Frederic Wakeman has long been fascinated with the police and criminals of pre-Communist Shanghai, who were as often each other's allies as opponents. His first book on the subject, Policing Shanghai 1927-37 (1995), described the self-subverting involvement of the new Kuomintang government's municipal police bureau in both the opium trade and the civil war against the Communists. The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime 1937-41 (1996) carried the story into the period of the Sino-Japanese War, when Shanghai became a battleground between the Japanese army, French and British police in the foreign settlements, Chinese collaborators with Japan, KMT secret police and the Communist underground.

LRB 24 June 2004 | PDF Download