Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:29:24.794Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Shanghai tebie shi gong'anju yewujiyao, Minguo shiliu nian ba yue zhi shiqi nian qi yue (Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau from August 1927 to July 1928) (Shanghai: Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, 1928), jishi, p. 48.Google Scholar

2. Li, Victor H., “The development of the Chinese police during the late Ch'ing and early Republican years” (paper prepared for Professor Jerome Cohen's Seminar on Contemporary Chinese Law, Harvard Law School, 05 1965), p. 49.Google Scholar

3. Li, Victor H., “The development of the Chinese police,” p. 52.Google Scholar

4. Wakeman, Frederic Jr., “The evolution of local control in late imperial China,” in Wakeman, Frederic Jr. and Grant, Carolyn (eds.), Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 125.Google Scholar

5. Rowe, William T., “Urban control in late imperial China: the pao-chia system in Hankow,” in Fogel, Joshua A. and Rowe, William T. (eds.), Perspectives on a Changing China: Essays in Honor of C. Martin Wilbur on the Occasion of His Retirement (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1979), pp. 100101.Google Scholar

6. The earliest police reforms were commenced in South China, in Hunan, during the provincial reform movement of 1895–98. Bays, Daniel H., China Enters the Twentieth Century: Chang Chih-tung and the Issues of the New Age, 1895–1909 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1978), pp. 3738, 240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Jr-lien, Tsao, “On the nature of the Chinese capitalists during the Republican period” (seminar paper, Berkeley, Calif., 1984), p. 5.Google Scholar

8. Weiyuanhui, Shanghai Shi Nianjian (comps.), Shanghai shi nianjian (Annual Mirror of Greater Shanghai) (Shanghai: Shanghai shi tongzhi guan, 1935), pp. 113.Google Scholar

9. Li, Victor H., “The development of the Chinese police,” p. 52.Google Scholar

10. MacKinnon, Stephen R., “A late Qing–GMD–PRC connection: police as an arm of the modern Chinese state,” Selected Papers in Asian Studies, new series, Paper No. 14 (1983), p. 5.Google Scholar

11. MacKinnon, Stephen, “Police reform in late Ch'ing Chihli,” Ch'ing-shih wen-ti (Questions in Qing History), Vol. 3, No. 4 (12 1975), pp. 8299passim.Google Scholar

12. Li, Victor, “The development of the Chinese police,” pp. 2930Google Scholar; Yee, Frank Ki Chun, “Police in modern China” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1942), pp. 1118.Google Scholar

13. Yisheng, Zhu, “Shanghai jingcha yange shi” (“History of the evolution of the Shanghai police”) in Yisheng, Zhu (ed.), Shanghai jingcha (Shanghai Police), opening issue (Shanghai: Shanghai shi jingchaju mishushi, 1946), p. 3.Google Scholar

14. Yaofu, Chen, “Qingmo Shanghai shezhi xunjing de jingguo” (“The process of setting up police patrolmen in late Qing Shanghai”), in Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Shanghai Weiyuanhui, Wenshi Ziliao Gongzuo Weiyuanhui, (comps.), Wenshi ziliao xuanji (Shanghai) (Selections of Historical Materials (Shanghai)), fascicle 13 (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), pp. 104106.Google Scholar

15. Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, zuzhi, p. 1Google Scholar; Li, Victor H., “The development of the Chinese police,” p. 53.Google Scholar

16. Gaustad, Blaine, “Colonial police in Africa and India” (seminar paper, Berkeley, University of California, 1983), pp 1213Google Scholar. See also Gwynn, Charles W., Imperial Policing (London: Macmillan and Co., 1934), p. 187.Google Scholar

17. See the public letter entitled “The persecution of Indian Nationalists in China (an appeal to fair-minded people,” signed by the Raj Paltao (Indian Revolutionary) Party, dated Nanking (Nanjing), 3 June 1929, in China Weekly Review, 1 06 1929, p. 16Google Scholar. The communication of information from India concerning suspected Communists or Indian nationalists came through C.M.H. Halland, the military intelligence officer in the Shanghai British consulate-general. Halland often shared his reports with American military intelligence. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-2313, 11 September 1931.

