Organizing for Crisis: Shanghai Civic Association and the Rise of Social Elites in Republican China, 1931-1937

Wei Luo, Stanford University

What explains the resilience of civic infrastructure during radical crisis? This study explores a successful case of emergency response of urban local elites facing Japanese military invasion in 1932 in Shanghai. In the absence of an effective government, local elites spontaneously organized to maintain social order, providing material support to the defense force, and coordinating city-wide social organizations attending to immediate war relief. The most remarkable of these proliferated elite efforts was the establishment of Shanghai Civic Association (SCA). Examining the history of SCA, this article finds that a new form of elite voluntary association - more formal and standardized, shaped by socioeconomic environment and previous patterns of social organizations - successfully merged and absorbed bureaucratically established state institutions at the municipal level. When state authority was lacking due to the war crisis, SCA replaced the local government and created an order to coordinate and mediate between civil society, economy and the state.

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 Presented in Session 140. Elites Networks: Business, Politics, and Civil Society