Civil Society and Urban Change in Republican China

From the 1950s to the 1970s, historians′ approach to Republican China was informed by a predominant concern for Revolution. Scholarly priorities were focused on the early history of the Chinese Communist Party and on the socio-economic analysis of the countryside where the Chinese revolution had achieved its first success. Few publications were devoted to urban China. The Maoist regime until its end was seen to maintain a strong anti-urban stance. Great ex-treaty port cities were condemned for their past co-operation with foreign imperialism. In the West, the Republican era was often perceived as a confused interregnum between the Qing dynasty and the Communist Empire. And more than a few historians shared the views of their Chinese colleagues and featured big cities of the 1920s and 1930s as outposts of foreign economic exploitation and political oppression, as citadels of cultural arrogance.