Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom

by Carl Crow

  This American settlement never had any official status, for the cession was never recognized by the American government. But because of it the present International Settlement came into existence. Finding that his government would not set up a little colony on the shores of China, the American consul salvaged what he could from his enterprise by a proposal that all three settlements be merged into one. After hopes had been raised that all three would join, the French decided to maintain their own separate existence. The British and Americans went ahead with their amalgamation but for more than a generation the two areas were referred to as the English settlement and the American settlement. It was not until many years after the amalgamation that the name International Settlement was generally adopted. Like many other things connected with this curious city, the name has no official status.

  Shanghai became an Anglo-American enterprise. Though British influence has been predominant, American residents have always shared the responsibility of government and a few of them have played an important part in the building of this remarkable city.

  While the English-speaking settlement has constantly become more international in character, the French concession has taken on more and more of the aspects of a French colony. Even the policemen in the French concession disdain any knowledge of English. There is no colonial governor, but the consul general exercises all of his functions. On the other hand the International Settlement has always been governed by its own residents. It is an aristocratic republic whose citizens owe allegiance to many flags but whose interests are inseparably bound up in the prosperity of the port. The tug of national interests has never been strong enough to interfere with what Shanghailanders thought to be best for Shanghai itself. In this may be found the principal reason for the great growth and prosperity of the International Settlement and the retarded development of the French concession which is actually but little more than a residential suburb for the sister municipality.

  The Chinese areas of Nantao are also little more than residential and industrial suburbs. The heart of Shanghai is the International Settlement, the city the foreign devils built. The problems of setting up a workable government were varied and complex. The Pilgrims, who were of the same stock as the British and Americans who founded Shanghai, landed on a rock-bound coast far from official authority. With no particular difficulty they drew up an ordinance of government before they got off the boat. The white men who landed on the mud flats of the Whangpoo were beset by a multiplicity of officials. There were Chinese officials and foreign officials and a good deal of doubt as to the authority that each of them held. A set of regulations for the government of the settlement had been drawn up by the British consul and the Chinese officials but they were vague and inadequate and could be amended only with the greatest difficulty. In theory the sovereignty of the place was vested in the consuls representing the powers which had treaties with China. In practice these consuls had little or nothing to say about the way the place was governed. A start was made by turning civic affairs over to an unpaid committee known as the Shanghai Municipal Council which functioned like the Board of Selectmen in a New England village or like the board of directors of a big corporation. It is this municipal council which through a continuous service of almost a hundred years has guided Shanghai in its development from a huddle of houses on a muddy foreshore to one of the finest and largest cities in the world. The Shanghai Municipal Council was always referred to by its initials, S.M.C.

  Men of many nationalities have lived there, have forgotten their national differences and worked out methods of getting along together. Its continued growth and prosperity provide the most convincing example of the fact that this could be a peaceful world and that government by democracy may be successful even under the most adverse conditions.

  The Americans and British who comprised the first residents were very few in number. The place was several years old before it had a foreign population of a hundred. They were accustomed to much the same kind of laws and municipal government and managed to get along with the minimum of friction. Then other foreigners moved in: Prussians, Swedes, Spaniards, Portuguese, Norwegians and Russians. Many of these new residents were entirely unfamiliar with the system of self-government which the Anglo-Saxon finds almost instinctive. More than that, each one enjoyed extraterritorial rights, was subject only to laws which could be enforced by his own consul. The S. M. C. could make police regulations but it had no power to enforce them - except with the co-operation of all of the nationalities. It could levy taxes but whether or not it could collect them was problematical. Consent of the governed was essential and not always obtained. It was not easy and many problems had to be solved before the municipal machine functioned with any degree of smoothness.

  The matter of taxes was especially troublesome. The tax rate was always decided on at the annual ratepayer’s meeting where all who paid a reasonable amount of taxes were represented and had a vote. But in spite of this fact there were frequently some who for one reason or another refused to pay. The only legal recourse the municipal council had was to bring suit. But as every foreigner enjoyed extraterritorial rights he could only be sued before his own consul and frequently it was the consul himself who refused to pay!

  On one occasion all Prussian firms in town refused to pay taxes and the municipal authorities didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. The Prussian consul was the judicial authority before whom the suit would have to be tried and he had already advised his nationals, who would be the defendants, that they should not pay taxes. The S. M. C. had but one weapon, control of the postal service. The modern and very efficient Chinese post office had not yet been organized and the municipality maintained its own local post office, carrying mail to and from Hong Kong, Japan and ports in China. After all other efforts had failed the Prussian firms were brought to terms by a threat to deny them the privileges of the postal services and to return to the senders all letters addressed to them.

