The Shanghai Mind of the Western World The establishment of treaty ports going back to the unequal treaties, which concluded the Opium War on October 24th, 1960, created a largely colonial society within China, diminishing their sovereignty. It also proposed a 'treaty port mentality' or 'Shanghai Mind' as described by American journalist, Arthur Ransome, in a 1927 editorial from the newspaper, the Chinese Puzzle. In the essay, Ransome argues that the combination of ethnocentrism, arrogance, and racism from British Shanghai led to the events of May 30th, otherwise known as the May 30th Tragedy in China ('Wu-san Ch'an-an'). He described British policy as "controlling the bottle neck through which the bulk of the China trade must pass; they prosper upon it coming and going." In a reflection pertaining to the leadup to the anti-imperialist May 30th movement, an American journalist, Milly Bennet, wrote: The war had involved every major urban area in China, and badly damaged the rural infrastructure. As a result of the conflict the
Zhili-controlled government, backed by varied Euro-American business interests, was ousted from power by pro-
Japanese warlord
Zhang Zuolin, who installed a government led by the generally unpopular statesman
Duan Qirui in November 1924. Though victorious, the war left Zhang's central government bankrupt and Duan exercised little authority outside Beijing. Authority in the north of the country was divided between Zhang and
Feng Yuxiang, a
Soviet Union-backed warlord, and public support for the northern militarists soon hit an all-time low, with southerners openly disparaging provincial governors as
junfa (warlords). Shanghai's native Chinese were strongly unionised compared to other cities and better educated, and recognised their plight as involving lack of legal factory inspection, recourse for worker grievances or equal rights. Educated Chinese were also offended by the council's plan to introduce a new
censorship law, forcing all publications in the Settlement to use the publisher's true name and address. In 1924, CCP cadres formed a night school in Hsiao-sha-tu bordering Shanghai; this would later turn into the Fu-hsi kung-jen chih-lo-pu, or, The Western Shanghai Workers' Club (). During early months of 1925, strikes on those matters intensified. A cotton-mill worker, Sun Liang-hio, a CCP member, was the head of the Western Shanghai Workers' Club. During the early months of 1925, strikes on those matters intensified.
Japanese-owned cotton mills were a source of contention, and disputes between Japanese owners and Chinese employees around the #8 Cotton Mill became regular occurrences. In February that year, a dispute between Chinese workers at the No. 8 Mill of the Naigai Wata Kaisha and Japanese management concerning layoffs led to the KMT helping to form the Shanghai Cotton Mill Union during the strike (). Although matters were settled, the workers felt unsatisfied about the situation and sought a bigger victory. In early May, workers at Shanghai Naga Wata Kaisha company began striking again in an effort to force company management to negotiate. On 15 May, a Japanese guard employed by the company shot and killed a worker named Ku Chen-hung. The killing resulted in public outrage. The Shanghai Students Union began fundraising campaigns and delivered speeches condemning the killing. The Party also led strikes to shift from the economic struggle to a political struggle against Japanese imperialists and Chinese warlords, eventually turning into an anti-west movement more generally. A week after the killing, a group of students, heading for Gu's public "state" funeral and carrying banners, were arrested while traveling through the International Settlement. With their trial set for 30 May, various student organisations convened in the days before and decided to hold mass demonstrations across the International Settlement and outside the
Mixed Court. ==The Nanjing Road incident==