Podcasts about Pudong

Last time we spoke about Operation Chahar. In July 1937, the tensions between Japan and China erupted into a full-scale conflict, ignited by the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Following a series of aggressive Japanese military maneuvers, Chiang Kai-shek, then enjoying a brief respite at Kuling, learned of the escalating clashes and prepared for battle. Confident that China was primed for resistance, he rallied his nation, demanding that Japan accept responsibility and respect China's sovereignty. The Japanese launched their offensive, rapidly capturing key positions in Northern China. Notably, fierce battle ensued in Jinghai, where Chinese soldiers, led by Brigade Commander Li Zhiyuan, valiantly defended against overwhelming forces using guerrilla tactics and direct assaults. Their spirit was symbolized by a courageous “death squad” that charged the enemy, inflicting serious casualties despite facing dire odds. As weeks passed, the conflict intensified with brutal assaults on Nankou. Chinese defenses, though valiant, were ultimately overwhelmed, leading to heavy casualties on both sides. Despite losing Nankou, the indomitable Chinese spirit inspired continued resistance against the Japanese invaders, foreshadowing a long, brutal war that would reshape East Asia.   #156 The Battle of Shanghai Part 1: The Beginning of the Battle of Shanghai Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. On August 9, a bullet riddled sedan screeched to an abrupt halt at the entrance to the Hongqiao airport along Monument Road. The gruesome scene on the dashboard revealed that one of the victims had died in the car. He had been dragged out and subjected to brutal slashing, kicking, and beating until his body was a mangled mess. Half of his face was missing, and his stomach had been cut open, exposing the sickly pallor of his intestines, faintly glimmering in the night. The other man had managed to escape the vehicle but only got a few paces away before he was gunned down. A short distance away lay a third body, dressed in a Chinese uniform. Investigators swiftly identified the badly mangled body as belonging to 27-year-old Sub-Lieutenant Oyama Isao, while the other deceased Japanese man was his driver, First Class Seaman Saito Yozo. The identity of the Chinese victim remained a mystery. At first glance, the scene appeared to be the aftermath of a straightforward shootout. However, numerous questions lingered: What were the Japanese doing at a military airfield miles from their barracks? Who had fired the first shot, and what had prompted that decision? The Chinese investigators and their Japanese counterparts were at odds over the answers to these questions. As they walked the crime scene, searching for evidence, loud arguments erupted repeatedly. By the time the sun began to rise, they concluded their investigation without reaching any consensus on what had transpired. They climbed into their cars and made their way back to the city. The investigators were acutely aware of the repercussions if they failed to handle their delicate task with the necessary finesse. Despite their hopes for peace, it was evident that Shanghai was a city bracing for war. As they drove through the dimly lit suburbs on their way from Hongqiao back to their downtown offices, their headlights illuminated whitewashed trees, interspersed with sandbag defenses and the silhouettes of solitary Chinese sentries. Officially, these sentries were part of the Peace Preservation Corps,  a paramilitary unit that, due to an international agreement reached a few years earlier, was the only Chinese force allowed to remain in the Shanghai area. In the hours that followed, both sides presented their versions of the incident. According to the Chinese account, the Japanese vehicle attempted to force its way through the airport gate. When members of the Peace Preservation Corps stationed at the entrance signaled for Saito, the driver, to stop, he abruptly turned the car around. Sub-Lieutenant Oyama then fired at the Chinese guards with an automatic pistol. Only then did the Chinese return fire, killing Oyama in a hail of bullets. Saito managed to jump out before he, too, was gunned down. The commander of the Chinese guards told a Western reporter that this wasn't the first time someone Japanese had attempted to enter the airport. Such incidents had occurred repeatedly in the past two months, leading them to believe that the Japanese were “obviously undertaking espionage.” The Japanese account, predictably, placed the blame for the entire incident squarely on China. It asserted that Oyama had been driving along a road bordering the airfield with no intention of entering. Suddenly, the vehicle was stopped and surrounded by Peace Preservation Corps troops, who opened fire with rifles and machine guns without warning. Oyama had no opportunity to return fire. The Japanese statement argued that the two men had every right to use the road, which was part of the International Settlement, and labeled the incident a clear violation of the 1932 peace agreement. “We demand that the Chinese bear responsibility for this illegal act,”. Regardless of either side, it seemed likely to everyone in the region, war would soon engulf Shanghai.  