Shanghai

Located at the outlet of the Yangzi River, about midpoint along China's coastline, Shanghai was established as a county seat in 1292. Cotton cultivation was introduced to the area around the same time, and by the eighteenth century Shanghai had become a booming "cotton town" renowned for its production and trade of nankeens and other cotton cloth. Trade routes extended from Shanghai to as far as Manchuria and Southeast Asia.

Shanghai was opened to the West in 1843 as one of the five treaty ports designated by the Treaty of Nanjing, which ended the Opium War (1839–1842). By the 1850s it had surpassed Canton (Guangzhou) in trade volumes. The Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs in Shanghai fell into British hands in 1854, which led to the customs system later coming under the supervision of Robert Hart (1835–1911) for nearly half a century. In the late nineteenth century trade in opium became the backbone of the city's commerce. Meanwhile, Shanghai became a major site of the Qing self-strengthening movement. The city quickly grew to be the center of China's modern manufacturing industry (shipbuilding, textiles, and others) as well as banking.

The main part of the city at the time consisted of foreign "concessions" where the British, French, and Americans held sway over the administration and effectively formed a virtual "state inside a state." While the Western domination infringed on Chinese sovereignty, it also provided a relatively safe zone for business and international trade in a China torn by war and revolution. Early in the twentieth century Shanghai had developed into China's largest and most advanced city. Modern enterprises, institutions, and professions mushroomed, and capitalists and compradors flourished. The Shanghai Chamber of Commerce was established in 1902 (reorganized in 1912) and became the most prominent business organization of its kind in the nation. During the republican period (1912–1949) the prosperity of Shanghai earned the city sobriquets such as "Paris of the East," "Paradise of Adventurers," and "China's New York." The city's business opportunities and cosmopolitanism attracted expatriates of more than thirty nationalities. Shanghai harbored more than 20,000 Jews who had fled from the Nazis, for the city was a free port that did not require an entrance visa. After the Japanese occupation of the city (1941–1945), the Chinese civil war broke out and Shanghai was taken over by the Communists in May 1949.

In terms of international trade, the three decades after the Communist Revolution witnessed the lowest point in Shanghai's modern history, due to the overall distrust of commerce under the Maoists. During that period Shanghai contributed about one-sixth of the central government's annual revenue—an enormous burden that impeded Shanghai's own development. In his "southern inspection tour" in 1992, Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) pushed the city to the forefront of reform by ordering the opening of Pudong New Area, a state-ofthe-art financial, high-tech, and trading center that has ignited new development in the region. After that Shanghai achieved a double-digit GDP growth rate for six consecutive years (1992–1997) and maintained a high economic growth rate thereafter. The average annual growth rate hit 9.4 percent during the period 1979 to 1997. By the late 1990s Shanghai handled more than one-fifth of China's total port cargo. At the turn of the twenty-first century, enterprises from more than eighty countries and regions around the world had invested in Shanghai, with Hong Kong, Japan, the United States, Germany, Singapore, Taiwan, Britain, and South Korea being the city's major trading partners.

SEE ALSO Agriculture; Alcock, Rutherford; Cargoes, Freight; Cargoes, Passenger; Chambers of Commerce; China; Compradors; Containerization;Deng Xiaoping; Empire, Japanese; Empire, Ming; Empire, Qing; EntrepÔt System; Free Ports; Guangzhou; Harbors; Hart, Robert;Hong Kong; Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank; Imperial Maritime Customs, China;Manchuria;Mitsui;Port Cities;Rice;Tea.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Hanchao Lu