Weihaiwei Under the Union Jack: An Odd Little British Enclave in China

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Military history, Regional History

Weihai City is a commercial port and major fishing centre jutting out on the north-easternmost tip of Kiaochow Peninsula in Shandong province. Geographically it is the southern point guarding the entrance to the Gulf of Zhili (Bohai) and the maritime route to Tianjin, the gateway to Beijing. Up until 1895 Weihai or Weihaiwei as it was formerly known was the China’s base for it’s Beiyang Fleet (Northern Seas Fleet). That year the port city was taken by the Japanese in the Jiawu War (First Sino-Japanese War).

⇓ Liugong Is. Chinese naval memorial

Britain’s motives for securing a port at Weihaiwei
Britain in the late 19th century was one of several European powers jockeying for territorial possessions in China. Weihaiwei was important to the diplomats in Whitehall, not so much because it had a deep-sea port (the British already had Hong Kong, to which they added the New Territories in 1898), but as a strategic buffer to other great powers in China. Early in 1898 the Chinese government leased Qingtao (Tsingtao) in southern Shandong province to Germany and the Liaoning Peninsula to Russia (which included the geopolitically important Lüshunkou, renamed by the Russians “Port Arthur”). Acquiring Weihaiwei in 1898 gave Britain a strategic foothold on the mainland to counterbalance the presence of the Germans and the Russians✲. Britain’s lease, it said, would last until the Russians pulled out of Port Arthur. However when Russia withdrew from Port Arthur in 1905, Britain stayed in Weihaiwei, mainly because another rival, Japan, took its place.

⇓1st Chinese Regiment, Weihaiwei

(Picture: www.history-chron.com)

The British War Office took charge of administering Weihaiwei (the capital of which was called Port Edward) locating it’s naval base just off the port at Liugong Island (Liu-Kung-Tao). A garrison of 200 British men (who saw service in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in Peking) and a local Chinese regiment was stationed at Pt Edward [‘Wei-Hai-Wei Police’, (Harry Fecitt), Gentleman’s Military International Club, 11-Nov-2008, www.gmic.co.uk].The Navy’s plans for a base in the mould of Hong Kong turned topsy-turvy when Port Edward was found to be unsuitable either as a major navy base or as a trading port. Administration of the territory was passed from the War Office to the Colonial Office which appointed a civilian commissioner to take charge [‘Weihaiwei under British Rule’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. The Navy retained a presence at Port Edward using it mainly as it’s China Station for summer anchorage∎.

A peculiar British enclave
As British overseas entities go, Weihaiwei was quite atypical. First, it was a leased territory, a legal occupancy, but not a colony like Hong Kong. Britain had no sovereignty over Weihaiwei or it’s Chinese population. Unlike Hong Kong Chinese residents, the Chinese in Pt Edward could not achieve UK citizenship. From 1898 to 1930 Weihaiwei remained a Chinese territory with the British exercising “exclusive jurisdiction over a Chinese population”. Another difference from the colonial model: Hong Kong’s top office-holder was the governor, whereas Port Edward’s administration was headed up by “a lowly commissioner”⌖ [Reviews of British Rule in China: law and justice in Weihaiwei, 1898-1930, by Carol G S Tan, (2008), (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Peter Wesley-Smith, Vol. 49, 2009; Li Chen, Law and History Review, Vol. 28, 2010)].

A quiet, unassuming ‘backwaters’
With British ambitions for Pt Edward scaled down considerably, the navy and the civil administration—both largely doing their own thing—settled down for a long and uneventful tenure in Shandong province. Weihaiwei’s mild summer climate (compared to the hotter climes in Peking and Hong Kong) free of malaria, allowed the Navy to use the locale for the pursuit of rest and recreation for UK personnel serving in China⌂ (Weihaiwei under British Rule’, Wiki). The British civil servants posted to Weihaiwei also enjoyed these relaxed conditions. Commissioner Lockhart, who spent nearly 19 years running the post, spent the bulk of his leisure time horse-riding and playing golf (Lethbridge).

