History of Shanghai
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History of Shanghai
[edit] Early Shanghai
Shanghai was founded in the 10th century. The city is located in a swampy area east of Suzhou which was only recently irrigated, although other parts of the Yangtze valley saw irrigation as much as 1,500 years ago. Until 1127, Shanghai was a small market town of 12,000 households. That year, however Kaifeng was conquered and many refugees came to Shanghai, and the city grew to 250,000 inhabitants.
Shanghai and the surrounding area became one of China's richest regions in the 13th century, when it became a cotton production and manufacturing center. The manufacturing was done using the cotton gin, a machine similar to that created by Eli Whitney. Cotton cloth was the backbone of Shanghai's economy from the 13th century until the early 19th. Canals, dikes and real estate were financed with private capital during Song and Yuan China.
The following autocratic government of the Ming dynasty imposed tight trade restrictions. In the 16th century, to guard against Japanese and Chinese pirates, trade was forbidden. After a hundred merchants died when Shanghai was pillaged by pirates, the Ming government evacuated the entire coastal population to the interior. In 1554 a wall was built to protect the city.
[edit] Early to Middle Qing China
Shanghai reached an economic peak in the early 19th century. The Qing Dynasty had little government control, so native place associations used their provincial networks to control the city and competed with each other. Bankers of different native place associations started cooperating with each other in the Shanghai Native Bankers Guild, which used a democratic decision-making process. Trade routes reached as far as Polynesia and Persia with cotton, silk and fertiliser as primary export products.
[edit] Foreign powers in Shanghai
The importance of Shanghai grew radically in the 19th century, as the city's strategic position at the mouth of the Yangtze River was perceived by the westerners as an ideal location for trade with the Chinese hinterland.
During the First Opium War in the early-19th century, British forces temporarily held Shanghai. The war ended with the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which saw the treaty ports, Shanghai included, opened for international trade, particularly of opium. According to Balfour, Great Britain destroyed the cotton industry of Shanghai. Ji emphasizes the backwardness of pre-1842 Shanghai and contends that trade increased thanks to the western powers. The Treaty of the Bogue signed in 1843, and the Sino-American Treaty of Wangsia signed in 1844 together saw foreign nations achieve extraterritoriality on Chinese soil, which officially lasted until 1943 but was functionally defunct by the late 1930s.
The Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, and in 1853 Shanghai was occupied by a triad offshoot of the rebels called the Small Swords Society. The fighting devestated the countryside but left the foreign settlements untouched, and Chinese arrived seeking refuge. Although previously Chinese were forbidden to live in foreign settlements, 1854 saw new regulations drawn up making land available to Chinese. Land prices rose substantially, and real estate development became a source of considerable income for Shanghai's westerners, further increasing the westerners' control over the city's economy.
1854 also saw the first annual meeting of the Shanghai Municipal Council, created in order to manage the foreign settlements. In 1863, the British settlement, located along the western bank of the Huangpu river to the south of Suzhou creek (Huangpu district), and American settlement, located on the western bank of the Huangpu river and to the north of Suzhou creek (Hankou district) joined in order to form the International Settlement. The French opted out of the Shanghai Municipal Council, and instead maintained its own French Concession, located to the south of the International Settlement.
From this situation two cities emerged: a chaotic Chinese city and a western city, inhabitated mainly by Chinese.
The western part of Shanghai was one of the most modern "European" cities in the world. New inventions like electricity and trams were quickly introduced, and westerners turned Shanghai into a huge metropolis. British and American businessmen made a great deal of money in trade and finance, and Germany used Shanghai as a base for investing in China. Shanghai accounted for half of the imports and exports of China. The western part of Shanghai was four times larger then the Chinese part in the early 20th century.
Europeans and Americans inhabitants of Shanghai called themselves the Shanghailanders. The extensive public gardens along the waterfront of the International Settlement were reserved for the foreign communities and forbidden to Chinese (other than those who were British or other colonial subjects). The foreign city was build in the British style with a large racetrack in what was then the west of the city, now People's Park. A new class emerged, the compradors, which mixed with the local landlords to form a new class, the Chinese bourgeoisie. The compradors were indispensable mediators for the western companies. Many compradors were on the leading edge of the movement to modernize China.
The Sino-Japanese War fought 1894-95 over control of Korea concluded with the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which saw Japan emerge as an additional foreign power in Shanghai. Japan built the first factories in Shanghai, which were soon copied by other foreign powers to effect the emergence of Shanghai industry.