18. Council for the Foreign Settlement of Shanghai (ed.), The Municipal Gazette, Being the Official Organ of the Executive Council of the Foreign Settlement of Shanghai, Vol. 20 (1927), p. 216.Google Scholar

19. “Corsicans, there as everywhere, hold the principal posts. They are hard men, and mocking; with a distrust of journalists and contempt for the consular corps.” Fontenoy, Jean, The Secret Shanghai (New York: Grey-Hill Press, 1939), p. 120.Google Scholar

20. Intelligence officers in the British consulate in Shanghai would request the SMP to put under surveillance suspected Communists whose names had been obtained from police raids on communist organizations in Malaya. This was how the writer Zheng Zhenduo was put on the SMP's suspects list. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-3564, 26 April 1932.

21. Pal, John, Shanghai Saga (London: Jarrolds, 1963), p. 19.Google Scholar

22. “History of police force is traced by speaker,” The Shanghai Times, 21 02 1937Google Scholar, in Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-2961, 28 February 1937. In the eyes of Chinese nationalists the Sikh policemen on the Shanghai force were “symbolic of the most sinister aspect of imperialism.” The Chinese Student (Chicago), Vol. 1, No. 6 (05 1936)Google Scholar, Wusa issue, p. 5.

23. See the case of the police spy and secret agent Pick, Eugene (alias Kojevnikov, alias Rafael Born, alias Dr Cliegel) in China Weekly Review, 15 06 1929, p. 100.Google Scholar

24. Ibid. p. 101.

25. The British Officers in charge of the Special Branch were worried about security leaks for this very reason. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-2381, 9 October 1935.

26. Yangqing, Wang and Yinghu, Xu, “Shanghai Qing Hong bang gaishu” (“A general account of Shanghai's Qing and Hong gangs”), Shehui kexue (Social Sciences), No. 5 (1982), pp. 6365.Google Scholar

27. Martin, Brian G., “Warlords and gangsters: the opium traffic in Shanghai and the creation of the Three Prosperities Company, 1913–1926” (paper delivered at the Sixth National Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, Sydney, 11–16 05 1986), p. 5.Google Scholar

28. Rowe, William T., “The Qingbang and collaboration under the Japanese, 1939–1945: materials in the Wuhan Municipal Archives,” Modern China, Vol. 8, No. 4 (10 1982), pp. 493–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Honig, Emily, “Women cotton mill workers in Shanghai, 1919–1949” (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford, 1982), p. 118Google Scholar; Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, jishi, p. 62Google Scholar. See, for Shanghai beggars: Gamewell, Mary Ninde, The Gateway to China: Pictures of Shanghai (New York: Fleming H. Revell, Co., 1916), p. 55.Google Scholar

30. Informers were also frequently murdered and dismembered. Pal, , Shanghai Saga, pp. 7172.Google Scholar

31. Organized crime regulates illegal but persistent transactions in informal economies. Smart, Alan, “The informal regulation of illegal economic activities: comparisons between the squatter property market and organized crime” (paper to be published in The International Journal of the Sociology of Law), p. 1Google Scholar. Or, in Carmine (“the Snake”) Persico's words: “Why [pay the mafia a ‘tax’ on criminal proceeds]? Because we let you do it. We're the government.” Abadinsky, Howard, The Criminal Elite: Professional and Organized Crime (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1983), p. 64.Google Scholar

32. “Tan jing zhi heimu yi” (“Inside story of the police”) in Shengke, Qian (ed.), Shanghai heimu huibian (A Classified Compendium from Behind Shanghai's Black Screen) (Shanghai: Haishang zhentan yanjiuhui, 1929), Vol. 2, p. 2Google Scholar. See also Martin, Brian G., “Tu Yueh-sheng and labour control in Shanghai: the case of the French Tramways Union, 1928–1932,” Papers on Far Eastern History, No. 32 (09 1985), p. 106.Google Scholar