⇓ Comm. Lockhart with some local headmen (1909) (Picture: National Galleries Scotland)

Relations with the local population
Lockhart’s tenure as civil commissioner from 1902 defined the pattern for the leasehold’s duration. A standardised tax-collecting system utilising the headmen of Weihai villages was established. The commissioner made sure that the enclave’s expenditure never exceeded that of revenue while implementing a modest program of reforms to education and infrastructure. Lockhart was able to administer Weihaiwei largely unencumbered…being free to govern unilaterally as there was no legislative council in the territory acting as a check on his actions. Lockhart, as a dedicated Sinologist, established a rapport with the middle-class Chinese merchants. He adopted an approach to the local community that was prudent and pragmatic, generally leaving them to run their own political and economic affairs at the village level. The Chinese headmen being conservative in nature in turn didn’t cause any undue problems for the commissioner (Wesley-Smith; Lethbridge).

Retrocession of Weihaiwei
In 1930 the lease expired on Weihaiwei, Britain handed back the territory to China and removed its garrison. By agreement Britain was allowed to retain certain buildings and facilities on Liugong Island for use by the British Navy for a further 10 years. Britain retained some personnel on the island using it only during winter…meanwhile the golf course activities continued. The day after the extended lease was up in 1940, a band of Japanese soldiers occupied Weihaiwei. Britain protested this action, contending that it had optioned a further extension on Liugong Island, but with larger issues to deal with didn’t press the matter. The remaining British personnel including the surgeon-commander were evacuated [‘Weihaiwei Withdrawal: Rights Reserved by Britain’, The Straits Times, 08-Dec-1940, www.eresources.nib.gov.sg]

Note: the last UK administrator of Weihaiwei, Reginald Fleming Johnston, had been a tutor and adviser to China’s last emperor, Pu-Yi.

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

Weihaiwei British Leasehold, 1898-1930. Capital: Port Edward.
288 square miles (including Liugong Island, 3.16 square miles)
Population (1901) >120,000 European portion <200 (Li Chen)


✲ the British pressured China into the lease of Weihaiwei, doing so after the Japanese withdrew their forces, but apparently after overcoming some reservations within Westminster (Wei Peh T’i, Review of British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers, by Pamela Atwell, (1985), Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol. 27, 1987)
∎ although it did function also as a free port until 1923
⌖ although one biographer of Commissioner Lockhart equated it with the rank of lieutenant-governor (Lethbridge, Henry James. “SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART: COLONIAL CIVIL SERVANT AND SCHOLAR.” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 12, 1972, pp. 55–88. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23881565. Accessed 4 Apr. 2020)
⌂ today under the PRC Weihai is a health and convalescence town

Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding?

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Media & Communications, Medical history, Natural Environment, Politics

Lockdown immediately, quarantine everyone, isolate the virus? Close the borders! Go hard, go fast! Make haste slowly! Laissez-faire? Test as many as you can! Watch and wait, hold off, preserve the economy, keep people working! Half/half?Herd immunity? As the experts—both recognised and putative—come out of the woodwork, a plethora of different approaches to the 21st century’s greatest crisis are thrown up, causing ever deeper descent into confusion for those of us watching from the sidelines.

Sweden: Personal responsibility to do the right thing, fingers and toes crossed
At one extreme there’s the “hands-off” non-interventionist line adopted by Sweden…”a relatively relaxed strategy, seemingly assuming that overreaction is more harmful than under-reaction” – in other words, keep calm and carry on. The Swedish government’s goal being to build up a “herd immunity” of the population to (they hope) forestall further waves of infection. The blueprint involves letting the virus spread slowly while sheltering the old and weakest elements of society until the bulk of the population become naturally immune. So schools, restaurants, bars and gyms remain open, all places that many other countries have ’hot-spotted’ as potential petri dishes (to use of the media’s current favourite buzzword in the virus crisis). Critics of the Swedish voluntary approach have stressed the risks it is exposing itself to – a danger of overwhelming the health system’s capability and precipitating large numbers of premature deaths [‘Inside Sweden’s Radically Different Approach to the Coronavirus’, (Bojan Pancevski), Wall Street Journal, 30-Mar-2020, www.wsj.com; ‘Sweden under fire for ‘relaxed’ coronavirus approach – here’s the science behind it’, The Conversation, (PW Frank & PM Nilsson), 30-Mar-2020, www.mamamia.com.au]. While Sweden persists in it’s “long game”, Sweden’s death toll from coronavirus has reached 239❈, a far-from-inconsequential figure for a small population nation like Sweden (and more than double the next highest total of fatalities in the Nordic region, that of Denmark). Not happy, Scandinavian neighbours of Sweden!

