Shanghai: Global aspirations with anti-Japanese characteristics

Shanghai, April 16

Associate professor James Farrer of the Sophia University in Tokyo analyses the predictment Shanghai finds itself in after the anti-Japanese demonstrations in April in Yale-Global. The problem for Shanghai according to Farrer:

The experience of Shanghai in dealing with nationalistic sentiments may offer a case study of the constraints that a globalized city's well-being imposes over narrow nationalistic pulls. For the time-being the Chinese and foreign stakeholders in global Shanghai have succeeded in containing the damage but questions remain about the future.

Farrer goes on to dissects the discourse he noted and concludes:

Although few foreigners in Shanghai worried about their immediate safety, many felt that by allowing violence against foreign property, the police had set a dangerous precedent for future demonstrations. Japanese residents were alarmed and angry but said they were planning to stay. Their local ties to Shanghai outweighed national rivalries, and Japanese companies could not afford to pull out.

And:

As China's rising global city, this Shanghai story also has implications for understanding the politics of globalization more generally. Political motives cannot be reduced simply to a story of narrow local and nationalist loyalties versus globally oriented economic interests; we should also take into account the local cosmopolitanisms developing in key polities such as Shanghai, creating mixed loyalties which – at least in peaceful times – may moderate more radical expressions of national sentiment.

James Farrer wrote earlier on China:
Farrer on Shanghai's sexual revolution