --> 0:20:59.320 riot police comes from is from the British police in 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:02.639 Hong Kong sixty seven. And you see this with like 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:06.760 waves of this with the earlier strikes too. I mean, 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:10.760 they're fucking good at it. I can It's also I'm 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:14.080 gonna guess where a lot of protester tactics for dealing 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:15.840 with I mean, I can say that just in terms 0:21:15.840 --> 0:21:18.920 of like last year in Portland, people were using tactics 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:22.880 they'd seen in Hong Kong. Uh do first, Um, yeah 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:25.040 dude that I I had no idea it went back 0:21:25.200 --> 0:21:28.880 that fucking far. But yeah, and there's interesting stuff here too, 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:32.359 because so basically, like the way the way this conflict 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:35.439 always works at like both sides are constantly trading like 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:37.920 tactics with they're sort of like equivalent numbers. So you 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:40.600 have like the thin blue line international but then you 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:42.960 also have you know, you have like the actual international 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:45.960 in in this period, so you have sort of which 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:50.439 is the kind of left socialist international. Yeah. Well by 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:52.320 by this by this point you're sort of in like 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:56.840 the the USSR Third International. But even before that, you 0:21:56.880 --> 0:22:00.119 have a lot of people who were like worker is 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:02.600 in uh like for example, like the like one of 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:04.400 one of the labor yins in Egypt, for example, starts 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:08.960 because a bunch of like like Italian anarchists like show 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:10.960