Full reference | Fox, Josephine, “Common Sense in Shanghai: The Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and Political Legitimacy in Republican China”, (2000) |
Type | Journal article |
Author(s) | Fox, Josephine |
Title | “Common Sense in Shanghai: The Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and Political Legitimacy in Republican China”, |
Year | 2000 |
Journal | History Workshop Journal, |
Volume | 50 |
Start page | 23 |
End page | 44 |
Language | English |
Subject | History |
Keywords | political; elites:trade; commerce; state; power |
Abstract | In 1920's Shanghai, the chamber of commerce (founded in 1902 and dominated by the middle class with foreign interests) faced foreign hostility in its search for Chinese legitimacy, while outside Shanghai it sought political security by electing chairmen connected with one militarist or another. When Shanghai fell under the authority of Chiang Kai-shek's Guomindang in 1927, the chamber was excluded as a representative of organized business. This collapse of the "common sense" notion that full cooperation with the representatives of foreign enterprise in China was in the best interests of all Chinese can be seen as an archetype of the complexity of the conflicts between elite Chinese, nonelite Chinese, non-Chinese, the provincial military, and the Guomindang and Communist groups which plagued China after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. |
Support | Print |