Meanwhile, as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident escalated into a full blown in the far north, General Zhang Fakui was attending a routine training mission at Mount Lu in southeastern Jiangxi. A short and small man, not considered too handsome either, Zhang had earned his place in China's leadership through physical courage, once taking a stand on a bridge and single handedly facing down an enemy army. He was 41 years old in 1937, having spent half his life fighting Warlords, Communists and sometimes even Nationalists. In the recent years he had tossed his lot in with a rebel campaign against Chiang Kai-Shek, who surprisingly went on the forgive him and placed him in charge of anti communist operations in the area due south of Shanghai. However now the enemy seemed to have changed.  As the war spread to Beijing, on July 16th, Zhang was sent to Chiang Kai-Shek's summer residence at Mount Lu alongside 150 members of China's political and military elites. They were all there to brainstorm how to fight the Japanese. Years prior the Generalissimo had made it doctrine to appease the Japanese but now he made grandiose statements such as “this time we must fight to the end”. Afterwards Chiang dealt missions to all his commanders and Zhang Fakui was told to prepare for operations in the Shanghai area.  It had been apparent for weeks that both China and Japan were preparing for war in central China. The Japanese had been diverting naval troops from the north to strengthen their forces in Shanghai, and by early August, they had assembled over 8,000 troops. A few days later, approximately thirty-two naval vessels arrived. On July 31, Chiang declared that “all hope for peace has been lost.” Chiang had been reluctant to commit his best forces to defend northern China, an area he had never truly controlled. In contrast, Shanghai was central to his strategy for the war against Japan. Chiang decided to deploy his finest troops, the 87th and 88th Divisions, which were trained by generals under the guidance of the German advisor von Falkenhausen, who had high hopes for their performance against the Japanese. In doing so, Chiang aimed to demonstrate to both his own people and the wider world that the Chinese could and would resist the invader. Meanwhile, Chiang's spy chief, Dai Li, was busy gathering intelligence on Japanese intentions regarding Shanghai, a challenging task given his focus in recent years. Dai, one of the most sinister figures in modern Chinese history, had devoted far more energy and resources to suppressing the Communists than to countering the Japanese. As a result, by the critical summer of 1937, he had built only a sparse network of agents in “Little Tokyo,” the Hongkou area of Shanghai dominated by Japanese businesses. One agent was a pawnshop owner, while the rest were double agents employed as local staff within the Japanese security apparatus. Unfortunately, they could provide little more than snippets, rumors, and hearsay. While some of this information sounded alarmingly dire, there was almost no actionable intelligence. Chiang did not take the decision to open a new front in Shanghai lightly. Built on both banks of the Huangpu River, the city served as the junction between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the great Yangtze River, which wound thousands of kilometers inland to the west. Shanghai embodied everything that represented modern China, from its industry and labor relations to its connections with the outside world. While foreign diplomatic presence was concentrated in nearby Nanjing, the capital, it was in Shanghai that the foreign community gauged the country's mood. Foreigners in the city's two “concession” areas nthe French Concession and the British-affiliated International Settlement often dismissed towns beyond Shanghai as mere “outstations.” Chiang Kai-shek would throw 650,000 troops into the battle for the city and its environs as well as his modest air force of 200 aircraft. Chiang, whose forces were being advised by German officers led by General Alexander von Falkenhausen, was finally confident that his forces could take on the Japanese. A German officer told a British diplomat, “If the Chinese Army follows the advice of the German advisers, it is capable of driving the Japanese over the Great Wall.”   