🔺 Boris in isolation – self-sacrificing crash-test dummy for the nation, gauging the coronavirus level of virulence: “taking one for the nation!” (Picture: No 10 Downing Street/AFP)

Boris, not dancing
The UK government in the early stages of the crisis, along with the Netherlands, flirted with adopting Sweden’s herd immunity approach, but subsequently (and belatedly) opted for lockdown. The UK number of cases and mortality rates continue to rise alarmingly (2,352 dead❈) and it’s citizens can draw little reassurance from the antics of its erratic Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson. At the onset the insouciant Johnson downplayed the epidemic and declared that he was all for shaking hands with as many people as he could (his Churchillian bluff AKA confidence-building strategy?) This didn’t prove a good move, personally for the prime minister, as he was soon struck down with the virus (recalling wistfully whilst in self-quarantine that shaking hands with some people at a hospital, who with hindsight probably had coronavirus, probably wasn’t a good idea).

(Photo: AP)

China’s southern neighbours
Taiwan and Singapore both got early warning of the outbreak in China, which helped them get an early start on their countries’ protective measures. Taiwan, at the get-go, posted health workers at airports – incoming passengers from Wuhan (the virus’ origin-point) were checked for symptoms before they exited the planes. Singapore on January 3, inside four days of China’s notification to WHO of an unknown virus, which later was confirmed to be the COVID pathogen, was temperature screening passengers arriving from Wuhan. Taiwan and Singapore were also in a better state of preparedness (than say northern Asian countries bordering China like South Korea and Japan which initially struggled with their respective outbreaks) The two southeast Asian micro-states had learned invaluable lessons from the 2003 SARS and the 2009 swine epidemics. That the Singaporean and Taiwanese governments were upfront and transparent with the public, also got everyone in society quickly on board with the “national project”. The death toll for both Taiwan and Singapore stands well short of double figures❈ [‘How Taiwan and Singapore Have Contained the Coronavirus’, (Chloe Hadavas), Slate, 11-Mar-2020, www.slate.com].

(Photo: AP)

Continental contrast
The European comparison of how different countries have handled the virus focuses largely on a Germany v Italy correlation – unfortunately to the great disadvantage of the latter. Angela Merkel and Germany have been able to restrict their coronavirus fatalities thus far to 931❈, compared to Italy’s out-of-control, frighteningly catastrophic 13,155 deaths❈. The reasons for the size of discrepancy are manifold. First as with Taiwan Germany was ready at the outset, comparatively Italy wasn’t. Germany went to social distancing and lockdown early while Italy prevaricated, and Italy was also slow to seal it’s borders. Anticipation paid off for Germany, it had developed a favourable type of test for the virus before it hit. They then tested fast and widely. Italy was slower off the mark, and it’s testing regime was (and is) half or less that of Germany’s capacity. Integral to Germany’s edge is its medical infrastructure, the ratios are stark: Germany has 33.9 hospital beds for every 100,000 of population, cf. Italy, only 8.6 per 100,000. So, by the time Italy got its testing into full swing, the country was swamped with way too many corona-patients requiring critical and urgent treatment. Italy’s age demographic, skewed towards the geriatric end of the scale (second oldest population in the world after Japan) was also a decisive factor in the extremely high mortality rates it has experienced [‘How one country got months ahead of its neighbours in coronavirus fight’, (AP), Yahoo!News, 02-Apr-2020].

Life on Planet Trump 
In the US a reasonable expectation the citizens of the world’s leading democratic-capitalist state might normally entertain in such a disastrous crisis, would be to have mature, insightful national leadership. Instead, they have Trump! Countless reems of pages of news-copy have been wasted on the US president, but to briefly summarise his Covid-19 performance: at the start in January we got the glib and blasé Trump – “the virus was one person coming from China and we’ve got it under control”; by February it was, we had “pretty much shut it down” (somehow he thought it was over before it had hardly started taking root!?!); next he opined “warm weather will kill it in April”; “the numbers are going down” (said after public health officials had advised the White House that the virus was spreading); by late February it was “we have lost nobody to coronavirus” (there had already been US fatalities). In March Trump, rebuked for repeatedly spreading misinformation, resorted to “it’s the Democrats’ new hoax”; then, “it will disappear one day – like a miracle!” which perhaps demonstrates one of Trump’s rare threads of consistency, drawing a link to the president’s later assertion (completely tone-deaf to the message of social distancing and ignorant of realistic timeframes) that he wanted to see the churches in America full at Easter!✪ [‘Coming Soon: Donald Trump As the Hero of COVID-19”, (Richard North Patterson), The Bulwark, 23-Mar-2020, www.thebulwurk.com].