  It was very largely by indirect methods like this that municipal authorities managed to collect taxes and enforce regulations. In a way the city was governed very much like a club in which the member who has violated club rules or has not paid his bill may be denied its privileges. With the passage of the years these disciplinary measures were used less and less frequently for in the hodgepodge of nationalities there developed a genuine civic spirit. But the need for discipline never entirely disappeared and officials of the S. M. C. developed an expert technique in enforcing authority without recourse to the courts. At the time the Prussians were compelled to pay their taxes the post office was the only indispensable public service the council maintained. With the development of the modern Chinese postal service the local post office was discontinued and defaulters could no longer be threatened with return of their letters. But about this time the development of public utilities - gas, water, electricity, and the telephone - gave the council a new method of meeting tax evasions; for the franchises of these companies provide that they can only serve householders whose taxes are not in arrears.

  This system of taxation is strange to Americans. Landlords pay an infinitesimal tax on the land they own; but the bulk of the municipal revenues come from the “rates,” a tax levied on tenants and based on the rentals they pay. This English system encourages landlords in the development of their properties and promoted the growth of Shanghai. Owners of land could erect shops or residences secure in the knowledge that they would not have to carry a heavy tax burden if the premises remained vacant. At the same time it makes a taxpayer of the man who lives in a furnished flat, thus giving everyone a keen interest in the budget and the rate of taxation that will be necessary to balance it. The privilege of voting at the annual ratepayers’ meeting or at the election for membership on the municipal council was restricted to those foreigners who paid a certain amount of taxes. It was not a property qualification because the great majority of the voters owned no property and lived in rented houses. The amount of taxes necessary to q
ualify as a voter was never large enough to confine the franchise to the wealthy nor low enough to throw it open to the low-salaried foreigners. In theory the franchise was given to those who had a real stake in the settlement. No one ever pretended that it was a democratic system, and no one ever thought that any other system would work in a community like Shanghai.

  The annual meeting of ratepayers aroused voters to their civic consciousness. It was more like a New England town meeting than anything else. Voters of a dozen or more nationalities all enjoying the same municipal rights and privileges listened to reports of how their city had been run, fixed the tax rate and passed the budget for the ensuing year. There was nothing novel about it to the British and Americans but to many other nationals it was a new experience in civic responsibility. They had to come to Shanghai to learn how democratic institutions work. There were few meetings that were not stormy ones or where a storm was not narrowly averted.

  If there wasn’t an argument about any other item on the budget, there was sure to be one over the expense of the municipal orchestra. This enterprise came into being as a modest town band at a time when there was no other musical organization in the city and band concerts provided the only entertainment. Smart hostesses gave dinner parties on houseboats anchored in Soochow Creek, and her guests listened to the band playing in the adjacent Bund Garden. It was the Shanghai equivalent of listening to a concert from a gondola in Venice. Under the leadership of Maestro Paci the orchestra became a very fine organization and a very expensive one. There was a row about it every year and predictions that it would be abolished. But every year the orchestra supporters won. It finally became a symbol of confidence in the future of Shanghai; and when the years of depression brought economies into homes as well as the municipal budget, the item for the orchestra was passed as a gesture of faith. Failure to pass the appropriation would have meant that Shanghailanders had lost one of their most precious possessions - hope for the future.

  The annual municipal elections were only for membership on the council, a committee of nine foreign business men and five Chinese, who served without pay and all too frequently without thanks. All other city officials from the mighty secretary-general down to the newest Chinese constable were employees of the council. Regular employment contracts were entered into with practically all of them providing for home leave, retirement pay, etc. In fact, Shanghai was always governed more like a giant corporation with an able board of directors than like any other city government in the world. There were no political obligations to pay off and no restrictions as to who should be employed. The bulk of the employees were British, but there was a liberal sprinkling of other nationalities. For many years the most important post, that of secretary-general, was held by an American, a son of Maine who came to Shanghai to practice law. There is no significance to his selection for this post beyond the fact that no one else was so well qualified for the position.

  The record of the administration of Shanghai has been particularly honorable. With greater opportunities for graft than those afforded by the average American city there has never been a scandal of any major proportions. Not only have there been none that ever reached the law courts but in more than twenty-five years of almost continuous residence there I do not recall any gossip that did not dissipate itself in a day or two because it had nothing substantial to feed on. Honesty in office was encouraged by the payment of reasonably good salaries coupled with security of employment and eventual retirement. Very low in the scale of pay was the probationary sergeant of police but if he kept a clean record he would eventually reach the dignified position of assistant commissioner and later be able to retire to his home in Ireland, Scotland or England.

