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AbstractIn 1937, bitter and brutal fighting raged for three months in and around the city, with intense bombardment from ships and planes. Within weeks, hundred of thousands of residents were thrown on to the streets and made homeless. This paper is concerned with the massive and sudden transformation of Shanghai residents into refugees and the consequences on the resources and management of the city. In the first part, I argue that 1937 created an entirely new situation no authority was prepared to meet because of the scope of the population exodus and to the actual blockade of the city. The second part is devoted to the refugee population, in both quantitative and qualitative terms. It examines who the refugees were—those who found refuge in camps—and why they did not reflect the normal structure of the local population. The last part is concerned with the challenges refugee camps had to face in maintaining a huge destitute population with limited resources in war-torn overcrowded urban space. War caused tremendous suffering among the civilian population, especially children, despite the fairly successful organisation of support by the authorities and private organisations.

This paper was prepared in 2000. I updated it for the AAS conference in 2002. All comments and suggestions welcome. It will be submitted to an academic journal. For quotations, please use the HAL URL. ; This paper establishes that during the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), the Central China areas came under various "state" schemes to control the production and sale of essential materials resources. The major actors were the Japanese army and its companies, and later on the various agencies set up by the Wang Jingwei government. This attempt at a "controlled economy" only led to a disorganization of the economy, widespread corruption and a waste of resources. Shanghai, the economic engine of the area, came to full paralysis by the end of 1944.

This paper was prepared in 2000. I updated it for the AAS conference in 2002. All comments and suggestions welcome. It will be submitted to an academic journal. For quotations, please use the HAL URL. ; This paper establishes that during the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), the Central China areas came under various "state" schemes to control the production and sale of essential materials resources. The major actors were the Japanese army and its companies, and later on the various agencies set up by the Wang Jingwei government. This attempt at a "controlled economy" only led to a disorganization of the economy, widespread corruption and a waste of resources. Shanghai, the economic engine of the area, came to full paralysis by the end of 1944.

This paper was prepared in 2000. I updated it for the AAS conference in 2002. All comments and suggestions welcome. It will be submitted to an academic journal. For quotations, please use the HAL URL. ; This paper establishes that during the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), the Central China areas came under various "state" schemes to control the production and sale of essential materials resources. The major actors were the Japanese army and its companies, and later on the various agencies set up by the Wang Jingwei government. This attempt at a "controlled economy" only led to a disorganization of the economy, widespread corruption and a waste of resources. Shanghai, the economic engine of the area, came to full paralysis by the end of 1944.

The liberation of women has been one of the priorities of the Chinese Communist Party since its foundation, with its sources in the evolution of ideas and the struggles that developed in urban China after the May Fourth movement. The Party, however, has put this ideal into practice only when it did not contradict the imperatives of revolution. The same holds true for prostitution: in 1949 the Party was eager to eliminate the most obvious forms of the exploitation of women, but practical measures were only carried out over several years. Article 6 of the Common Programme stated that "the People's Republic of China abolishes the feudal system that maintains women in slavery." Prostitution appears in the discourse of the Party as the worst form of exploitation, as exemplified in an editorial of Xin Zhongguo funii in December 1949: "Prostitution is a sequel to the savage and bestial system of former exploiters and power holders to ruin the spirit and the body of women and to tarnish their dignity."