Early 20th century Shanghai Divergence - Literature review Example

This paper is in response to Wasserstrom’s article about thinking about Shanghai. In this article the traces the development of Shanghai over the centuries and travels back and forward in time to explore the connections that the “city by the Huangpu” (Wasserstrom, 226) has had with itself and the world. The central theme of the article is an attempt to classify and categorize the city from the view point of history, globalization, and internationalization and to examine the divergence the city of the 20th century with that of the earlier periods. The article starts off by attempting to place Shanghai in the context of other cities of the world like Amsterdam, Budapest and Houston that Baverstock et al have placed in the category of “gamma-global-cities”. What this means is that these cities have been given a separate place from the other cities of the world in terms of their tendency to what Wasserstrom calls “re-globalizing” nature i.e. the ability of the cities to re-integrate them with the global landscape. The author attempts’ to place Shanghai in context leave him bewildered considering the range of transformations that the city underwent in its existence and the fact that it is still a “work in progress”. The author reaches the view point that Shanghai is a city that is “good to think” which means that attempts to compare Shanghai with other cities have proved fruitless. And the article quotes Rudolf Wagner who suggests a moratorium in comparing Shanghai with other cities. Wasserstrom is not deterred by the academic community’s decision on de-linking comparisons of Shanghai with other cities. On the other hand, “While there is a strong case to be made for Wagner’s argument and the modification of it just described, this article argues that this is a good time for Shanghai specialists to enter the admittedly treacherous waters of far-flung comparison. And it will suggest a specific strategy for doing just this by proposing that we think of Shanghai as a reglobalizing Post-socialist city that has interesting things in common with urban centers such as Budapest that were once part of the Soviet bloc” (Wasserstrom, 204). When we use the term “re-globalize”, we effectively mean that there was a time when these cities were part of the global mainstream in terms of their relations with the rest of the world be it for trade or exchange of ideas. Shanghai has a particular significance in this respect as it was one of the cities in the East that had interacted with the West before the opium wars and the hundred years of treaty enforced port-period when it was a bustling port that served as a center for commerce and trade. The emphasis on the “re” is characteristic of attempts to describe situations, events or in this case, cities as having somehow “returned” to their one of several incarnations and past structures. In this context, it is useful to note that the author’s conception of Shanghai is that it was integrated and then cut off and is not integrating again. Much like the Prodigal son coming home, this process is fraught with complexities of classification and this is where the author repeatedly contrasts the city with Budapest as examples of two cities that are attempting to find themselves again. It is said that cities have a character much as people do. For instance, in the case of Shanghai, it underwent several transformations in its hundreds of years of existence, starting from a trading hub and then forced internationalization to socialist transformation that was during the period of Mao and then re-globalization when China decided to join the global economy. Hence, the city became like a palimpsest that had several layers of history written over it. The attempt to find the soul of the city that has survived the ravages of history makes the author feel like “This creates an overall impression of the metropolis as constituting both a crazy quilt and a palimpsest” (Wasserstrom, 227). However, the author of the article does not come to the conclusion that there is no cohesion to the city that is so entangled in different periods and different ideologies that govern its existence. On the other hand, the author of the article tries to find the underlying structure of the palimpsest and comes to the conclusion that this is one city that lives in different centuries at the same time. As the author points out, “There are also many places in Budapest, as in Shanghai, where the palimpsest aspect of the city shows through in uses being put to sections of town that are simultaneously novel and redolent of not one but several periods of the past” (Wasserstrom, 227). If we come to the question that needs to be answered for this paper, the issue of divergence and the significance of the departure need to be considered. The points of divergence are in the facets of demographic mix, architectural styles, building booms and the nature of the administrative structure. Within each facet, we find that the city has always been a center of trade and commerce that is the underlying feature of Shanghai because of its proximity to three waterways and hence an ideal place for transshipment and trade. The first point of divergence is the ethnic mix. Shanghai has always been considered something of an “anomaly” because of the extraordinary number of foreigners who lived there as part of the settlement. As the author states, “The Settlement was, for good reason, understood at the time to be a very “peculiar” administrative district, owing to its “status as a sort of imperium in imperio,” as the editor of the magazine Oriental Affairs described the enclave in a 1939 public lecture” (Wasserstrom, 210). The point here is that the ethnic mix of the settlement was not comprised of one particular nation or region and it was global in character. And this continued till the outbreak of World War Two that saw the first divergence. However, the contention of the author about Shanghai’s uniqueness in the 20th century is what this passage is all about. The other point of divergence was the unique administrative structure that was put in place for governing Shanghai. As the following passage from the article makes it clear, “No other treaty port was divided, as was Shanghai, into a colonial concession area, a multinational settlement district, and a surrounding Chinese municipality, each of which was big enough to qualify as a city of moderate or large size in its own right. The fact that all of these three districts had their own police forces, courts, newspapers, and so on added to the peculiarity of the situation” (Wasserstrom, 210). The fact that Shanghai was always considered something of a global city made it distinctive from the other cities of Urban China. For instance, Beijing and Hong Kong were as different as chalk and cheese in almost every point of comparison. However, what made Shanghai entirely different from these cities is that it was like “the metropolis by the Huangpu was distinctive in that it was almost like “‘all other Chinese Cities rolled into one” (Wasserstrom, 211). As the points of divergence have focused on ethnic and demographic mix and the administrative structure, I now turn to the landscape and the cuisine available in Shanghai in the 20th century that made the divergence complete. As the author points out, Shanghai of the treaty port era and that of the early 20th century completely differed from the rest of the urban centers in China. Not only were the landscapes of Shanghai a mix of Chinese and Western styles of architecture, there was also a distinctiveness about them that did not resemble anything like the rest of the Urban Chinese centers of that era. If we consider the most significant divergence, it is the ethnic and the cosmopolitan nature of Shanghai that stands out. As mentioned earlier, Hong Kong comes close but it was always administered by the British (till 1999 when it became a SAR or Specially Administered Region). Hence, the point of comparison stands with that of the other urban centers in China. And this is where the significance of the departure from these centers is visible and distinctive. This paper has tried to discuss the place of Shanghai in the early 20th century as well as in modern times. The question as to which category does the city fit in has been examined as well. However, it is the contention of this writer that the uniqueness of Shanghai when compared to the other urban centers lies in the patterns of governance and economic structures rather than any other factor. As the article states, “The metropolis by the Huangpu, by contrast, has followed not a steady evolution toward global city status but rather, as already noted, a stop-and-start progression. It has alternately opened up to and turned away from cosmopolitan currents associated with capitalism. And from the early 1950s through early 1980s, it was more firmly nestled within a nation state than it had been early in the 1900s” (Wasserstrom, 222). In conclusion, it is the uniqueness of Shanghai throughout its history that has lent it a special status among the cities of the world. In the closing decades of the 20th century as well as the first decade of the 21st century, Shanghai has been the marvel of the world and a must see destination for anyone wishing to do business in China. Read More