ABSTRACT
This chapter chooses Shanghai and San Francisco as subjects of the case studies for the obvious reasons: in Shanghai there resided largest concentration in China of Caucasian traders, civil servants, and intellectuals including missionaries; in San Francisco there lived large concentration of Chinese immigrants. The trend towards the degeneration of the foreign community in Shanghai began in the 1880s. In the centre of China's foreign trade, finance and light industries, the Shanghai bourgeoisie was divided into two, not entirely unconnected, sections– the compradore and national. The pattern of acculturation in Shanghai was not then one where the majority was to change the minority, but vice versa. International organizations with branches among Chinese communities all over the world, these secret societies yet had a surprisingly parochial political concern. The crime rate among the Chinese in the city had never been noticeably higher than that among any other ethnic group.
