About Shanghai Labor Daily

Shanghai Labor Daily

Overview

The Shanghai Labor Daily, known in Chinese as Laodong Bao (劳动报, pinyin: Láodòng Bào), is a Chinese-language daily newspaper published in Shanghai, in eastern China. It is the organ newspaper of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions (上海市总工会) and is edited and published by the Laodong Bao Press (劳动报社), a public institution sponsored and supervised by the federation. Chinese Wikipedia describes the paper as China's first workers' daily and as a local comprehensive daily whose target readership is the city's broad workforce. It carries the domestic serial number CN 31-0005, is priced and distributed as a daily, and appears in listings of Shanghai's extant newspapers. Its headquarters are recorded at 700 Changping Road in Shanghai. The paper should not be confused with the national Workers' Daily in Beijing, the organ of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, nor with other provincial labour papers such as the Tangshan Labour Daily; the Shanghai title is a municipal paper rooted in one specific city's union movement and industrial history.

A paper proposed during the takeover of Shanghai

The newspaper's origins lie in the final weeks of the Chinese Civil War. On 23 April 1949, after the People's Liberation Army took Danyang, the leadership bodies preparing to take over Shanghai — including the general front committee of the Yangtze crossing campaign, the East China Bureau and the Shanghai Bureau — gathered in Danyang to prepare for the administration of the city. During those preparations Chen Yi, who would become Shanghai's first mayor under the new order, proposed that after the takeover Shanghai's workers should have a newspaper of their own. Shanghai was China's greatest industrial city, with a huge factory workforce in textiles, machinery, docks and utilities, and the proposal reflected the importance the incoming administration placed on a press addressed directly to that workforce. The Shanghai Labor Daily was founded on 1 July 1949, only weeks after the city changed hands on 27 May 1949 and in the same founding season as Shanghai's other post-1949 titles, including the party organ Jiefang Daily (28 May 1949) and the Youth Daily (10 June 1949).

How the paper got its name

The title itself was settled personally by Chen Yi. In early August 1949, at a briefing meeting, Chen proposed that the workers' newspaper be named simply Laodong Bao — "Labor Daily." Liu Changsheng, a leading figure in the Shanghai labour movement, suggested the more explicit name Shanghai Laodong Bao ("Shanghai Labor Daily"), which would have tied the title to the city. Chen Yi insisted on the shorter name, explaining that he hoped the Laodong Bao would grow beyond Shanghai and face the whole of East China. The episode is preserved in accounts of the founding of the Shanghai General Trade Union in the early liberation period and is one of the best-documented details of the paper's early history. In English-language directories the paper is rendered "Shanghai Labor Daily" because of its city base, even though its Chinese masthead carries no place name — a direct survival of Chen Yi's 1949 decision.

Early years and distribution beyond Shanghai

From 1 May 1950 the paper began distribution through the postal system, a step that took it beyond workplace and union-branch circulation in Shanghai itself and made it available to subscribers more widely, consistent with the ambition expressed in its naming. Through the 1950s it served as the daily voice of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions at a time when the city was being reorganised as the industrial heartland of the new People's Republic, its factories, docks and department stores employing a workforce numbered in the millions. As the federation's organ, the paper's natural subject matter was the world of work: production campaigns, model workers, union organisation, labour protection and the everyday life of employees and their families. Its identity as a comprehensive local daily aimed at workers, rather than a narrow trade bulletin, was present from this early period and is the description still used of it today.

Suspension in 1960 and revival in 1979

The paper's first run ended in December 1960, when it ceased publication as part of a consolidation that reduced the number of newspaper titles. The suspension lasted more than eighteen years. In March 1979, as China entered the reform era and institutions closed or disrupted during the preceding decades were restored across the country, the Laodong Bao resumed publication. The revival restored to Shanghai's trade union movement its own newspaper, and the date places the paper among the many Chinese titles that reappeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through the following decade it rebuilt its readership among a workforce that was itself changing rapidly as reform opened Shanghai's economy, expanded its service sector and began the transformation that would produce the modern Pudong skyline across the Huangpu River.

