I was pursuing the origins of the modern political transparency concept yesterday and eventually landed at the un where a couple of searches there led to…
…which raised my eyebrows. If you spend a few minutes there after reading the following passage from The Last Kings of Shanghai yours might too. The pertinent part is hi-lited in bold below.
…By 1895, Shanghai had a modern tram system and gas works that rivaled London’s. By the 1930’s, led by taipan Victor Sassoon, it had skyscrapers and a skyline that rivaled Chicago’s. It was the fourth largest city in the world. While the rest of the world sank into the Great Depression, Chiang Kai-sheck’s government worked with the Sassoons to stabilize the currency and create an export boom. Shanghai became China’s New York, the capital of finance, commerce and industry. It also became China’s Los Angeles, the capital of popular culture. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Shanghai’s publishing houses produced more than 10,000 pamphlets, newspapers and magazines. It’s film studios churned out hundreds of films, many of them set in the westernized city. Colleges flourished.So did politics. The International Concession of Shanghai was governed like a republic of business. A seven-member council made up of businessmen, independent representatives of the Sassoons, ran the city independent of Chinese law. Paradoxically, that meant a relatively liberal political atmosphere – protecting Chinese activists, reformers, and radicals from heavy handed Nationalist-Chinese-government restrictions on free speech, communism and protests. What would become Mao Zedong’s Communist Party held its first meeting in Shanghai, just a few miles from the business headquarters and mansions of the Sassoons Kadoories…
I don’t believe in coincidences anymore; let’s just call Shanghai practice for things they plan to happen.