Wu Guixian

Wu Guixian the Chinese textile worker and agricultural model of the mid-twentieth century who rose from a cotton mill in Shaanxi province to national prominence and served in the highest organs of the People's Republic as an emblem of worker and peasant participation in government.

Early Life and Mill Work

Wu Guixian was born in 1938 into a poor peasant family in Shaanxi province in northwestern China, a region that had suffered greatly during the war and the civil conflict. Her family could not afford to educate her, and she grew up illiterate, working in the fields and at household tasks from childhood.

In the 1950s she found work in a textile mill in the city of Xianyang, where she became a cotton spinner. She applied herself to learning the trade with unusual determination and soon acquired a reputation as a skilled and diligent operator, taking on the additional task of teaching literacy to her fellow workers who, like her, had grown up without schooling.

Rise to Prominence

Wu Guixian came to public attention as a model worker who embodied the ideal of the diligent and self-improving industrial operative. She exceeded her production quotas, was active in union and Party work, and was promoted to supervisory and management roles within the mill. Her illiteracy made her progress the more striking, and she became a symbol of the social mobility open to workers under the new order.

In the tumultuous political campaigns of the late 1960s she was thrust into national politics, elevated to high office as a representative of the working class. She was elected to senior positions in the Party and the state and became one of the most prominent working women in the country, though she had little of the education or administrative experience usually expected of such posts.

Her sudden rise reflected the political emphasis of the period on promoting workers and peasants to leading positions. She was the subject of intense publicity and her image was used to demonstrate the participation of ordinary working people in the government of the country.

Role in the Women's Movement

Wu Guixian was closely associated with the women's movement of the period and headed the national women's organization as part of her responsibilities. She spoke at meetings on the position of women and on the need for women to take part in production and in public affairs, drawing on her own experience of rising from the mill floor.

Her leadership of the women's body reflected the political line of the time and was later criticised, as were many institutions of the period, for excessive politicisation and for neglecting the practical concerns of women. She nonetheless remained personally popular among many workers who saw in her a genuine representative of their own lives.

She travelled widely and met foreign delegations, and she was one of the Chinese working women who became known abroad in the 1970s. Her visits and speeches emphasised the changes that had occurred in the status of women in her country.

Her public appearances were carefully managed as part of the political culture of the period, and she was presented as proof that workers and peasants had been raised to the highest levels of the state. Visitors from abroad who met her recorded a mixture of curiosity and respect, seeing in her both a product of her time and a genuine example of self-improvement.

Political Career and Difficulties

Wu Guixian held several of the highest offices in the Party and state during the 1970s, including membership of the senior Party bodies and leadership of the women's federation. She was also involved in regional administration, taking charge of a large district in her native Shaanxi.

Her position was difficult because she lacked formal training and because she was caught up in the factional politics of the time. After the political changes of the late 1970s, when the emphasis shifted toward expertise and education, she lost her national offices and was reassigned to a less prominent role, a common fate for those promoted during the previous period.

She returned to Shaanxi, where she held posts in provincial administration and industry, and she worked in the region of her birth for the remainder of her career. She was remembered for bearing her reversals with dignity and for continuing to serve the province in which she had grown up.

Legacy

Wu Guixian's career is studied as an illustration of the distinctive politics of promotion in the mid-twentieth century, when an uneducated mill worker could rise to the summit of the state. Her story combines genuine personal achievement with the wider political currents in which she was caught.

She is remembered in Shaanxi as a daughter of the province who reached national prominence, and her life is cited in discussions of the participation of workers and peasants in Chinese political life. She died in 2006, and tributes emphasised both her personal tenacity and the complexity of the era in which she served.

See also

• Textile industry in China
• Model worker
• All-China Women's Federation
• Shaanxi province