Policing Shanghai, 1927–1937 by Frederic Wakeman Jr

Upon taking power in 1927, the Nationalists chose Shanghai to showcase their ability to govern and thus undercut the premise of foreign privilege in China. Bringing order to this famed metropolis with modern, professional policing would lend the new regime both domestic and international legitimacy. Frederic Wakeman's Policing Shanghai demonstrates the difficulty of undertaking such a task in a city as complex as Shanghai, with its heavy foreign and communist presence, permeable international port, and vulnerability to outside attack. An obsession with eliminating the communists (distracting police from normal police duties), the constant threat of the Japanese armed forces (leading to the militarization of the police), the corrosive participation in the opium trade and cooperation with criminal organizations (destroying the regime's domestic legitimization) sabotaged this effort. The Nationalists, Wakeman persuasively argues, failed by the standards they set for themselves

China · Chose · Communism · Legitimacy · Militarization · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Premise · Privilege (computing) · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy

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