  Civic consciousness was of slow growth because in the early days no one looked on Shanghai as a place of permanent residence. Everyone expected to make his fortune and return home in the shortest possible time. Under these circumstances, the idea of high taxes to provide revenue for public improvements was not popular. Of recent years town meetings have cheerfully passed budgets providing for the expenditure of millions for public works but in the early days there was always violent opposition to any but the most unavoidable expenditure. The first roads were built by the merchants for their own convenience and they were neither wide nor well built. There were no carriages and the ricksha had not been invented. One either walked or rode in a sedan chair. Some of the merchants insisted that there was no reason for building any roads wider than six feet which allowed sufficient room for coolies to carry a bale of goods.

  It was the English love of horse racing that turned popular sentiments to the support of roads. Some brought horses out by sailing ship and later trained the Mongolian ponies. But in order to ride them the owners had to buy their own ground and that was the way that the famous Bubbling Well Road came into existence. In the beginning its route followed no orthodox lines. Starting at the edge of the settlement the shareholders in “The Shanghai Riding Course” bought a strip of land and then bought other consecutive strips until the terminus was reached at the Bubbling Well only a few miles distant. The road was in fact nothing more than a bridle path with astonishing zigzags which were later converted into graceful curves. The same daring pioneers introduced carriages, a vehicle that was as much of a nuisance to the sedan chairs as motorcars were in the horse and buggy age. The offense for which foreigners were haled into court most frequently was that of “furious driving.”

  In this clash between the old and the new, the carriages won out and those who had most bitterly opposed them bought and used them. Rickshas also came in for they were being produced by the thousands for the Japanese trade by a factory at Worcester, Mass. The road leading from The Bund to the edge of the settlement and connecting with the privately owned Bubbling Well Road was widened so that carriages could be driven over it and the Chinese promptly called it Ma Loo or “horse road,” a name which it has always retained.

  Motorcars were undreamed of but the carriages and rickshas demanded more room and the council had a difficult time securing land for the widening or extension of existing roads or the building of new ones. Some property owners showed a sweet reasonableness and surrendered their land for a fair price. Others fixed the prices according to the urgency of the council’s needs, brazenly demanding ten times what the land was actually worth. One old gentleman who had made his fortune and retired to England wrote the council that he would not sell his land for road widening at any price because he did not believe in encouraging the council in its present course of reckless extravagance which was bound to destroy the trade of the port.

  The council explored the possibility of some method of acquiring new legal rights but always with misgivings. The interpretations of legal rights would depend on the members of the consular body, some of whom were also merchants and landowners. Thus it was inevitable that sooner or later a consul would be called upon to decide whether or not the municipality had a right to take his land for road purposes. To be faced with such a problem might be embarrassing to the consul but experience had shown that they always decided questions in favor of themselves.

  Then the S.M.C. hit on a happy expedient, typical of the methods by which many of Shanghai administrative problems were solved. If a new building was being erected or an old one repaired it was necessary to enclose the area with a bamboo fence not only for the protection of pedestrians but also to prevent pilferage of building material. In most cases the fence was on a street or sidewalk belonging to the municipality and a permit for its erection had to be secured.

  The power to issue or refuse this permit has been used with slow but deadly effect against stubborn and rapacious landlords. When land is set apart for road widening, negotiations are at once entered into for the purchase of the land involved. Sometimes these go on for months or years. The council has no legal right to compel surrender. The landlord can be completely independent until the time comes for rebuilding or repairs to the front of the house. Then the council has
the whip hand. The sidewalk belongs to the settlement and it is for the council to decide how it may be used. In extreme cases they may refuse a permit which would allow for the repainting of a shop front. There are still a lot of houses jutting out into Shanghai streets many of them in a disgraceful state of decay. Civic-minded Shanghailanders note with approval the increasing evidence of decay knowing that sooner or later the owner will have to apply for a building permit and that it will be issued only on the council’s own terms.

  The council also built roads through the Chinese countryside and foreigners began buying property and building houses on these roads. Actually they were in Chinese territory where the council did not have a vestige of authority. But the roads had been built from municipal funds which also provided them with police and fire protection. Control of the public utilities gave the council control of these distant properties even to the extent of compelling owners to submit their building plans for approval. If you didn’t acknowledge the authority of the council, you couldn’t have any electric lights. I once leased a house on one of these extra-settlement roads, and before the Shanghai Power Company could consider an application for service, I had to sign an agreement covering the matter of taxes. On a few occasions of recent years there have been tax strikes by whole Chinese communities. When cutting off water, light, and telephones failed, the council resorted to the final weapon and closed the roads.