This special issue of Urban History, which brings together a set of six case-studies of Chinese cities, all with a focus on the Republican era (1912–49), has different things to offer discrete sets of scholars. For example, to specialists in urban history who have only a passing interest in Chinese themes, the three works by scholars based in the People's Republic of China (PRC) offer a rare glimpse into the way that cities are studied in what remains (though not for long, if trends in India continue) the world's most populous country. The editors of Urban History are to be commended for making these articles, all of which were originally written in Chinese, available to Anglophone readers. When read beside other recent translations of pieces on cities by PRC-based authors in varied fields, such as the city-focused writings of cultural critic Xu Jilin and the journalist and oral historian Dai Qing that have appeared in the lively online journal China Heritage Quarterly, they give a sense of some of the main contours in contemporary Chinese discussions of and debates about the country's modern urban past.

This article explores the transformation of the city of Dalian from a colonial export port to an industrialized core city of the Japanese wartime empire and finally a model production city of the People's Republic of China. These shifts in the economic and political function of the city also resulted in complex identity issues for Dalian's urban residents. Dalian's rise reminds that there were trajectories of urban development and modernity in China which were different from that of Shanghai. Dalian provides an important, local view of the transition from empire to nation in this strategically important part of Manchuria.

The emergence of tap water supplied through water grids changed the spatial structure of cities. As a commercial port containing foreign settlements and divided urban political systems, Tianjin became host to two major, long-term water supply systems. Different social environments and systems of municipal government meant that tap water was accepted by urban society in different ways. In the settlements, the supply of tap water was the foundation for the formation of a modern community. In the Old City, the introduction of tap water for the most part had a different effect: it manifested the ways in which traditional and new lifestyles conflicted and mingled with each other. Yet, in any case, as tap water entered the lives of the people from the end of the Qing to the Republican period, new ideas of health and hygiene associated with tap water were gradually accepted, and modern urban lifestyles gradually took shape.

In early twentieth-century Suzhou, business and state leaders deployed female prostitution to foster commerce despite its controversial nature and sometime illegality. This political-economic policy variously pitted prostitutes and madams, police, commercial interests and social reformers against one another as tensions between gender reform and economic growth played out in urban development. This article analyses these conflicts to highlight the actions of prostitutes and the prerogatives of male desire in Suzhou's spatial and economic transformation.

This article explores the refugee experiences of three communities in Shanghai during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Social and political organizations worked together in different ways to send people safely back to different parts of China. I argue that this shows how migrant identities were trans-local and that urban identity in the first half of the twentieth century in China was never wholly confined within one city. Rather, networks of individuals and institutions worked together to handle the crisis caused by one of the most devastating invasions of World War II.

Trade associations were widely established as new industrial and commercial organizations in modern China, particularly during the Republican era. They were characterized by enormous spatial, temporal and industrial differences, and generalizing, one-sided studies are very unlikely to lead to a truthful, precise historical understanding of these associations. Case-studies that are more fully multidimensional are urgently needed to supplement our understanding. The national bicycle industry was representative of emerging industries in modern China. This article focuses on bicycle industry-related trade associations in modern Shanghai. Files housed in the Shanghai Municipal Archives are analysed to offer a concrete dissection of an individual case-study that will illuminate broader questions in trade association historical research.

Horse racing ended in Shanghai in 1945, but the public continued for a long time to make its opinion heard on the prohibition of horse racing and on the changing function of the racecourse. In 1951, the dust settled, and the racecourse became People's Park and People's Square. This article describes the ever changing symbolic significance of the racecourse that has played out against a backdrop of changing racecourse functions and varying intellectual currents. Initially, it was a relatively simple place of leisure. It later became a gambling arena where people were cheated of their money and sometimes murdered, a place where Chinese suffered discrimination, and a stage on which imperialism flaunted its military might. It had, in short, become a diabolic symbol of a multitude of evils. The call to change the racecourse merged powerfully with the struggle to oppose imperialism, regain the settlement and struggle towards civilization and democracy. In spite of changes in the ruling party and the replacement of one regime by another, a remarkable ideological and intellectual continuity persisted from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The present bibliography is a continuation of and a complement to those published in the Urban History Yearbook 1974–91 and Urban History from 1992. The arrangement and format closely follows that of previous years. The list of abbreviations identifies only those periodicals from which articles cited this year have been taken, though many other journals are also checked. There is an index of towns on p. x