(Photo: CBS News)

Perhaps the most striking and alarming example of Trump’s off-the-cuff and off-the-rails raves is his wilful and flagrant ignoring of the professional advice of his top medical advisers, eg, “anyone who wants a test can have one” (wrong); “we’ll have vaccines relatively soon…they’re coming” (even the non-scientific layperson knows it will take at least one to one-and-a-half years to be publicly available); “we have tremendous control of the virus”, completely contradicting Dr Fauci’s starkly realistic warning that the worst is ahead of us. The consequences of Trump’s disregarding scientific truths provided by medical experts in favour of convenient misinformation has been downright dangerous. His advocacy of an unproven coronavirus treatment (chloroquine phosphate) still being scientifically reviewed was a causal factor leading to the death of a man who tried to self-medicate using the ‘treatment’.

Trump, master of the ad hominem at the lectern, recently on TV seems bored with the subject, maybe looking round for a new focus (Iran?). Trump as president takes no responsibility. When he should be uniting all the key cogs in a coherent national response to the corona-crisis which is killing hundreds of Americans every day, he has been his divisive worst, brawling with the media, attacking medical workers for supposedly hoarding supplies, shifting blame to state governors. Fortunately, governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom and Washington’s Jay Inslee, recognising the gaping gap in leadership and the lack of support coming from the White House, have risen to the mammoth and increasingly desperate challenge facing the country and taken the lead in the crisis [‘History’s verdict on Trump will be devastating’, (Michael D’Antonio), CNN, 30-Mar-2020, www.cnn.com].

(Photo: Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The “Trump of the Tropics” 
Trump’s abject performance, his “epochal incompetence” (to quote Michael D’Antonio), in the crisis, is bad enough for the risks he has exposed Americans to, but his influence as a “role model” for far-right leaders in other countries, is helping to undermine those countries’ fight against the virus. One such leader is Brazil’s authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro who expresses profound admiration for Trump (hence his nickname above), whose skepticism for the virus’ threat Bolsonaro mirrors. Bolsonaro has publicly dismissed the coronavirus as “a little cold”, refuses to isolate and continues to attend public events, irresponsibly mingling with crowds of his supporters, shaking hands with all❖. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has tended to “flip-flop” on the epidemic, lunging erratically from urging Brazilians to show caution in avoiding transmission of the disease (do as I say, not do as I do!) to calling for an end to the quarantine restrictions and removal of the shackles on the economy.

When confronted with the danger of the virus to Brazilian society, Bolsonaro rivals Trump in loopy explanations, eg, Brazilians possess a “natural immunity” which means that they cannot be infected by diseases❅ (part of the Bolsonaro fantasy playbook!) So far, despite these unique ‘antibodies’ claimed by Bolsonaro, some 244 Brazilians have died from coronavirus❈. The Brazilian president has also exhibited the Trump trait of disbelieving the medical experts and the official statistics. When São Paulo recorded a sharp spike in deaths from the virus, Bolsonaro was quick to cast doubts on the numbers. The governors of São Paulo and Rio are two of the most vocal critics of his lax approach to the crisis, in return Bolsonaro blames the state governors for their concerted measures to halt the disease, labelling their efforts ‘criminal’ [‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro makes life-or-death coronavirus gamble’, (David Biller), Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].

🔺 Bolsonaro, unsafe at any distance?

Some analysts have noted the element of political calculation in Bolsanaro’s hard line on the epidemic. The Brazilian leader’s may feel that if he can take the economy (still feeling the severe effects of the 2015/16 recession) to the next elections in good health, the voters may be less concerned about the country’s death toll from coronavirus (David Biller). Mexico’s president, López Obrador, is singing from a similar hymn-sheet as Bolsonaro. Obrador contends that the severity of the virus has been overstated, and has been quoted as saying that personally he would rely on his (lucky) amulets to keep him safe [‘In Brazil and Mexico, Leaders Downplay Dangers of Virus Outbreak’, Latino USA, 26-Mar-2020, www.latinousa.org].