33. Yangqing, Wang and Yinghu, Xu, “A general account of Shanghai's Qing and Hong gangs,” p. 63.Google Scholar

34. Martin, Brian G., “Warlords and gangsters,” p. 5.Google Scholar

35. Zaiyu, Qi, Shanghai shi renzhi (Current Biographical Gazetteer of Shanghai) (Shanghai: Zhanwang chubanshe, 1947), p. 165Google Scholar; Coble, Parks M. Jr., The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927–1937 (Cambridge, Mass.Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1980), p. 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Yangqing, Wang and Yinghu, Xu, “A general account of Shanghai's Qing and Hong gangs,” p. 64.Google Scholar

37. “Inside story of the police,” in Shengke, Qian (ed.), Shanghai heimu huibian, Vol. 1, pp. 12.Google Scholar

38. Yangqing, Wang and Yinghu, Xu, “A general account of Shanghai's Qing and Hong gangs,” p. 63.Google Scholar

39. Huang also carried on a version of the “Moll Cutpurse” system perfected by the colourful 18th-century criminal Jonathan Wild. In effect, Huang gave the rightful owners of stolen goods first refusal of them by letting them buy them back through his own mediation with the felons. See, for Wild, Jonathan, Tobias, J. J., Urban Crime in Victorian England (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), p. 29Google Scholar. “Even though the organization and activities of the Wild gang were in some respects unique, they were not altogether unusual. Crime was rapidly becoming a business, a form of entrepreneurship based upon the existence of large amounts of capital (stolen goods) and a new market (the city) in which to invest.” Weisser, Michael R., Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, Ltd., 1979), p. 124.Google Scholar

40. Zhucheng, Xu, Du Yuesheng zhengzhuan (A Straightforward Biography of Du Yuesheng) (Hangzhou: Xinhua shudian, 1982), pp. 2123Google Scholar. Control of gambling is almost always crucial to a racketeer's system of control. Whyte, William Foote, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1943), p. 140.Google Scholar

41. Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, jishi, p. 49Google Scholar. For a comparative study of crime in Calcutta and three other cities see: Gurr, Ted Robert, Rogues, Rebels, and Reformers: A Political History of Urban Crime and Conflict (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1976)Google Scholar. There is an enthralling portrait of a Calcutta goonda (hired killers) member in: Basu, Dilip K. and Freeman, James M., “Mallabir: life history of a Calcutta gangster” (unpub. ms., 1984).Google Scholar

42. There were said to be about five million addicts in the Yangzi valley alone. Tang Shaoyi, while chairman of the National Anti-Opium Association, estimated that a total of $1 billion worth of opium was consumed annually in China; of this, perhaps $40–100 million in drugs passed through Shanghai each year. Martin, , “Warlords and gangsters,” pp. 23Google Scholar. See also: Sues, Ilona Ralf, Shark Fins and Millet (Garden City: Garden City Publishing Co., 1944), p. 7Google Scholar. The dollar figures are in Mexican silver dollars. See also The China Weekly Review, 20 07 1929, p. 323.Google Scholar

43. Pal, , Shanghai Saga, pp. 4142.Google Scholar

44. Zhucheng, Xu, A Straightforward Biography of Du Yuesheng, p. 21.Google Scholar

45. Pal, , Shanghai Saga, p. 72Google Scholar; Scott, A. C., Actors Are Madmen: Notebook of a Theatregoer in China (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 6061Google Scholar; Martin, , “Warlords and gangsters,” passim.Google Scholar

46. Zhucheng, Xu, A Straightforward Biography of Du Yuesheng, pp. 2225.Google Scholar

47. Marshall, Jonathan, “Opium and the politics of gangsterism in Nationalist China, 1927–1945,” Bulletin of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 8, No. 3 (0709, 1977), p. 33Google Scholar. See also China Weekly Review, 30 10 1926, p. 249.Google Scholar

48. Sues, , Shark Fins and Millet, p. 67.Google Scholar

49. Anonymous, Chongdang “Si yi er” da tusha de kuaizishou: dengshang Jiang jia wangchao de zhengzhi tai (1927 nian, ji 40 sui) (Playing the Role of an Executioner in the Great Slaughter of 12 April: Climbing Upon the Political Platform of the Chiang Dynasty (1927, 40 years old) (n.p., n.d.), pp. 23Google Scholar; Pal, , Shanghai Saga, p. 19Google Scholar; Finch, Percy, Shanghai and Beyond (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), p. 185.Google Scholar

