The Shanghai Mind
From Urban Press
| Journal Article |
|
For [Shanghailanders] the last important political event was the suppression of the Boxers. Europe is far away from them and China, at their very doors, seems almost as far. They seem to have lived in a comfortable but hermetically sealed and isolated glass case since 1901, and since English information on China and Chinese information on England comes for the most part through Shanghai and similar places, it cannot be too clearly understood, both in England and China, that Shanghailanders of English extraction belong, if they belong to England at all, to an England that no longer exists...
They look round on their magnificent buildings and are surprised that China is not grateful to them for these gifts, forgetting that the money to build them came out of China. Controlling the bottle-neck through which the bulk of Chinese trade must pass, they prosper upon it coming and going and forget that it is the trade that is valuable to England and not the magnificent buildings which big profits and small taxes have allowed them to erect...
Shanghai will not be satisfied unless Sir Austen Chamberlain's winter policy is scrapped and, with high water on the Yangtze, a summer policy takes its place with a naval demonstration up the river, the "occupation of strategic points," an open attack on the Nationalists, and an attempt to plant the war-lords once more on the lid of the boiling Chinese cauldron.(Ransome 1927)