While Chiang was groping in the dark, deprived of the eyes and ears of an efficient intelligence service, he did have at his disposal an army that was better prepared for battle than it had been in 1932. Stung by the experience of previous conflicts with the Japanese, Chiang had initiated a modernization program aimed at equipping the armed forces not only to suppress Communist rebels but also to confront a modern fighting force equipped with tanks, artillery, and aircraft. He had made progress, but it was insufficient. Serious weaknesses persisted, and now there was no time for any remedial action. While China appeared to be a formidable power in sheer numbers, the figures were misleading. On the eve of war, the Chinese military was comprised of a total of 176 divisions, which were theoretically organized into two brigades of two regiments each. However, only about 20 divisions maintained full peacetime strength of 10,000 soldiers and officers; the rest typically held around 5,000 men. Moreover, Chiang controlled only 31 divisions personally, and he could not count on the loyalty of the others. To successfully resist Japan, Chiang would need to rely not only on his military command skills but also on his ability to forge fragile coalitions among Warlord generals with strong local loyalties. Equipment posed another significant challenge. The modernization drive was not set to complete until late 1938, and the impact of this delay was evident. In every category of weaponry, from rifles to field artillery, the Chinese were outmatched by their Japanese adversaries, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Domestically manufactured artillery pieces had shorter ranges, and substandard steel-making technology caused gun barrels to overheat, increasing the risk of explosions. Some arms even dated back to imperial times. A large proportion of the Chinese infantry had received no proper training in basic tactics, let alone in coordinated operations involving armor and artillery. The chief of the German advisory corps was General Alexander von Falkenhausen, a figure hard to rival in terms of qualifications for the role. Although the 58-year-old's narrow shoulders, curved back, and bald, vulture-like head gave him an unmilitary, almost avian appearance, his exterior belied a tough character. In 1918, he had earned his nation's highest military honor, the Pour le Mérite, while assisting Germany's Ottoman allies against the British in Palestine. Few, if any, German officers knew Asia as well as he did. His experience in the region dated back to the turn of the century. As a young lieutenant in the Third East Asian Infantry Regiment, he participated in the international coalition of colonial powers that quelled the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. A decade later, he traveled through Korea, Manchuria, and northern China with his wife, keenly observing and learning as a curious tourist. From 1912 to 1914, he served as the German Kaiser's military attaché in Tokyo. He was poised to put his extensive knowledge to good use in the months ahead. Chiang believed that Shanghai should be the location of the first battle. This decision was heavily influenced by Falkenhausen and was strategically sound. Chiang Kai-shek could not hope to win a war against Japan unless he could unify the nation behind him, particularly the many fractious warlords who had battled his forces repeatedly over the past decade. Everyone understood that the territory Japan was demanding in the far north did not need to be held for any genuine military necessity; it was land that could be negotiated. The warlords occupying that territory were unpredictable and all too willing to engage in bargaining. In contrast, China's economic heartland held different significance. By choosing to fight for the center of the country and deploying his strongest military units, Chiang Kai-shek signaled to both China's warlords and potential foreign allies that he had a vested interest in the outcome.  There were also several operational reasons for preferring a conflict in the Yangtze River basin over a campaign in northern China. The rivers, lakes, and rice paddies of the Yangtze delta were much better suited for defensive warfare against Japan's mechanized forces than the flat plains of North China. By forcing the Japanese to commit troops to central China, the Nationalists bought themselves the time needed to rally and reinforce their faltering defenses in the north. By initiating hostilities in the Shanghai area, Japan would be forced to divert its attention from the northern front, thereby stalling a potential Japanese advance toward the crucial city of Wuhan. It would also help safeguard potential supply routes from the Soviet Union, the most likely source of material assistance due to Moscow's own animosity toward Japan. It was a clever plan, and surprisingly, the Japanese did not anticipate it. Intelligence officers in Tokyo were convinced that Chiang would send his troops northward instead. Again in late July, Chiang convened his commanders, and here he gave Zhang Fukai more detailed instructions for his operation. Fukai was placed in charge of the right wing of the army which was currently preparing for action in the metropolitan area. Fukai would oversee the forces east of the Huangpu River in the area known as Pudong. Pudong was full of warehouses, factories and rice fields, quite precarious to fight in. Meanwhile General Zhang Zhizhong, a quiet and sickly looking man who had previously led the Central Military Academy was to command the left wing of the Huangpu. All of the officers agreed the plan to force the battle to the Shanghai area was logical as the northern region near Beijing