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258 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1998 technical assistance contrasted with a suspicion of the Japanese. The historical residue of past prejudices on both sides, bitter memories ofJapanese aggression, and insensitive behavior by Japanese businessmen remain as negative factors against any real partnership. Last but not least is the Sino-Japanese problem of disputed territory, of which the disagreement over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyutai) provides the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Professor Taylor misses the linkage between the islands and the entire continental shelf underlying the East China Sea to which China lays claim. More is at stake than uninhabited rocks over potential oil and gas fields. He also misstates the Soudi China Sea problem, alleging "frequent armed clashes" where there has only been one, in 1988, and erroneously includes Indonesia as one of the claimants to the Spratly Islands. Fortunately, none of diese items detracts from the excellent economic analysis of this pivotal relationship, which is of regional and potentially global importance. Allen S. Whiting University ofArizona Allen Whiting is Regents Professor ofPolitical Science at the University ofArizona specializing in East Asian international relations. Frederic Wakeman, Jr. The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937-1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xvi, 227 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 0-521-49744-2. History is mostiy detective work, and good history should read like a mystery thriller. Frederic Wakeman's new study, The Shanghai Badlands, is such a book. The author, who is Haas Professor of Asian Studies and Director of East Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, has written extensively on modern Chinese history, including his masterful Policing Shanghai, 1927-1937, published in 1995. The present book under review is an equally impressive followup in which Wakeman deftly unravels a tangled web oflocal, national, and international intrigues and terrorism that had become an accepted part of daily life in y niversi y war_torn Shanghai between 1937 and 1941. Here is an absorbing drama replete with espionage, counterespionage, murder, sex, and drugs, in which loyalties were ambiguous and deceptive. ofHawai'i Press Reviews 259 The author has done a remarkable job in elucidating an extremely complicated story, and he has done so with great clarity and verve. Basing his study primarily on recently released confidential Shanghai police files and American and British diplomatic records, Wakeman has been able to detail the inner workings ofShanghai's gangster and terrorist organizations, presenting a compelling social history ofShanghai's underworld during the crucial five years prior to Pearl Harbor . His book also deepens our understanding ofthe politics ofterrorism in China. Wartime Shanghai was, like Casablanca, a cosmopolitan international center, with several million residents, Chinese and foreign, many ofwhom were only recent arrivals and sojourners. It was also an isolated and deeply divided city. Once the Japanese had occupied the Chinese sections ofthe city in 1937, Shanghai immediately became the focal point for both resistance and collaboration. It was bitterly contested among the Chinese, Japanese, and Westerners, with unending terrorist warfare involving soldiers, politicians, bankers, journalists, and gangsters. The most brutal and devastating struggles were between the Chinese themselves, who supported either the puppets of the Japanese or Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists . Assassinations and bombings were brazenly employed by all sides in the fight for control of the city. One ofthe most disputed areas was the western suburbs, a veritable noman 's land tiiat everyone called the Badlands, where millions ofdollars were laundered daily through underground gambling, narcotics, and prostitution rackets . Immense amounts ofmoney made strange bedfellows ofboth collaborators and patriots. With the crackdown on gambling in the International Settlement in 1940, the racketeers simply moved their operations to the nearby Badlands, where they easily paid offpolice and politicians for protection. It was common knowledge that vice was an important source ofrevenue for both the local puppet regime and Wang Jingwei's collaborationist government in Nanjing. Because everyone relied on illicit money to fund everything from plots to regimes, it was impossible to put a stop to organized crime and violence. As Wakeman correctly points out, "It was . . . becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish crime from conspiracy as the two converged to pulverize whatever shreds remained of...

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