50. Martin, Brian G., “The Green Gang and ‘party purification’ in Shanghai: Green Gang–Kuomintang Relations, 1926–1927” (Symposium on the Nanking Decade, 1928–1937: Man, Government and Society, Taibei, 15–17 08 1983), p. 33.Google Scholar

51. Jungu, Zhang, Du Yuesheng zhuan, di yi ce (A Biography of Du Yuesheng, Volume One), Zhuanji wenxue congkan 9 (Taibei, 1967)Google Scholar; Martin, , “Tu Yueh-sheng and labour control in Shanghai,” p. 104.Google Scholar

52. Fontenoy, , The Secret Shanghai, p. 129Google Scholar; Finch, , Shanghai and Beyond, p. 158.Google Scholar

53. Gourlay, Walter E., “‘Yellow’ unionism in Shanghai: a study of Kuomintang technique in labor control, 1927–1937,” Papers on China, Vol. 7 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, Committee on International and Regional Studies, 1953), pp. 106107.Google Scholar

54. For an impressive list of Du's official titles see: Shanghai Shi Nianjian Weiyuanhui (comps.), Annual Mirror of Greater Shanghai, p. X25.Google Scholar

55. Approximately 5,000 people were killed by the “purification” squads between April and September 1927 in Shanghai alone. Martin, , “The Green Gang and ‘party purification’ in Shanghai,” pp. 4445.Google Scholar

56. Yi, Shen, “Shanghai shi gongwuju shi nian” (“Ten years in the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Works”), Pt 1, Zhuanji wenxue (Biographical Literature), Vol. 70, No. 2 (08 1970), p. 17.Google Scholar

57. Chiang Kai-shek's speech at the founding of Shanghai on 8 July 1927, from Shenbao, cited in Zheng Zu'an, “Guomindang zhengfu ‘da Shanghai jihua’ shimo” (“The Kuomintang Government's ‘plan for a greater Shanghai’ from beginning to end”), in Pengcheng, Wang et al. (comps.), Shanghai shi yanjiu (Research in the History of Shanghai) (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 1984), p. 209.Google Scholar

58. Lee, James S., The Underworld of the East, Being Eighteen Years' Actual Experiences of the Underworlds, Drug Haunts and Jungles of India, China, and the Malay Archipelago (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd., preface dated 1935), p. 238Google Scholar; Hauser, Ernest O., Shanghai: City for Sale (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1940), pp. 268–69.Google Scholar In 1937, of the 349, 744 women in the International Settlement, 25,000 were believed to be practising prostitution. The China Critic, 1 04 1937, p. 7.Google Scholar

59. China Weekly Review, No. 42 (17 09 1927), p. 78.Google Scholar The Chinese authorities asked the consular body of the Municipal Council to close down the brothels established on streets along the Settlement borders. Ibid. 20 August 1927, p. 316.

60. Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, jishi, pp. 5253.Google Scholar The foreign community was certainly sensitive to its own vulnerability on the prostitution issue. “One of the publicly announced reasons for maintaining the present foreign regime in Shanghai is that the place would quickly go to ruin if the Chinese were running it, but we doubt seriously if there is another city anywhere in China under Chinese control where such a spectacle of public prostitution is presented on the public streets every night in the week and every week in the year!” The China Weekly Review, 5 01 1929, p. 226.Google Scholar

61. Sun Chuanfang supposedly told the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in May 1926 that: “I am ashamed every time I cross the border from the foreign settlements into ours as I see the contrast between their good and our bad management.” Green, O. M. (ed.), Shanghai of Today: A Souvenir Album of Thirty-Eight Vandyke Prints of the “Model Settlement” (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, Ltd., 1927), p. 10.Google Scholar

62. Yi, Shen, “Ten years in the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Works,” Pt 1, p. 17.Google Scholar

63. The school backgrounds of higher-ranking officers in the Shanghai PSB in 1932 included the Beijing School of Law and Administration, the Jiangsu Police Training Institute, the Baoding Police Training Institute, the Central Military Academy's Military Police School, the Beiyang Police Academy, and so forth. Shanghai Municipality Public Safety Bureau Report of Affairs, Vol. 5 (07 193106 1932), pp. 257–94.Google Scholar

