I rapporti tra gli stranieri e i nazionalisti nella Shanghai degli anni Trenta

During the period of the foreign concessions, the system of maintaining the public order and guarantee of security protection in Shanghai reflected the administrative structure of the city. Being it divided in three independent administrative zones (the International Concession; the French Concession; the Chinese city), each with a separate government system, there were also distinct policy organs in charged of the control of the respective jurisdiction area. Generally speaking, there was little collaboration among the three police forces, even between the English one and the French one – reflecting the different interests which characterized the administration of the two foreign concessions -, but especially between them and the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek. However, after a starting period of reciprocal diffidence, the anti-communist hysteria which obssessed the Nationalists at the beginning of the Thirties, encouraged the emergence of a kind of entente cordiale aimed at fighting a common enemy, i.e. the communists.