The Green Gang in Shanghai, 1920-1937 : the rise of Du Yuesheng

Abstract

The subject of the thesis is the rise and development of the

Green Gang in Shanghai during the 1920s and 1930s. It approaches this theme through the study of one particular Green Gang group which operated out of the French Concession, and specifically the career of one of its bosses, Du Yuesheng.

In the early twentieth century the Green Gang was one of the major secret society organisations active in North and Central China. Although it drew on earlier sectarian and organisational traditions, the evidence suggests that its origins date only from the second half of the nineteenth century. At an early stage Shanghai provided a very favourable environment for the development of the Green Gang with its emphasis on the acquisition of wealth, its large immigrant population, its separate jurisdictions, and its foreign administrations. By 1920, therefore, the city had emerged as a major centre of Green Gang activity.

In the course of the 1920s the French Concession Green Gang group emerged as the dominant group within the Green Gang system in Shanghai. This process was accompanied by changes in the power relations within the group's leadership which saw the emergence of Du Yuesheng to a position of predominance. The French Concession group's rise to power was the product of two factors: its control of the opium traffic in Shanghai, and the agreement it reached with the French authorities on the division of the profits from the traffic. After 1927 this agreement was expanded to include Green Gang assistance with aspects of the internal security of the Concession, although the consequent marked increase in Du Yuesheng's power compelled the French authorities to take action against him in 1932.

The French Concession Green Gang's increasing power attracted the attention of both the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang who each sought its support in the period of the Northern Expedition (1926-1928). Although the Green Gang bosses eventually supported Jiang Jieshi and played a key role in his anti-communist coup in Shanghai of 12 April 1927 , nevertheless their relations with the new Guomindang state were affected by the political instability of the regime the late 1920s and early 1930s. It was the crisis provoked by the Shanghai Incident of 1932 which provided a new basis for the relationship. The French Concession Green Gang group became one element in the new corporatist structures which Jiang Jieshi created in the wake of the crisis in order to strengthen his regime with the inclusion of key members of Shanghai's "civil society". Of the the Green Gang bosses it was Du Yuesheng who adapted most effectively to the new system of power. With his close connections with both the Guomindang's trade union organisations and the leading members of the Shanghai bourgeoisie together with his activities in support of the Government's economic policies, Du emerged as a key element in the Guomindang's corporatist system of power in Shanghai. Indeed the years 1932 to 1937 represented the apogee of Du's power in Shanghai.