🔺 President Lukashenko, national leader, sportsman, tractor enthusiast

Belarus, 2020 global sporting capital
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko is another head of state professing an admiration for the US president and similarities in style can be observed. Lukashenko has launched the small East European country on a novel path to (supposedly) combat the deadly virus – a cocktail of sport, cold, vodka and saunas. The Belarus government has vetoed lockdowns and social isolation to counter coronavirus, and it is just about the only place in the world that hasn’t discontinued sporting events. The Tokyo Olympics have been canned for 2020 but crowds still flock to football matches in Belarus. The remarkable leader himself, leading by example, recently participated in an ice hockey game. Likewise, the annual victory parade scheduled for May is still all systems go! In addition to spruking sport (and would you believe, “tractor-riding” in the countryside⊞) as antidotes to the virus, the Belarusian president recommends drinking vodka and taking saunas, whilst reassuring Belarusian citizens that God will protect the country from the global pandemic, adding the rider that Belarus’ icy cold climate will also do the job [‘“Reckless” World Leader says vodka and saunas will protect people from coronvirus’, (James Hawkins), The Mirror, 30-Mar-2020, www.mirror.co.uk].

Postscript: Crisis climate – encroaching on democratic rights? 
While the pandemic continues to rage, the politics don’t abate. All countries trying to restrict the movements of their citizens have enacted emergency measures to try to confine the pathogen. Most countries have closed their borders and some have legislated the power to detain people. The fear for advocates of civil liberties is that the more authoritarian states may use the new arrangements to move towards martial law. Regimes cross the globe have enacted new powers, ostensibly to protecting the public, but at the same time with the effect of protecting themselves from public and press scrutiny and accountability [‘”Coronavirus” profound threat to democracy’, (Noah Millman), The Week, 01-Apr-2020, www.theweek.com]. In Hungary the right-wing Orbán government has suspended existing laws, by-passing the parliament to allow president Viktor Orbán to rule by decree (with no end date). Thailand has taken the opportunity to censor the nation’s news media (suing and intimidating journalists who criticise the government’s handling of the crisis). Turkmenistan has taken the unusual approach to the pandemic of banning all use of the word ‘coronavirus’ by it’s citizens and state-controlled media✧. According to Radio Free Europe‘s Turkmenistan watch group, people talking about the virus or wearing masks in public could be arrested by the authoritarian regime which claims to have had no confirmed cases of the virus…as Turkmenistan shares a border with coronavirus-ravaged Iran this claim is viewed from outside with extreme skepticism. President Berdymukhamedov✜, not to be outdone for whacky coronavirus remedies, has recommended inhaling smoke from a burning desert-region plant (Vanguard) [’For Autocrats and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’, (Selma Gebrekidian), New York Times, 30-Mar- 2020, www.nytimes.com; ‘Coronavirus: The unusual ways countries are managing lockdowns’, BBC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.bbc.co.uk].

🔻 President Berdymukhamedov, safe distancing not on the agenda here! (Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)

 

╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍

❈ as at 1000 hours, Greenwich M-T, 02-Apr-2020
◘ faced with an overwhelming dose of reality, “Flip-Flop Man” Trump has been forced to pivot 180° away from this…now the White House is acknowledging the health authorities’ dire, nightmarish predictions, (‘US predicts up to 240,000 deaths even with social distancing’, ABC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.abc.net.com.au)
✪ the secular and materialistic lifestyle Trump follows, nay revels in, contrasts conspicuously with the image he tries to sow in the minds of the American public and especially the Religious Right, of him as piously religious
❖ Bolsonaro himself has apparently tested twice for coronavirus but won’t publish the results
❅ including the notorious assertion by Bolsonaro that they “can swim in raw sewerage and not catch a thing” – in effect this is what he is doing to Brazilians with his cavalier policy
⊞ the Belarusian president was quoted as saying: “There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone.” (tractors are apparently something of a fetish item in Belarus!)(‘Belarusian president proposes ‘tractor’ therapy for coronavirus’, Vanguard, 16-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com)
✧ Turkmenistan is ranked by Paris-based RSF (Reporters Without Borders) as the country with the least press freedom in the world
✜ Berdymukhamedov has an exalted status in Turkmenistan, being seen as the Arkadag (protector of the people)

Green Gang: Boatmen, Salt Smugglers, Secret Society, Triad and Social Organisation

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Regional History, Social History

The Green Gang (Qing Bang) was a Chinese form of mafia organisation based in Shànghâi, best known for their activities in the 1920s and 1930s as a web of street gangs. The career of their paramount leader, Du Yuesheng, has been well documented in a previous blog, The Emperors of Vice and Crime of Shànghâi‘s Yesteryear (February 2020). But the origins of the gang (which might be more usefully thought of as a clique) were rooted in a specific type of brotherhood associated with boatmen in the early Qing Dynasty (17th-18th centuries).