Shanghai was then the biggest financial city in the Far East. Under the Republic of China, Shanghai was made a special city in 1927, and a municipality in May 1930.
[edit] Chinese society
Chinese society was divided in native place associations or provincial guilds. These guilds defended the interests of people from certain areas. They had their own dresscodes and sub-cultures. Chinese government was hardly organized, instead society was controlled by the native place associations. The Guangdong native place associations represented the skilled workers of Shanghai. These native place associations belonged to the top of the Shanghainese society. Ningbo and Jiangsu native place associations were the most numerous. They represented the common workers. Many Chinese inhabitants came from the north of China. They were on the bottom of the society. Many of them were forced to work as seasonal workers or mobsters.
The Tong Reng Tan was a neutral organization that tried to build up good governance in Shanghai. In 1905, the Tong Reng Tan was abolished and replaced by the Shanghai municipality. A Shanghainese native place association came into being called the Tongrengtang tongxianghui.
[edit] Chinese attempts at modernization
Many Chinese tried to take over the western inventions to make China stronger. The Self-strengthening movement was based in Shanghai in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The self-strenthening of China did not succeed because of the incompetence, corruption and inefficiency of many participants. Chinese Shanghai became a Chinese municipality in 1905, but it was hampered by the power of the native place associations. New, progressive native place associations tried to replace the old ones. These associations helped with the revolution in 1911. The Republic of China, which was a result of the revolution, quickly lost control of the country to provincial warlords, supported by their native place associations. The importation of goods from Europe stopped during the First World War. The Japanese founded many factories in Shanghai. They were followed by Chinese and British entrepreneurs, and Shanghai became an industrial city, unique in China.
[edit] 1920s
Chinese industry in Shanghai had a hard time after the First World War and the competition with the western world started again. But the city's industrial and financial power increased, because the merchants were in control of Shanghai, while the rest of China was divided among warlords. A stock exchange was founded in 1920. According to Ji, stock exchanges are meant by merchants and bankers to control trade. The Chinese bankers and merchants were primarily aimed at getting the foreigners out of China. The Chinese warlord government didn't cooperate at all to achieve this goal, so the Chinese bankers and merchants of Shanghai opposed both the warlords and the foreigners.
Meanwhile, the traditional division of the society by native place associations was falling apart. The new working classes were not prepared to listen to the bosses of the same native place associations during the 1910s. Resentment against the foreign presence in Shanghai rose among both the entrepreneurs and the workers of Shanghai. In 1919, protests against the Treaty of Versailles of the May Fourth Movement brought the rise in power of the mafia. Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s was a cynical battleground of ideologies. Uncompromising communists and autocratic nationalists fought against opportunistic mobsters and Shanghailanders. Entrepreneurs had a hard time to maintain their position and their liberal ideas.
Shanghai became the centre of national and international opium smuggling during the 1920s. The Shanghai Green Gang(Quinbang) became a major influence in the Interational Settlement during the 1920's, with the Commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police reporting that corruption associated with the trade had affected a large proportion of his force. An extensive crack down in 1925 simply displaced the focus of the trade to the neighbouring French Concession. The French authorities made deals with the Green Gang, who controlled all Chinese affairs in the French Concession.
The Quinbang and other gangs comprised the middlemen of Shanghai politics. The Communist Party of China was founded in 1921 in the French Concession by members of the Green Gang. The Green Gang was divided on the issue of cooperating with the communists. Some gang leaders openly waged war against the communists, while another gangster became the minister of post in People's Republic of China.
In 1927, communists tried to end foreign rule. officially supported by the gangsters and the Guomindang nationalists. Leaders of the Green Gang however entered into informal alliances with Chiang Kai-shek and the Shanghailander capitalists to act against the communists and organised labour unions. The nationalists had cooperated with gangleaders since the revolution of 1911. Many communists were killed in a major gangster surprise attack in April 1927 in the Chinese administered part of Shanghai, although sporadic fighting between gangsters and communists had occurred previously. Zhou Enlai was lucky to flee the city, because suspected left-wingers were shot on sight.
[edit] 1927-1937
Chiang Kai-shek started an autocratic rule supported by the progressive native place associations which lasted from 1927 to 1937. These associations consisted of workers, businessmen, gangsters and others from a given province. This was part of the policy to organize society in corporations. It was a major failure, because the Chinese refused to be subdued. Only a minority became members of the appointed native place associations. Chiang Kai-shek chose to cooperate with gangsters in order to maintain his grip on Chinese society. This meant that the gangsters remained middlemen during the rule of the nationalists, controlling society by frequently organizing strikes.
