National Settlement Research Articles

Starvation, Boom and Blockade in Shanghai

Under the sharp and continuing impact of pressures, both international and domestic, the city of Shanghai has been confronted since mid-1939 with problems of readjustment of the first magnitude. Among the factors present three were of major impor? tance. First, the value of the Chinese Readjustment dollar declined sharply in June and Imperative again in July. Then in September came war in Europe, and Britain and France began mobilizing the resources of their empires from London and Paris to Hongkong and Haiphong. And finally, Shanghai felt the effect of increasing Japanese pressure as the invaders intensified their effort to wrest quick returns from the occupied parts of the Yangtze delta. By the beginning of this year Shanghai had made an uneasy adjustment to an entirely new world scene and to the changed local conditions which had emerged since the summer of 1939. The situation thus created is too complex for generalizations about it to be easy, but developments during the first quarter of 1940 make it possible to distinguish three major features in the economic life of the city: grave hardship and some? times starvation for its Chinese workers; an apparent increase in the prosperity of its businessmen, Chinese and foreign; and for the foreign-controlled areas generally, a situation of virtual severance from the hinter? land created not only by Japanese pressure but by the policies of the Chinese National Government and the activities of Chinese guerrillas. None of these elements is new (they have been discussed in these pages many times in the past). But for political reasons conditions in Shanghai have now reached a point where even the wars of the East and West can no longer disguise the seriousness of the crisis. The population of the foreign-controlled part of the International Settlement and the French Concession is around 3.8 million at the present time. Huge In 1936, a peaceful year, it was around Population 1.5 million for the whole of the InterIncrease national Settlement and the French Concession. In 1938 it reached a peak of 5 million, mainly as a result of the influx of refugees from the non-foreign parts of Greater Shanghai and from other sections of the Yangtze delta. During 1938 there was in refugee camps an average of 500,000 per? sons; in 1939, 30,000 to 50,000. During 1939 industrial employment returned to prewar levels but quite evi? dently the amount of labor available far exceeded the prewar supply and refugee camps accommodated a mere fraction of the surplus. Though some of the refu? gees were wealthy, the vast majority were indigent and