64. In 1930, of the approximately 6,000 PSB policemen, 1,550 came from Hebei; 1,540 from Shandong; 640 from Jiangsu; 380 from Anhui; 250 from Henan; 145 from Zhejiang; and 110 from Hunan. The rest of the provinces provided less than 100 apiece. Shanghai Municipality Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 3 (07 192906 1930)Google Scholar, table after p. 56. The SMP also preferred recruits from Shandong, Hunan, and Hubei because of their superior physiques and conduct. “The Shanghai Municipal police,” Pt 2, The North China Herald and South China and China Gazette, 31 12 1909, p. 801.Google Scholar

65. The rivalry between northerners and southerners thus fitted into a familiar rivalry between patrolmen and detectives, characteristic of almost all police forces. Westley, William A., Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom and Morality (Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: The MIT Press, 1970), p. 43.Google Scholar

66. Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, jishi, p. 42.Google Scholar For the location of each of the precinct stations, see the organizational chart in ibid.zuzhi.

67. Shanghai–the South itself–was a corrupting force as such. Marshal Sun Chuanfang once told Qi Xieyuan that it was unwise for an army to remain too long in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, lest the luxurious life there turn them soft. Sokolsky, George E., “What stops progress in Nanking?North China Daily News, 16 11 1928, pp. 14, 18.Google Scholar

68. E.g., Northern policemen were brought in from Beiping in May 1932 to re-occupy Zhabei after the Japanese occupation was ended. Extract from the French police intelligence report dated 16 May 1932, in: Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-3648, 18 May 1932. See also Chinese Affairs: Weekly Survey of Important Events, 30 06 1932, p. 48.Google Scholar Recruitment of policemen in Beiping was also carried out at the urging of Dr Rudolph Muck, the Austrian police adviser to the Nationalist Government. Ibid. D-3433, 1 April 1932. For Dr Muck, see Shanghai Municipality Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 5 (07 193106 1932), p. 257.Google Scholar

69. Shanghai Municipality Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 3 (07 192906 1930), pp. 131–32.Google Scholar

70. Ibid. Vol. 4 (July 1930–June 1931), p. 68.

71. Policemen-whom the public often called “native dogs” (ben quan)-were constantly under fire, and every police officer in Shanghai carried a gun, with orders to take the safety catch off when going on duty. “Inside story of the police,” in Shengke, Qian (ed.), Shanghai heimu huibian, Vol. 1, p. 1.Google Scholar See also Pal, , Shanghai Saga, p. 13Google Scholar; Carney, Sanders, Foreign Devils Had Light Eyes: A Memoir of Shanghai, 1933–1939 (Ontario: Dorset Publishing, 1980), p. 16.Google Scholar Many PSB men were killed in the line of duty (“Shanghai, a key to peace,” North China Daily News, 29 08 1933)Google Scholar: between July 1930 and June 1931, 4 officers and 61 patrolmen were murdered. Shanghai Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 4 (07 193006 1931), table after p. 66.Google Scholar

72. For a list of the duties of the various sections of the Shanghai PSB, see Shanghai Shi Nianjian Weiyuanhui (comps.), Annual Mirror of Greater Shanghai, pp. F26–F29.Google Scholar

73. The police requested that public health affairs be put entirely under their jurisdiction in 1930. Shanghai Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 3 (07 192906 1930), pp. 128–29.Google Scholar

74. Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, jishi, p. 63Google Scholar; Henriot, Christian, “Le gouvernement municipal de Shanghai, 1927–1937” (Ph.D. thesis, Unversité de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 06 1983), p. 131.Google Scholar For a similar, and even longer, list of service responsibilities for a U.S. police force in a midwestern city, see Westley, , Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom and Morality, pp. 1718.Google Scholar

75. Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, jishi, pp. 1920, 46.Google Scholar

76. Ibid., jishi, pp. 4344.Google Scholar

77. Shanghai Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 5, p. 55.Google Scholar

78. There has been very little sociological analysis using crime data from Chinese cities. One of the exceptions is Ching-yueh, Yen, “Crime in relation to social change in China,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 3 (19341935), pp. 298308.Google Scholar

79. Shanghai Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 5, p. 55.Google Scholar

80. “Progress re enforcement of pao chia system in the Settlement,” Report, 7 04 1942Google Scholar, in Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) files, No. N-1437–1–(6), Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, p. 1; Jingcha faling (Police Laws) (n.p., n.d. [c. 1944, published evidently by the Wang Jingwei Ministry of Interior]), pp. 121–30.

