Shanghai

Shanghai (上海 pinyin shang4 hai3) is China's largest city and is situated on the banks of the Chang Jiang delta. In China, Shanghai is also known as Hu4 (滬) and Shen1. Administratively Shanghai is a self-governing city which gives its city government provincial status.

After the Opium War in the mid-19th Century, Shanghai became one of the five treaty ports and served as a major gateway to inland China. It was the biggest financial city in the Far East. After 1949, however, most foreign firms moved their offices from Shanghai to Hong Kong. During the 1950's and 1960's, Shanghai became an industrial center and center for revolutionary leftism. After the start of Chinese economic reform in the 1980's, Shanghai's role as economic center was eclipsed by southern provinces such as Guangdong who were more free to experiment with economic liberalization. In the 1990's, the central government under Jiang Zemin began to invest heavily in Shanghai in order to both promote it as the economic hub of east Asia and to encourage its role as gateway of investment to the Chinese interior.

Shanghai and Hong Kong have had a recent rivalry over which city is to be economic center of China. Hong Kong has the advantage of a stonger legal system and greater banking and service expertise. Shanghai has stronger links to the Chinese interior and to the central government in addition to a stronger manufacturing and technology base.

Shanghai now is the biggest and most developed city in China. The official registered population is about 16 million, however it is believed that there is an large unregistered floating population of economic migrants from the Chinese interior which may number several million.

Shanghai is the financial and cultural center of China. It is also developing at a very fast rate, approximately 12 per cent every year.

The local dialect of Shanghai is Shanghainese which is a version of Wu. The official language is Mandarin Chinese.

Shanghai has traditionally been seen as a stepping stone to positions within the Chinese central government. In the 1990's, there was often described a Shanghai clique which included the General Secretary Jiang Zemin and the premier Zhu Rongji. Shanghainese have been stereotyped by other Chinese as being pretentitious, arrogant, and morally untrustworthy. In turn, Shanghainese stereotype other Chinese as being uncultured country bumpkins.

Shanghai is bisected by the Huangpu River into two parts. Puxi is the old city, while development since the 1990's has been focused in Pudong. Shanghai has two international airports. Hongqiao and Pudong. It also has an excellent public transportation system and in contrast to other major Chinese cities has clean streets and surprisingly little air pollution.