Shanghai

I

Introduction

Shanghai, city in eastern China, a major port located on the Huangpu (Whangpoo) River, near its confluence with the Yangzi River at its mouth on the East China Sea. One of the world's largest cities, Shanghai is China's largest city and its main commercial, industrial, and financial centre. Administratively, it is a province-level municipality answering directly to the central government; its total area of 6,185 sq km (2,388 sq mi) encompasses the city proper, industrial districts, suburbs, and agricultural districts. Population 12,887,000 (2000 estimate).

II

Economy

Shanghai owes much of its economic importance to its excellent transport links. Its port is the outlet for the Grand Canal system of the Yangzi River Basin. The city's extensive port facilities, which must be regularly dredged to accommodate ocean-going vessels, handle coastal trade as well as the bulk of China's foreign shipping. A dense local network of canals facilitates the transport of farm produce from the rural parts of the municipality to the city centre. Shanghai is also a major rail junction with connections to North and South China. The city has long been known as China's leading textile manufacturing centre. Other major industries include steel, electrical equipment, chemicals, motor vehicles, and paper. Also important are shipbuilding, petroleum refining, printing, and publishing. The Pudong commercial and industrial development zone, on the east bank of the Huangpu, was begun in the late 1980s.

III

Places of Interest

Shanghai is one of China’s major cultural and educational centres. The city has an orchestra, ballet troupe, several opera companies and film studios, and a circus. Among the institutions of higher education are Fudan University (1905) and Tongji University. Major museums include the Art and History Museum, with extensive collections of Chinese art; the Museum of Natural Sciences; and the Temple of the Jade Buddha. Other sites of interest include Yu Yuan, the garden of a 16th-century mandarin and the Garden of the Purple Clouds of Autumn, a park laid out during the Ming dynasty. Shanghai's most famous landmark is Zhong Shan Road: also known as the Bund or the Waitan, it is a boulevard along the Huangpu River lined with parks and European-style buildings constructed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

IV

History

Founded in the 11th century, Shanghai remained a small fishing village for centuries. From the 18th century the town prospered as the centre of a cotton-growing area, but it did not become important until after 1842 when the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) opened it to foreign trade. The peace treaty, a result of the Opium War with Great Britain, provided for the incorporation of a greater part of the city into the British Concession. Subsequently, other nations, including France and the United States, obtained extraterritorial rights and privileges; the foreign zones maintained their own administration. Major European banks and trading companies set up in the concessions, and commerce flourished after the British obtained navigation rights on the Yangzi in 1857. By 1860 Shanghai was China's busiest port, accounting for a quarter of the country's total maritime trade. From the 1890s foreign capital promoted local industry, drawn by the supply of cheap labour, which flocked to Shanghai.

A growing Chinese resistance to foreign domination was manifested in the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist party, which was held in the city in 1921. In 1927, with the help of the Communists, the Nationalist army, led by Chiang Kai-shek, captured Shanghai and placed the Chinese section under the Kuomintang government, soon suppressing the Shanghai Communists. The city was occupied by the Japanese from 1937 to 1945. At the end of World War II Shanghai was returned to China, as the United States, Great Britain, and France had renounced their claims. In 1949 the city was captured by Communist forces. During the early 1950s, in an attempt to decentralize industry, many of Shanghai's factories were moved to the interior. This policy was reversed by the late 1950s, and Shanghai once again began to thrive as an industrial centre. It also provided several national leaders, such as Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing and Jiang Zemin, who began his career in local administration and became Communist party secretary in Shanghai before becoming national secretary in 1989, and subsequently state president.

During the Cultural Revolution, Shanghai was convulsed by feuds between rival factions and the government of the city was replaced by an army-directed committee; the civilian government was restored in 1979. In the early 1980s the series of economic reforms masterminded by Deng Xiaoping led to a dramatic increase of industrial output and foreign investment, particularly after 1990, when the central government gave local administration full freedom to promote development and create a counterweight to Hong Kong. In the early 1990s, a number of large public works projects—including an elevated six-lane highway, new bridges, an underground railway network, and many residential buildings—were begun to continue the city's economic expansion. Extensive redevelopment, including destruction of much of the old city, centred on the Pudong development zone across the river from the Bund; by the mid-1990s Shanghai was effectively the flagship of China's free market economic reform programme. That status was confirmed in 2002, when it was announced that the city would host the International World's Fair and Exposition in 2010. Shanghai’s transport system was significantly enhanced when, in December 2002, a magnetic levitation (maglev) train was launched between the city centre and the Pudong International Airport; during the 30-km (19-mi) journey the train develops a speed of more than 430 km/h (267 mph).