81. Te-chen, Wu [Wu Tiecheng], “Greater Shanghai places emphasis on social reconstruction, welfare; good start now well on way to success,” The China Press Double Tenth Supplement, Shanghai (1935), p. 49.Google Scholar

82. Shanghai Public Safety Repon of Affairs, Vol. 3, p. 168.Google Scholar

83. See, for a brief account of each chief, Henriot, , “Le gouvernement municipal de Shanghai, 1927–1937,” pp. 175–77, 375–76.Google Scholar

84. Shanghai Shi Nianjian Weiyuanhui (comps.), Annual Mirror of Greater Shanghai, H4.Google Scholar

85. Gongsu, Xu and Jinzhang, Qiu, “Shanghai gonggong zujie zhidu” (“The system of the Shanghai International Settlement”), in Shanghai shi ziliao congkan: Shanghai gonggong zujie shigao (Collection of Shanghai Historical Materials: Draft History of the Shanghai International Settlement) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1980), p. 18.Google Scholar

86. Shanghai Shi Nianjian Weiyuanhui (comps.), Annual Mirror of Greater Shanghai, p. H4.Google Scholar

87. Green, (ed.), Shanghai of Today: A Souvenir Album of Thirty-Eight Vandyke Prints of the “Model Settlement”, p. 11.Google Scholar

88. Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, jishi, p. 35.Google Scholar The Nanjing Government asked for the abolition of extraterritoriality in the spring of 1929. Hauser, , Shanghai: City for Sale, pp. 189–91.Google Scholar

89. Friction seemed to reach a high point in August 1930. Shanghai Public Safety Report of Affairs, Vol. 4, huiyi, p. 8.Google Scholar

90. Ibid. Vol. 4, pp. 83–85.

91. Report by the Shanghai consul-general, 15 September 1928, in Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of China, 1910–1929, roll 68, 893.00, Political Affairs, Vol. 70, p. 2.Google Scholar

92. China Weekly Review, 30 03 1929, p. 176.Google Scholar

93. “The Vietnamese policemen looked more ridiculous. There are no Orientals as puny and ill-suited to wearing a uniform as the Vietnamese.” Chung-shu, Ch'ien, Fortress Besieged, translated by Kelly, Jeanne and Mao, Nathan K. (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1979), pp. 132–33.Google Scholar

94. The incident occurred on 23 April 1935. Shanghai Municipal Police (International Settlement) Files, Microfilms from the U.S. National Archives, D-6677, 26 April 1935.

95. Rankin, Mary Backus, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1986), pp. 307308.Google Scholar

96. Tien, Hung-mao, Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, 1927–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), p. 60.Google Scholar But see, for a different interpretation: Wei, William, Counterrevolution in China: The Nationalists in Jiangxi during the Soviet Period (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), p. 159.Google Scholar

97. Yee, Frank Ki Chun, “Police in modern China” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1942), pp. 3839.Google Scholar

98. A national commission of police experts was established in 1928 but it eventually atrophied. Yee, Frank Ki Chun, “Police in modern China,” pp. 3033.Google Scholar

99. Kirby, William C., Germany and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), p. 137.Google Scholar

100. Carte, Gene E. and Carte, Elaine H., Police Reform in the United States: the Era of August Vollmer, 1905–1932 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 3Google Scholar; Parker, Alfred E., Crime Fighter: August Vollmer (New York: Macmillan Co., 1961), pp. 122.Google Scholar

101. Parker, , Crime Fighter: August Vollmer, pp. 122.Google Scholar

102. Ibid. pp. 35–60.

103. Vollmer, August and Parker, Alfred E., Crime and the State Police (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1935), p. viii.Google Scholar

104. Policemen were also society's soldiers, engaged in waging a “war against crime.” Ibid. p. 6.

105. “We're in a big job, Jack,” Vollmer told a friend of his. “We're fighting a war against the enemies of society. We can't do it without knowledge.” Parker, , Crime Fighter: August Vollmer, p. 77.Google Scholar