The story starts with “three sworn brothers”, Weng Yan, Qian Jian and Pan Qing, who won a contract from Emperor Yongzheng (Yinzhen) to manage the transport of grain materials on the Yellow River (Grand Canal) route in Old China. The trio went on to form an association of boatmen which utilised Luojiao principles (Buddhist sect) to attract workers. The organisation that evolved on the Canal was a kind of professional trade federation dedicated to serving the interests of it’s waterborne employees (including the use of strong-arm tactics to protect them from corrupt officials and local thugs) [Brian G Martin, The Shànghâi Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919-1937, (1996)].

🔺 The Grand Canal

Over time, the structure took on a quasi-government character with specific departments formed to handle different functions. It also evolved into a secret society with very strict membership criteria involving a seven-year process before members would be fully admitted. The society’s activities earned the ire of the authorities and was driven underground. After experiencing disruptions in the Grand Canal trade the business eventually dissolved [‘Shanghai’s Shadowy Green Gang’, (Sun Jiahui), (The World of Chinese), 28-Aug-2015, www.theworldofchinese.com].

But the society and the boatmen adapted to the changes, segueing into the salt smuggling business in northern Jiangsu Province – in the process forming a new organisation, Anqing Daoyou (literally “Friends of the Way of Tranquility and Purity”), which was a direct forerunner to the modern Green Gang organisation (‘Shanghai’s Shadowy Green Gang’).

Green versus Red
For a brief period in the early 20th century the Green Gang shared the underworld spotlight in Shànghâi  with a rival body, the Red Gang (Hong Gang)❇. In the years of the early republic the ‘Reds’ managed to establish “a complete monopoly over the illicit trade of (Shànghâi) opium” in cooperation with the Green Gang and the Big Eight Mob (the ubiquitous Green Gang boss Huang Jirong had links to the Red Gang)[‘Shanghai’s Gangs in the Early 20th Century’, (Clay Capra), 10-Dec-2018, www.umdjanus.com]. By the 1920s the ‘Greens’ by themselves were a formidable mob organisation in Shànghâi, trafficking in opium, using stand-over tactics to intimidate workers and business owners [‘The Green Gang of Shanghai’, (Pat Welsh), (China Insight), 01-Nov-2013, www.chinainsight.info].

Du and the KMT 
Huang (and his wife Lin Guisheng) elevated Du Yuesheng to a leadership position in Green Gang based in the French Concession area, from which he never looked back. The Green Gang formed an interesting two-way relationship with the KMT (Kuomintang), it received protection from the KMT and was given a free hand to carry on it’s various illegal business activities in Shànghâi. In return the Green Gang smuggled weapons and money (eg, opium profits) to the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek✡ co-opted Du’s Green Gang in the suppression of the communist element in Shànghâi in 1927 (up to 5,000 communist opponents of Chiang liquidated). Chiang and the Nationalist government—with only a nominal hold over the country—needed the support of local warlords and drug lords like Du as much as they needed the KMT’s imprimatur [Derks, Hans. History of the Opium Problem: The Assault on the East, Ca. 1600-1950. Vol. 105, Brill, 2012. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv4cbhdf. Accessed 21 Feb. 2020].

🔺 Chiang Kai-shek

A secret society of gangsters and a …
The Green Gang was a criminal confederation of leviathan proportions, a Chinese Triad coordinating a wide network of individual gangs with connections to powerful and influential figures in Shànghâi. But another arm of the organisation had a social welfare role through membership of the secret societies. Peasants for example who were driven off their land and into the city could find aid in the banghui – a “mutual help group” [‘Green Gang’,  www.streetsofshanghai.pbworks.com; ’History of the Opium Problem’].

Footnote: Drawing the curtain on the Green Gang
With the defeat and flight of Chiang’s KMT in 1949, the Green Gang also fled Shànghâi for Hong Kong where it opened up heroin refineries, but couldn’t establish itself in the market against the stiff competition of the local drug syndicates in HK. By 1955 Qing Bang had disappeared from the scene [‘Green Gang’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/].