From weekly rhythms to a modern daily in the 1990s

During the 1990s the paper developed from a weekly publication rhythm into a daily, and it expanded its offering with weekly supplements including an Economic Weekly and a News Panorama supplement. In July 1993 it set up a dedicated special-sections department, at a time when the paper carried six feature sections: Overseas Panorama, Health and Hygiene, a Taiwan–Hong Kong–Macau supplement, Family Life, Shanghai Bund and Novelties. The line-up shows how far the paper had travelled from a purely industrial bulletin: alongside coverage of work and the economy it was offering readers health advice, family pages, entertainment and features on the wider Chinese world. In January 1995 the Shanghai Bund section was revamped as Science and Education Panorama, and in April of the same year the Taiwan–Hong Kong–Macau supplement became Fashion Panorama, reflecting the consumer and lifestyle interests of a 1990s Shanghai readership. In 1997 the Laodong Bao Press's office building was completed on Changde Road in Jing'an District, giving the paper a purpose-built home in the district where it remains based.

The organ of Shanghai's trade unions

Institutionally, the paper belongs to the trade union system rather than to the party committee press or a commercial media group. Its owner is the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions, the municipal arm of China's union movement, and the Laodong Bao Press operates as a public institution under the federation's sponsorship and supervision. That position defines its editorial territory: employment, wages and labour relations, workplace safety, social insurance, the work of grass-roots unions, and services and rights protection for employees, alongside general news of the city it serves. Shanghai listings of extant newspapers record it plainly as the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions' organ paper, in the comprehensive newspaper category, published daily under serial CN 31-0005. Its OCLC record (222409437) reflects a publication history long enough to be catalogued in libraries internationally.

Distinct from the national Workers' Daily

Because both papers serve the union movement and both date from July 1949, the Shanghai Labor Daily is easily confused with the Workers' Daily (Gongren Ribao), and the distinction matters. The Workers' Daily was founded a fortnight later, on 15 July 1949, in Beijing, as the organ of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, and it is a national newspaper with bureaus across China. The Shanghai paper is older by two weeks, is municipal rather than national, answers to the Shanghai federation, and concerns itself with one city's workforce — though its founder's ambition, recorded in the naming story, was always that it should look outward to East China. Chinese reference works likewise describe it, in its own right, as China's first workers' daily. Other Chinese cities have their own labour titles, such as the Tangshan Labour Daily in Hebei, but none shares the Shanghai paper's 1949 founding pedigree.

Digital transition: the Labor Observation app

Like the rest of Shanghai's press, the paper has moved into mobile and social distribution. On 5 July 2019 — days after its seventieth anniversary — the paper launched its news client app, "Labor Observation" (劳动观察), an event reported by the Xinmin Evening News's online arm. The app extended the paper's union-focused reporting into the channel through which most Shanghai readers now take their news, and it sits alongside the paper's official website and its presence on the Sina Weibo microblogging platform, both linked from its reference listings. The digital products keep the same editorial centre of gravity — work, employment and the life of the city — while changing the format from a printed daily to a continuously updated news service for a workforce that largely reads on phones.

Place in the Shanghai newspaper landscape

Shanghai's post-1949 press is one of the densest in China. A city list of newspapers published since 27 May 1949 records more than seventy pre-1949 titles having existed in the city at the takeover, and the surviving daily line-up is headed by the party organ Jiefang Daily, Wenhui Daily and the Xinmin Evening News, described as the city's three principal papers. Within that landscape the Labor Daily occupies a defined niche: it is not the party committee's voice, nor a commercial evening paper, but the specialist comprehensive daily of the union movement, published continuously in its revived form since 1979 and in origin since 1949. Its survival, under its original two-character name, through suspension, revival, format change and the digital transition makes it one of the oldest continuously identifiable newspaper brands in the city.

Legacy and significance

The Shanghai Labor Daily's significance rests on three documented facts: its founding date of 1 July 1949, which makes it China's first workers' daily; its naming by Chen Yi, which ties it directly to the founding moment of municipal government in Shanghai; and its unbroken institutional role as the organ of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions. For historians of the Chinese press it is a compact case study of how a specialised organ paper adapted — suspended in the consolidation of 1960, revived in 1979, rebuilt as a modern daily with lifestyle supplements in the 1990s, housed in its own Jing'an building in 1997, and relaunched for the mobile era in 2019 — while keeping the same masthead and the same core readership of working people. In a directory of world newspapers it stands as Shanghai's labour paper of record.