106. The detective squad of the PSB attributed the rise in Shanghai crime rates to the appearance of the motor car, which made it possible for felons to escape at fast speeds into nearby Zhejiang. Summary of the Affairs of the Shanghai Special Municipality Public Safety Bureau, jishi, p. 55.Google Scholar

107. Vollmer, and Parker, , Crime and the State Police, p. 77.Google Scholar

108. Carte, Gene E. and Carte, Elaine H., Police Reform in the United States: the Era of August Vollmer, 1905–1932, p. 56.Google Scholar

109. Vollmer, and Parker, , Crime and the State Police, pp. 89Google Scholar; Parker, , Crime Fighter: August Vollmer, p. 123.Google Scholar

110. Vollmer, and Parker, , Crime and the State Police, pp. 134–35.Google Scholar

111. Ibid. p. 140.

112. Woods, Arthur, “Some aspects of training for police service,” Police Journal, No. 2 (1929), p. 365.Google Scholar

113. Parker, , Crime Fighter: August Vollmer, pp. 168–70.Google Scholar

114. August Vollmer, Correspondence and Papers (Bancroft Library CB-403), letters from Yukon, Feng, letter dated 3 12 1933.Google Scholar

115. August Vollmer, Correspondence, letters from Yee, Frank, letter dated 25 07 1934.Google Scholar

116. August Vollmer, Correspondence, letters from Yukon, Feng, letter dated 25 03 1934.Google Scholar

117. August Vollmer, Correspondence, letters from Yee, Frank, letters dated 30 06, 25 July, 10 September, 13 November and 18 December 1934Google Scholar; 22 January, 6 April and 18 June 1935; and 27 April 1936.

118. August Vollmer, Correspondence, letters from Yee, Frank, letters dated 30 06 1934Google Scholar, and 6 April 1935.

119. This was in July 1932. Feng presented Chiang with two papers: one on the condition of police forces around the world, and the other on the state of local Chinese police departments. August Vollmer, Correspondence, letters from Feng Yukon, letter dated 2 August 1932.

120. Yee, Frank, “Police in modern China,” pp. 3839.Google Scholar August Vollmer, Correspondence, letters from Frank Yee, letter dated 22 January 1935.

121. A 1924 graduate of the Whampoa Military Academy, Li Shizhen had completed a regular training course at the Japanese Police Academy in 1931 after service as commander of the Peace Preservation Corps of Zhejiang. Who's Who in China (6th edit.) (Shanghai: China Weekly Review, 1950), p. 129.Google Scholar

122. Weihan, Zhang, “Dai Li yu ‘Juntong ju’” (“Dai Li and the Military Statistics Bureau”), in Wenshi Ziliao Yanjiu Weiyuanhui (eds.), Zhejiang wenshi ziliao xuanji (Selections of Historical Materials from Zhejiang), No. 23 (Zhejiang: Renmin chubanshe, 1982), p. 89.Google Scholar Yee's training materials were eventually published as a police manual. Xiuhao, Yu, Jingcha shouce (Police Handbook) (Shanghai: Shanghai Jingsheng shuju, 1948).Google Scholar

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

159. Feng, Liu, “Zai wei jingchaju li de douzheng”Google Scholar (“The struggle in the collaborationist police force”), in Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Weiyuanhui, Shanghai, Weiyuanhui, Wenshi Ziliao Gongzuo (comps.), Wenshi ziliao xuanji Shanghai jiefang sanshi zhounian zhuanji (Selections of Historical Materials Special Collection for the 30th Anniversary of the Liberation of Shanghai), shang (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1979), pp. 178–80, 190Google Scholar; Ren, Wan, “Guomindang Shanghai jingchaju li de dixia gongzuo” (“Underground work in the police force of Kuomintang Shanghai”), in CPPCC, weiyuanhui, Shanghai, Wenshi ziliao gongzuo weiyuanhui (comps.), Shanghai wenshi ziliao xuanji (Selections of Historical Materials on Shanghai), fascicle 44 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1983), pp. 1922.Google Scholar