was far too open, giving the advantage to tank warfare, which they could not hope to contest Japan upon. The Shanghai area, full of rivers, creaks and urban environments favored them much more. Zhang Zhizhong seemed an ideal pick to lead troops in downtown Shanghai where most of the fighting would take place. His position of commandant of the military academy allowed him to establish connections with junior officers earmarked for rapid promotion. This meant that he personally knew the generals of both the 87th and 88th Divisions, which were to form the core of Zhang Zhizhong's newly established 9th Army Group and become his primary assets in the early phases of the Shanghai campaign. Moreover, Zhang Zhizhong had the right aggressive instincts. He believed that China's confrontation with Japan had evolved through three stages: in the first stage, the Japanese invaded the northeast in 1931, and China remained passive; in the second stage, during the first battle of Shanghai in 1932, Japan struck, but China fought back. Zhang argued that this would be the third stage, where Japan was preparing to attack, but China would strike first.   It seems that Zhang Zhizhong did not expect to survive this final showdown with his Japanese adversary. He took the fight very personally, even ordering his daughter to interrupt her education in England and return home to serve her country in the war. However, he was not the strong commander he appeared to be, as he was seriously ill. Although he never disclosed the true extent of his condition, it seemed he was on the verge of a physical and mental breakdown after years in high-stress positions. In fact, he had recently taken a leave of absence from his role at the military academy in the spring of 1937. When the war broke out, he was at a hospital in the northern port city of Qingdao, preparing to go abroad for convalescence. He canceled those plans to contribute to the struggle against Japan. When his daughter returned from England and saw him on the eve of battle, she was alarmed by how emaciated he had become. From the outset, doubts about his physical fitness to command loomed large. At 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, August 10, a group of officers emerged from the Japanese Consulate along the banks of the Huangpu River. This team was a hastily assembled Sino-Japanese joint investigation unit tasked with quickly resolving the shooting incident at the Hongqiao Aerodrome of the previous night. They understood the urgency of reaching an agreement swiftly to prevent any escalation. As they drove to the airport, they passed armed guards of the Chinese Peace Preservation Corps stationed behind sandbag barricades that had been erected only hours earlier. Upon arriving at Hongqiao, the officers walked up and down the scene of the incident under the scorching sun, attempting to piece together a shared understanding of what had transpired. However, this proved to be nearly impossible, as the evidence failed to align into a coherent account acceptable to both parties. The Japanese were unconvinced that any shootout had occurred at all. Oyama, the officer who had been in the car, had left his pistol at the marine headquarters in Hongkou and had been unarmed the night before. They insisted that whoever shot and killed the man in the Chinese uniform could not have been him. By 6:00 pm the investigators returned to the city. Foreign correspondents, eager for information, knew exactly whom to approach. The newly appointed Shanghai Mayor, Yu Hongjun, with a quick wit and proficiency in English, Yu represented the city's cosmopolitan image. However, that evening, he had little to offer the reporters, except for a plea directed at both the Japanese and Chinese factions “Both sides should maintain a calm demeanor to prevent the situation from escalating.” Mayor Yu however was, in fact, at the center of a complex act of deception that nearly succeeded. Nearly eight decades later, Zhang Fakui attributed the incident to members of the 88th Division, led by General Sun Yuanliang. “A small group of Sun Yuanliang's men disguised themselves as members of the Peace Preservation Corps,” Zhang Fakui recounted years later in his old age. “On August 9, 1937, they encountered two Japanese servicemen on the road near the Hongqiao military aerodrome and accused them of forcing their way into the area. A clash ensued, resulting in the deaths of the Japanese soldiers.” This created a delicate dilemma for their superiors. The two dead Japanese soldiers were difficult to explain away. Mayor Yu, likely informed of the predicament by military officials, conferred with Tong Yuanliang, chief of staff of the Songhu Garrison Command, a unit established after the fighting in 1932. Together, they devised a quick and cynical plan to portray the situation as one of self-defense by the Chinese guards. Under their orders, soldiers marched a Chinese death row inmate to the airport gate, dressed him in a paramilitary guard's uniform, and executed him. While this desperate ruse might have worked initially, it quickly unraveled due to the discrepancies raised by the condition of the Chinese body. The Japanese did not believe the story, and the entire plan began to fall apart. Any remaining mutual trust swiftly evaporated. Instead of preventing a confrontation, the cover-up was accelerating the slide into war.  