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Policing Modern Shanghai

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

We have found that along the banks of the Hu, Chinese and foreign residents mix together in great numbers. Their style of life has traditionally been frivolous and flashy. There is mutual competition for profit, owing to the convenience of communications and the crass materialism. Since this is a centre where Chinese merchants are gathered together, it is a carefree place, where gentlemen and ladies take their pleasure. If one is of the upper classes, then luxurious desires are fully realized and there are many instances of behaviour overstepping proper boundaries. If one is a worthless fellow, then when he sees something different and thinks of moving ahead, he has a disproportionate expectation. He might well wait until the seas are drained and the mountains are worn down and yet still lack the craft to carry out [his plans]. Nonetheless he walks straight into danger without hesitation and willingly engages in illegal behaviour. Furthermore, Communists take advantage of the situation and think of intimidating robbers, kidnappers and bandits to wait in secret for an opportunity to behave outrageously.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1988

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123. August Vollmer, Correspondence, letters from Frank Yee, letter dated 10 September 1936. See also the letter dated 27 October 1936, for plans to train the deans of police schools all around China.

124. The Shanghai Opium Suppression Bureau opened 21 August 1927 in the old coal merchants guild in nanshi. The director was the chief of the PSB. Shanghai Municipal Gazette, 16 09 1927, p. 320.Google Scholar

125. “Editorial,” North China Herald, 5 01 1929Google Scholar; Henriot, , “Le gouvernement municipal de Shanghai, 1927–1937,” p. 348.Google Scholar

126. Lary, Diana, Region and Nation: The Kwangsi Clique in Chinese Politics, 1925–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 138.Google Scholar

127. Henriot, , “Le gouvernement municipal de Shanghai, 1927–1937,” p. 66.Google Scholar For gun-running in general, see: Chan, Anthony B., Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920–1928 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1982), pp. 67108.Google Scholar For Shanghai in particular, see Finch, , Shanghai and Beyond, pp. 7172Google Scholar, and Pal, , Shanghai Saga, pp. 7980.Google Scholar

128. Military attaché's comments on current events, 1–15 December 1928, in U.S. Military Intelligence Reports, China 1911–1941, reel 1, foot 85.

129. Kuoqing, Zeng, “He Mei xieding qian Fuxingshe zai Huabei de huodong”Google Scholar“The activities of the Fuxingshe in north China before the He-Umezu Agreement”), in Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, Wenshi Ziliao Yanjiu Weiyuanhui (eds.), Wenshi ziliao xuanji (Selections of Historical Materials), fascicle 14 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 02 1961), pp. 138–39.Google Scholar Numerous societies were closed down and magazines were banned by the PSB in Shanghai in 1930. Hunter, Neale, “The Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers, Shanghai, 1930–1936” (Ph.D. thesis, Australian National University, 08 1973), p. 111.Google Scholar

130. Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, jishi, p. 62.Google Scholar

131. Shanghai Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 4, p. 119, and Vol. 5, pp. 851.Google Scholar

132. Like so many concerns about threats to public order, the obsessions became a self-fulfilling prophecy when Kuomintang members kidnapped a national student delegate during the demonstrations against the government after the Manchurian Incident. The “December Eighth Affair” in Shanghai led students to demand that the kidnappers be punished and that Chen Xizeng, chief of public safety, be killed by a firing squad. Henriot, , “Le gouvernement municipal de Shanghai, 1927–1937,” p. 107.Google Scholar

133. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-2880, 11 November 1931.

134. Chief Yuan Liang had related law and order to the end of extraterritoriality on the grounds that as long as the international concessions offered refuge to criminals, the Shanghai PSB could not prevent felonies from being committed. He frequently called for the recovery of sovereign rights. Translation of article in China Times, dated 28 01 1931Google Scholar, in Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-1949.

135. See, e.g., the daily intelligence report in: Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, No. D-4003, 19 September 1932.

