Shanghai. Da concessione occidentale a metropoli asiatica del terzo millennio

The book analyzes the most significant events that have marked the history of the Chinese city, starting from the opening to the Western commerce and the constitution in its interior of Western enclaves, which have led to become, in the thirties of the Twentieth Century, the first port in the country, as well as his main political, economic and cultural center, with the reputation of "Paris of the East". The Japanese invasion, perpetrated since 1931 with the incident on the Manchurian rail and continued with the outbreak of the war between China and Japan in July 1937, inaugurates the decline of the international and cosmopolitan Shanghai. The arrival point of this study is today’s Shanghai, reawakened after a long period of eclipses imposed by the Maoist regime because of its past as outpost of Western domain in the East. The most famous of the Chinese cities is actually returned to be the "locomotive" of the development of the whole country, as well as its main intellectual and cultural center. Shanghai is taking again the features that make it unique, not only in China, but also in the rest of the world, proven by some recent important acknowledgments, first of all, the assignment of the organization of Expo 2010. The most internationalized metropolis of China is again a symbol, no longer of foreign imperialism and the consequent Chinese humiliation, but rather of the rebirth of the world's most populous country, of its dream of greatness and affirmation.