2024/10/28 by Y C. Wang · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Chinese history and philosophy #China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance #Japanese History and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0963926824000609
openalex publication_date 2024/10/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract Slum clearances expose hostility between municipal authorities and residents fighting to claim urban space. In colonial contexts, these processes created conflicts between rulers and the ruled. Focusing on the ‘semi-colonial’ Shanghai International Settlement, this article examines interactions between the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) and slum-dwellers amid an evolving crisis of urban governance in the 1930s. This case-study, grounded in Shanghai’s complex socio-political climate, reveals how ordinary Chinese residents negotiated with the authorities and points to the frailties of semi-colonial governance, showing how the SMP deployed coercion only when it was unavoidable in slum clearances.