136. The first request of this sort that I have found in the SMP archives was issued in November 1929 by the PSB in the form of a letter from Yuan Liang to the SMP commissioner of police requesting help against the Reorganizationist Clique. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-623, 2 November 1929.

137. The tone of these requests became increasingly hysterical during the year July 1930–June 1931, when there were (usually on the eve of days of commemoration) totals of 123 cases of arrests of suspected Communists and the seizure of 1,471 sets of “reactionary” materials. Shanghai Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 4, pp. 7778.Google Scholar See also the request from the PSB to Major Gerrard in: Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, No. D-4003, 17 September 1932.

138. Letter dated 7 March 1932 from the chief of the PSB to Captain Martin, Commissioner of Police, in Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-3312, 8 March 1932.

139. E.g., the SMP received word from the CID of the Straits Settlement government of a mail intercept that led back to a suspected communist bookstore in the International Settlement. After enlisting the help of the Chinese postal censor, the SMP was pleased to receive, on 5 June 1930, a request from the PSB, based on information extracted from a communist agent interrogated in Jiangxi, that a warrant be issued for the arrest of people on the premises of that self-same shop. The warrant was duly issued and executed. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-7873, 18 June 1930.

140. See, e.g., surveillance of the Ming Dan Middle School. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-3922, 8 October 1932.

141. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-3922, 18 October 1932.

142. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-2760, 18 September 1931.

143. Journalists estimated that about 1,500 Communists were arrested in the International Settlement between 1931 and 1937. Finch, Shanghai and Beyond, p. 187.Google Scholar

144. Shanghai, Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 4, p. 119.Google Scholar

145. Ibid. Vol. 3, p. 77, and Vol. 5, p. 16.

146. Costs for public security in Shanghai came to constitute more than 30% of the total municipal budget. Salaries made up the bulk of police expenses. Henriot, , “Le gouvernement municipal de Shanghai, 1927–1937,” p. 201.Google Scholar

147. Zui, Shen, Juntong neimu (The Inside Story of the Military Statistics (Bureau)) (Beijing: Wenshi ziliao chubanshe, 1984), p. 49.Google Scholar

148. Ibid. pp. 51–52.

149. Zui, Shen, “Wo suo zhidao de Dai Li” (The Dai Li I knew”), in Zui, Shen and Qiang, Weng, Dai Li qi ren (Dai Li the Man) (Beijing: Wenshi ziliao chubanshe, 1980), p. 10.Google Scholar

150. Zui, Shen, “The Dai Li I knew,” p. 10.Google Scholar

151. The Special Services Group was created in 1930 to gather “intelligence” (qingbao). Shanghai Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 3, p. 115.Google Scholar

152. Zui, Shen, “The Dai Li I knew,” p. 7.Google Scholar

153. Zui, Shen, The Inside Story of the Military Statistics (Bureau), p. 117.Google Scholar

154. Weihan, Zhang, “Dai Li and the Military Statistics Bureau,” pp. 8788.Google Scholar

155. According to Shanghai police records, the Kuomintang Central Committee formed a secret organization in May 1934 to assassinate Communists. The association, which was called the Shanghai Municipality Comrades Association for the Elimination of Communists, was supposed to consist of ninety sections, each containing five members. “Rules and regulations of the Shanghai Municipality Comrades Association for the elimination of Communists,” Special Branch Secret Memorandum, 29 May 1934, in Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, No. D-4685.

156. Gourlay, , “‘Yellow’ unionism in Shanghai,” pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

157. Zui, Shen, The Inside Story of the Military Statistics Bureau, p. 58.Google Scholar Harold Isaacs estimated that the numbers of “direct victims” of police terror between 1927 and 1932 reached at least one million, and he claimed that between January and August 1928, 27,699 people were formally condemned to death. Isaacs, Five Years of Kuomintang Reaction, p. 4.Google Scholar

158. Coleman, Maryruth, “Municipal authority and popular participation in Republican Nanjing” (paper delivered at the Association for Asian Studies meetings, San Francisco, 27 03 1983), p. 4.Google Scholar

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