 

 

↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬↬

❇ at one point the two gangs were allied
✡ Chiang himself may have been a member of the Green Gang during the years he lived in Shànghâi, however the evidence is hazy on this (‘Shanghai’s Shadowy Green Gang’)

The Emperors of Vice and Crime of Shànghâi‘s Yesteryear

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Popular Culture, Regional History, Social History

This piece in the China Daily Show caught my eye recently…”the first season of CSI’s much-anticipated ‘Shanghai’ spin-off has been cancelled, after scriptwriters failed to take into account the East Coast city’s complete absence of crime”. It goes on to say, “plotlines involving corruption, sexual harassment and high-end ergotou[𝕒] were shelved after quality-control cadres for the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) cited an ’insufficient suspension of disbelief’ for viewers”[𝕓].

🔺 The formula: the standard Shànghâi period crime series

This amused me, less for the satirical tone inherent in the piece (CSI detectives investigating “high level wok theft”), but because every time I switch on the television in China and flick through the drama offerings on China’s subscription network,  a more than healthy proportion of the fare seems to be fixated on 1930s Shànghâi noir and underground crime gangs.

Chinese television entertainment csars of course trade on the viewing public’s nostalgia for a past time where Shànghâi pulsated to a rhythm of decadence, glamorous nightspots and ostentatious ritzy opulence, counterposed against an underbelly of sin, gangland warfare and corrupt police. While these television series, such as the popular Meng’s Palace and New Bund, are pure and typically exaggerated fictions, the sources of their invention were very real.

If the Shànghâi of the 1920s and ‘30s that we visited in the preceding blog deserves it’s glowing epithet, “the Paris of the South”, then it’s other sobriquet, “the whore of Asia”, to describe the seedy and violent underbelly of the same city, is every bit as applicable. The “freebooting capitalism” of Shànghâi in the interwar years[𝕔] and it’s rewards, spawned a wave of criminal activity with underworld bosses vying for a bigger piece of the city’s stupendous economic pie. Like the legitimate commercial powerhouses on the Bund, the gangland “Mr Big’s” were very much part of Shànghâi’s “movers and shakers”.

The Big Three?
The conventional view of Shànghâi‘s criminal underworld in the Twenties and Thirties is that there were three main gang chiefs who ran most of the show. This triumvirate of crime was made up of Du Yuesheng, Huang Jinrong and Zhang Xiaolin, …of the three gang bosses (san daheng), Zhang was of lesser significance, confined to playing a secondary role to Du. The older Huang was first to attain prominence, entering the French Concession police force and rising through the ranks to become police chief. From this advantageous post the corrupt Huang could play both sides and garner a cut of the criminal profits [𝕕].

Huang—Lin—Du
Huang was eventually dismissed from the FP constabulary which led to him going full-time as a criminal overlord. The sacked cop made his fortune with a scheme involving the stealing of incoming opium from the docks, which his gang then transported into Huang’s residence by a back entrance. Huang had the opium—which cost him zilch!—distributed throughout China through his Sanxin Company [‘Murder, Mayhem and Money’, (Ni Dandan), Global Times, 12-Mar-2013, www.globaltimes.cn]. It was the pockmarked Huang’s first wife (Lin Guisheng), an influential behind-the-scene figure in Shànghâi power circles, who provided the boost to the career of the third of the crime triumvirate. Madame Huang took on the young Du Yuesheng as a partner in a French Concession operation, the start of a business empire for Du which ultimately eclipsed that of her husband’s. Du’s power base and muscle was the much feared Green Gang, which numbered as many as 20,000 members at it’s zenith [‘Shanghai in the 1930s’, World History, http://world history.us].

Du and the Green Gang
“Big-eared” Du was a complex and fascinating figure in the Shànghâi underworld scene. As zongshi (grandmaster) of the local crime operation, he was ruthless in business and intimidating in method (he would despatch coffins to the houses of gangland rivals who had earned its displeasure as a grim warning). Yet he forbid members of his Qing Bang gang to violate women, the wealthy Du was generous and wrote off many debts owed him by friends. Du’s business scope was panoramic … opium dens, gambling shacks, prostitution rings strung out across the city, kidnapping, protection rackets, labour contracting, heroin and morphine labs, as well as more ‘legit’ activities. He also founded a boys’ school in the French Connection and was president of the Chinese Red Cross during the Sino-Japanese War. And, in a perverse twist, Du, having made a ‘motza’ from his cur of the proceeds of the opium monopoly, was ultimately made president of the “National Board of Opium Suppression Bureau”! [Derks, Hans. History of the Opium Problem: The Assault on the East, Ca. 1600-1950. Vol. 105, Brill, 2012. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv4cbhdf. Accessed 21 Feb. 2020].

