Hao Jianxiu

Hao Jianxiu
郝建秀
Hao Jianxiu in the 1950s
Vice Chair of the State Planning Commission
In office 1987–2001
Member of the CPC Central Secretariat
In office 1982–1987
Minister of Textile Industry
In office 1981–1982
Preceded by	Qian Zhiguang
Succeeded by	Wu Wenying
Personal details
Born	November 1935 (age 81) Qingdao, Shandong, China
Political party	Communist Party of China
Alma mater	East China Textile Engineering Institute

Hao Jianxiu (Chinese: 郝建秀; Wade–Giles: Hao Chien-hsiu; born November 1935) is a retired Chinese politician. As an illiterate teenage textile worker, she was named a national model worker after inventing the "Hao Jianxiu Work Method".

She later graduated from university and was elevated to the upper echelon of Chinese politics, serving as Minister of Textile Industry in the 1980s. She then became a member of the CPC Central Secretariat, thus officially ranked as a "national leader", and served as vice chair of the State Planning Commission. In the People's Republic of China, she was extolled as a symbol of the ideal worker who improves production through innovation, and her political career benefited as a result.

Hao Jianxiu was born in November 1935 into a working-class family in Qingdao, Shandong Province. Having had only one year's education in primary school, she began applying for jobs at local cotton mills at the age of nine, and eventually entered the state-owned No. 6 Cotton Mill in 1948, when she was 13.

She was said to be obsessively hard working, and devoted her energy to improving productivity and reducing waste at the factory. She took the initiative to observe and analyze the movements of the most productive workers, and propagate their techniques to others. She also studied the widespread problem of broken yarns, and discovered that breakage rate could be substantially reduced if the room was cleared of fluff.

Her work attracted the attention of Chen Shaomin (), chairwoman of the All-China Textile Workers' Trade Union, and Zhang Qinqiu, Vice Minister of Textile Industry. Her innovation was officially dubbed the "Hao Jianxiu (Fine-Yarn) Work Method" and it was instituted in textile mills nationwide. She was honoured as a national model worker in 1951, at the age of 16.