Late on August 10, Mayor Yu sent a secret cable to Nanjing, warning that the Japanese had ominously declared they would not allow the two deaths at the airport to go unpunished. The following day, the Japanese Consul General Okamoto Suemasa paid a visit to the mayor, demanding the complete withdrawal of the Peace Preservation Corps from the Shanghai area and the dismantling of all fortifications established by the corps. For the Chinese, acquiescing to these demands was nearly impossible. From their perspective, it appeared that the Japanese aimed to leave Shanghai defenseless while simultaneously bolstering their own military presence in the city. Twenty vessels, including cruisers and destroyers, sailed up the Huangpu River and docked at wharves near "Little Tokyo." Japanese marines in olive-green uniforms marched ashore down the gangplanks, while women from the local Japanese community, dressed in kimonos, greeted the troops with delighted smiles and bows to the flags of the Rising Sun that proudly adorned the sterns of the battleships. In fact, Japan had planned to deploy additional troops to Shanghai even before the shooting at Hongqiao Aerodrome. This decision was deemed necessary to reinforce the small contingent of 2,500 marines permanently stationed in the city. More troops were required to assist in protecting Japanese nationals who were being hastily evacuated from the larger cities along the Yangtze River. These actions were primarily defensive maneuvers, as the Japanese military seemed hesitant to open a second front in Shanghai, for the same reasons that the Chinese preferred an extension of hostilities to that area. Diverting Japanese troops from the strategically critical north and the Soviet threat across China's border would weaken their position, especially given that urban warfare would diminish the advantages of their technological superiority in tanks and aircraft. While officers in the Japanese Navy believed it was becoming increasingly difficult to prevent the war from spreading to Shanghai, they were willing to give diplomacy one last chance. Conversely, the Japanese Army was eager to wage war in northern China but displayed little inclination to engage in hostilities in Shanghai. Should the situation worsen, the Army preferred to withdraw all Japanese nationals from the city. Ultimately, when it agreed to formulate plans for dispatching an expeditionary force to Shanghai, it did so reluctantly, primarily to avoid accusations of neglecting its responsibilities. Amongst many commanders longing for a swift confrontation with Japan was Zhang Zhizhong. By the end of July, he was growing increasingly impatient, waiting with his troops in the Suzhou area west of Shanghai and questioning whether a unique opportunity was being squandered. On July 30, he sent a telegram to Nanjing requesting permission to strike first. He argued that if Japan were allowed to launch an attack on Shanghai, he would waste valuable time moving his troops from their position more than 50 miles away. Nanjing responded with a promise that his wishes would be fulfilled but urged him to exercise patience: “We should indeed seize the initiative over the enemy, but we must wait until the right opportunity arises. Await further orders.” That opportunity arose on August 11, with the Japanese display of force on the Huangpu River and their public demand for the withdrawal of China's paramilitary police. Japan had sufficiently revealed itself as the aggressor in the eyes of both domestic and international audiences, making it safe for China to take action. At 9:00 p.m. that evening, Zhang Zhizhong received orders from Nanjing to move his troops toward Shanghai. He acted with remarkable speed, capitalizing on the extensive transportation network in the region. The soldiers of the 87th Division quickly boarded 300 trucks that had been prepared in advance. Meanwhile, civilian passengers on trains were unceremoniously ordered off to make room for the 88th Division, which boarded the carriages heading for Shanghai. In total, over 20,000 motivated and well-equipped troops were on their way to battle.  