The new architectural style of Shanghai was American. Cinemas were created all over the city. Shanghai was one of the largest cities in the world with 3,000,000 inhabitants in 1936, of whom only 35,000 were foreigners, though they were in charge of half of the city. Many Russian refugees came to Shanghai. They were regarded as an inferior (oriental or occidental) race by the Shanghighlanders. A lot of Russian women worked as prostitutes alongside Chinese, Korean and Japanese colleagues. The Great World was a place where opium, prostitution and gambling came together. Shanghai had turned into the commercial centre of East Asia, with banks from all over the world.
The nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek tried to turn Shanghai into the capital of China. Large residential areas were build north of the foreign concessions, which were between the old Chinese town and the new Chinese town. These residential areas were modern, with good roads and parking lots for automobiles. A new Chinese port was built, which could compete with the Shanghighlander's port. Chiang Kai-shek continuously demanded large amounts of money from the financial world in Shanghai. Some bankers and merchants resisted from the start while others were so enthusiastic in supporting the KMT, that they liquidated their companies to extract as much money as possible. Most bankers and merchants were willing to invest in the army, but this stopped in 1928. They refused to give what Chiang wanted. Chiang got angry and he demanded double the amount, followed by quadruple the amount. Bankers responded by refusing all subsidies and Chiang nationalised all enterprises. The brother-in-law of Chiang, Soong expressed the opinion of the Shanghai capitalists in 1930 by writing that it is better to strengthen the politics, the army and the economy instead of focusing only on the army. Chiang was very agitated about this.
The power of the gangsters rose in the early 1930s, especially the power of the Green Gang-leader Du Yuesheng. Du started his own native place association. Mobsters stormed the Shanghai Stock Exchange in order to get control over it. The police did not interfered, since they had been dominated by the mobsters since 1919. Shanghighlanders did not interfere as well, since it was an internal Chinese affair. The nationalist government did not interfered, because it tried to break the power of the entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs were forced to make a deal after a second storming of the mobsters.
[edit] During World War II and the Japanese Occupation (1937-1945)
The Japanese Navy bombed Shanghai on January 28, 1932, nominally in an effort to crush down Chinese student protests of the Manchurian Incident and the subsequent Japanese occupation. The Chinese fought back in what was known as the January 28 Incident. The two sides fought to a standstill and a ceasefire was brokered in May. In the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city fell after the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, and was occupied until Japan's surrender in 1945.
During World War II in Europe, Shanghai was a centre for European refugees. It was the only city in the world that was open unconditionally to the Jews at the time. However, under pressure from their allies, the Nazis, the Japanese ghettoised the Jewish refugees in late 1941 in what came to be known the Shanghai ghetto, and hunger and infectious diseases such as amoebic dysentery became rife. The foreign population rose from 35,000 in 1936 to 150,000 in 1942 mainly due to the Jews. Germany wanted Japan to exterminate the Jews of Shanghai, but Japan only put them into a ghetto. The Japanese were harsher on the British, Americans and Dutch. They slowly lost their privileges and had to wear a B, A or N for their nationality when walking in public places. Their villas were turned into new brothels and gambling houses. The British, Americans and Dutch were forced marched into concentration camps in 1943.
[edit] End of Old Shanghai
The foreign concessions were closed in 1946 when the French departed. The major government controlled companies in Shanghai of KMT-China had gone corrupt after moving to inland China in 1937. Shanghai merchants and bankers had completely lost faith in a healthy economy under KMT-rule. Nationalists had no concern for local interests in Shanghai and tried to force everybody to accept autocratic rule. The main protectors of the mafia, the Shanghighlanders were gone and the mafia was ignored by the nationalist government. Du Yuesheng tried to become the mayor of Shanghai, but he was forced to leave the city. Communists gained control over the workers. The success of the communists had mainly to do with a different policy. Instead of exclusionism of non-communists, the communists tried to gather a broad coalition. Chinese business-people made a deal with the communists in 1949, which resulted in a peaceful takeover of Shanghai by the communists. The communists put an end to opium, prostitution, gambling and business. All private companies were nationalized in 1952.
