Abstract
Shanghai has its unique position at the mouth of a waterway that drains the richest and most populated regions of China have attracted foreign economic interests. The Chinese authorities have given up their sovereignty over certain areas of the city under French administration or, which is the international concession, under the authority of Great Britain and the United States. In 1927, the foreign population of the city amounted to about forty thousand people(see the nationality of several characters from The Human Condition: May is German, French-Hungarian Clappique, Ferral and Valerie French, Russian Katov Chinese Chen, Hemmerlich Belgian...).
Booming economy in twenty years, Shanghai is a cosmopolitan metropolis, but also the bastion of the new Chinese bourgeoisie case, the westernized intelligentsia and the industrial proletariat - about 500,000 people -. As the city becomes a place of intense fermentation and political conflict.
What are the forces?
The Kuomintang, Democratic and nationalist party founded by Sun Yat-sen, is supported by the financial and commercial bourgeoisie that wants to take their foreign administrative and economic privileges. To wrest power from the military dictatorship(" Warlords") which holds the central government in Beijing, Sun obtained the support of some general South and can form a government in southern China, in Canton.