Du’s political ties to the Chinese republic’s political elite
Du sided with Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists in the conflict against Mao’s communists, playing a role in the 1927 Shànghâi purge. After the Japanese invasion in 1937 Du fled to Hong Kong, a move which lost him goodwill in Shànghâi. After the war Du wanted to return to the city but was not welcomed back and died in Hong Kong exile [‘The three tycoons of gangsters’ Shanghai’, Timeout, 22-Mar-2016, www.timeoutshanghai.com].

It didn’t end in a happy story for the other two ‘tycoons’ either. When the Japanese army invaded, Xiaolin switched sides and aided the Japanese efforts to root out subversive (ie, anti-Japanese) elements in Shànghâi, making him a wanted man by the Nationalists. In 1940 he was executed by one of his own bodyguards. As for Huang, his ultimate downfall was the communists’ takeover in 1949. Stripped of his great wealth, Huang was forced to submit to “self-criticism” and take up lowly work as a street sweeper (‘The three tycoons’).

1932 Hochi map of Shànghâi🔺

A Mexican ‘godfather’ of Shanghai crime?
Another name—juxtaposed against that of Du—occupied a similar senior role in the gangland power structure in Shànghâi. Carlos Garcia, a Mexican who migrated to the fabled city of the east, carved out a lucrative (illicit) business shipping Mexican tequila via Shànghâi back to prohibition-hit California. He has been depicted as the closest thing the Shànghâi underworld of the day had to a “capo di tutti capi”[𝕖]…gang boss Garcia proved indispensable in his ability to adjudicate disputes and ensure that they didn’t develop into internecine gang warfare [‘The Canidrone Tower Gang’, Paul French, (‘That’s Shanghai’), 23-Sep-2019, www.thats,mag.com].

During the 1920s and 1930s it is estimated that there was some 100,000 gangsters in Shànghâi (around three percent of the city’s population at the time) [Brian G Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919-1937, (1996)]. The vice empires of Du and his ilk were built on control over the city’s prostitution, gambling and drug trade, especially opium.

The law-enforcers’ role
The city’s police, tempted by tangible graft and corruption all around, were inherently weak, explaining why Shànghâi fell prone to unchecked lawlessness and gangsterhood. Irredeemable “bad apples” like the discredited Huang thrived in the tainted civil police agencies of 1920s and ’30s Shànghâi. The individual carve-up of the city constabulary into three distinct and unrelated entities, added to the police’s overall inefficiency. Law enforcement suffered hugely as a result of the absence of a single, paramount city police force, making it very difficult for the police to operate strategically and cohesively to rein in the city’s countless ’villains’ [‘The Shanghai Settlements’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Endnote: Gangs of old Shànghâi
Carlos Garcia’s key role in the city’s crime business is a reminder of the importance of the non-Chinese element in the Shànghâi underworld.  As well as Garcia, there were other “blow-ins”, characters like ’Lucky’ Jack Riley. Riley, an escaped convict from the US, “lucked-in” in a big way on settling in the inter-war East Asian crime capital. Riley succeeded in cornering the Shànghâi slot machine market (patronised heavily by the foreign military personnel in residence), and with a Jewish criminal associate, he ran from a business from Shànghâi servicing prohibition-era America’s habit for heroin. Roaming the mean streets of 1930s Shànghâi were a host of multicultural gangs—Portuguese gangs, Spanish gangs, Mexican gangs, Jewish gangs, etc—giving the cosmopolitan edge of Shànghâi another dimension [‘Those Rogue Foreigners Ruled the Streets of 1930s Shanghai’, (Seth Ferrenti), Vice Media, 22-Jun-2018, www.vice.com].

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[𝕒] a white-coloured liquor (a type of baijiu) popular in China; literally ”second pot head”
[𝕓] “’CSI: Shanghai’ cancelled due to lack of crime”, (Ping’an Jiedao), China Daily Show, 20-Feb-2020, www.chinadailyshow.com
[𝕔] Ferranti: 2018
[𝕕]  of the several territorial police forces in Shànghâi, the French was the most corrupt – according to Bernard Wassermann, Secret War in Shanghai: Treachery, Subversion and Collaboration in the Second World War (2017, 2nd Ed.)
[𝕖] ”boss of bosses”