[edit] Communist rule
On May 27, 1949, Shanghai came under communist control and was one of the only two former ROC municipalities not merged into neighbouring provinces over the next decade (the other being Beijing). It underwent a series of changes in the boundaries of its subdivisions, especially in the next decade.
After the communist takeover in 1949, most foreign firms moved their offices from Shanghai to Hong Kong. During the 1950s and 1960s, Shanghai became an industrial center and center for revolutionary leftism. Yet, even during the most tumultuous times of the Cultural Revolution, Shanghai was able to maintain high economic productivity and relative social stability. For most of the history of the PRC, Shanghai has been the largest contributor of tax revenue to the central government compared with other Chinese provinces and municipalities. This came at the cost of severely crippling Shanghai's infrastructure and capital development. Its importance to China's fiscal well-being also denied it economic liberalizations that were started in the far southern provinces such as Guangdong during the mid-1980s. At that time Guangdong province paid nearly no taxes to the central government, and thus was perceived as fiscally expendable for experimental economic reforms. Shanghai was not permitted to initiate economic reforms until 1991.
Political power in Shanghai has traditionally been seen as a stepping stone to higher positions within the PRC central government. In the 1990s, there was what was often described as the politically right-of-center "Shanghai clique," which included the president of the PRC Jiang Zemin and the premier of the PRC Zhu Rongji. Starting in 1992, the central government under Jiang Zemin, a former Mayor of Shanghai, began reducing the tax burden on Shanghai and encouraging both foreign and domestic investment in order to promote it as the economic hub of East Asia and to encourage its role as gateway of investment to the Chinese interior. Since then it has experienced continuous economic growth of between 9–15% annually, arguably at the expense of growth in Hong Kong, leading China's overall development.
[edit] History of the economic development of Shanghai
Shanghai is an especially interesting example of spatial development as China’s largest and most important industrial and commercial city, and also as a city that was largely stagnant during theMaoist period (1949–1976). Its modern transformation really did not begin until the Dengist period (1978), and most strikingly not until President Jiang Zemin came to power in 1992. The remarkable development of the Pudong zone offers a compelling example of the various political mechanisms, players, complexity and character of urban land development and spatial change in the context of China’s rapidly growing transitional economy.
Shanghai is China’s largest and greatest commercial and industrial city. With 0.1% of the land area of the country, it supplies over 12% of the municipal revenue and handles more than a quarter of total trade passing through China’s ports. Its year 2000 population, according to China’s latest census, was 16.74 million and represented an increase of 3.4 million from the 1990 size with an average annual growth rate through the decade of the 1990s of 2.2% and a total increase of 25.5%.
The average size of a family in Shanghai had declined to less that 3 people during the last decade, and it is clear that most of Shanghai’s population growth is driven by migration rather than natural factors based on high birth and fertility rates. Shanghai has for many years had the lowest birth rate in China, a rate lower than large American cities such as New York.
As with most cities in China, Shanghai is overbounded in its administrative territory. The city in the year 2000 was comprised of 17 urban districts and three counties together occupying 6300 km² of land area. The three counties contain substantial rural land and a number of rural residents who continue to farm for their livelihood. The city has the highest population density of all the first order administrative units in China, with 2657 people per km² in 2000. Owing to its continued growth and industrial and commercial development, Shanghai also has the highest index of urbanization among all of China’s first order administrative units, with 88.3% of the official population (14.78 million) classified as urban.
The amount of building activity in Shanghai fueled by government investment expenditures continues to be astounding. During the same period following Deng’s national ‘‘Opening and Reform’’ movement in 1978 propelling modernization, Shanghai’s economy shifted from over 77% of gross domestic product in secondary sector manufacturing to a more balanced sectoral distribution of 48% in industry and 51% in services in 2000 and 2001.
Employment in manufacturing reached almost 60% in 1990 and has declined steadily since to 41% in 2001, while employment in the tertiary sector has grown from 30% in 1990 to more than 47% in 2001, a remarkable expansion of employment in service activities in step with Shanghai’s reemergence as a commercial city.
Increasing population and economic activity in areas between established suburbs and major East Asian cities, a process known as periurbanization, result from entirely different causes than those driving ‘‘in-filling’’ in western metropolitan areas. As powerful central government control that formerly stabilized the economic activity of the population devolved during the 1990s, new forms were encouraged to anchor and attract workers in peripheral areas. These included township and village enterprises and rural industries popping up in peri-urban development zones.
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