On August 12, representatives from the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Italy, Japan, and China gathered for a joint conference in Shanghai to discuss ceasefire terms. Japan demanded the withdrawal of Chinese troops from Shanghai, while the Chinese representative, Yu Hung-chun, dismissed the Japanese demand, stating that the terms of the ceasefire had already been violated by Japan. The major powers were keen to avoid a repeat of the January 28 Incident, which had significantly disrupted foreign economic activities in Shanghai. Meanwhile, Chinese citizens fervently welcomed the presence of Chinese troops in the city. In Nanjing, Chinese and Japanese representatives convened for the last time in a final effort to negotiate. The Japanese insisted that all Peace Preservation Corps and regular troops be withdrawn from the vicinity of Shanghai. The Chinese, however, deemed the demand for a unilateral withdrawal unacceptable, given that the two nations were already engaged in conflict in North China. Ultimately, Mayor Yu made it clear that the most the Chinese government would concede was that Chinese troops would not fire unless fired upon. Conversely, Japan placed all responsibility on China, citing the deployment of Chinese troops around Shanghai as the cause of the escalating tensions. Negotiations proved impossible, leaving no alternative but for the war to spread into Central China. On that same morning of Thursday, August 12, residents near Shanghai's North Train Station, also known as Zhabei Station, just a few blocks from "Little Tokyo," awoke to an unusual sight: thousands of soldiers dressed in the khaki uniforms of the Chinese Nationalists, wearing German-style helmets and carrying stick grenades slung across their chests. “Where do you come from?” the Shanghai citizens asked. “How did you get here so fast?” Zhang Zhizhong issued detailed orders to each unit under his command, instructing the 88th Division specifically to travel by train and deploy in a line from the town of Zhenru to Dachang village, both located a few miles west of Shanghai. Only later was the division supposed to advance toward a position stretching from the Zhabei district to the town of Jiangwan, placing it closer to the city boundaries. Zhang Zhizhong was the embodiment of belligerence, but he faced even more aggressive officers among his ranks. On the morning of August 12, he was approached by Liu Jingchi, the chief of operations at the Songhu Garrison Command. Liu argued that the battle of 1932 had gone poorly for the Chinese because they had hesitated and failed to strike first. This time, he insisted, should be different, and Zhang should order an all-out assault on the Japanese positions that very evening. Zhang countered that he had clear and unmistakable orders from Chiang Kai-shek to let the Japanese fire first, emphasizing the importance of maintaining China's image on the world stage. “That's easy,” Liu retorted. “Once all the units are deployed and ready to attack, we can just change some people into mufti and send them in to fire a few shots. We attack, and simultaneously, we report that the enemy's offensive has begun.” Zhang Zhizhong did not like this idea. “We can't go behind our leader's back like that,” he replied. Zhang Zhizhong's position was far from enviable. Forced to rein in eager and capable officers, he found himself acting against his own personal desires. Ultimately, he decided to seek the freedom to act as he saw fit. In a secret cable to Nanjing, he requested permission to launch an all-out attack on the Japanese positions in Shanghai the following day, Friday, August 13. He argued that this was a unique opportunity to capitalize on the momentum created by the movement of troops; any further delay would only lead to stagnation. He proposed a coordinated assault that would also involve the Chinese Air Force. However, the reply from Chiang Kai-shek was brief and unwavering: “Await further orders.” Even as Chiang's troops poured into Shanghai, Chinese and Japanese officials continued their discussions. Ostensibly, this was in hopes of reaching a last-minute solution, but in reality, it was a performance. Both sides wanted to claim the moral high ground in a battle that now seemed inevitable. They understood that whoever openly declared an end to negotiations would automatically be perceived as the aggressor. During talks at the Shanghai Municipal Council, Japanese Consul General Okamoto argued that if China truly wanted peace, it would have withdrawn its troops to a position that would prevent clashes. Mayor Yu responded by highlighting the increasing presence of Japanese forces in the city. “Under such circumstances, China must adopt such measures as necessary for self-defense,” he stated. Late on August 13, 1937, Chiang Kai-shek instructed his forces to defend Shanghai, commanding them to "divert the enemy at sea, secure the coast, and resist landings."  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. In July 1937, tensions between Japan and China escalated into war following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Confident in his country's resolve, Chiang Kai-shek rallied the Chinese against Japanese aggression. On August 9, a deadly confrontation at Hongqiao Airport resulted in the deaths of Japanese soldiers, igniting further hostilities. As both sides blamed each other, the atmosphere became tense. Ultimately, negotiations failed, and the stage was set for a brutal conflict in Shanghai, marking the beginning of a long and devastating war.

Fluent Fiction - Mandarin Chinese: Capturing Magic: A Shanghai Night of Connection and Reflection Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/zh/episode/2025-01-12-08-38-19-zh Story Transcript:Zh: 夜晚的外滩，总是那么迷人。En: The Waitan at night is always so enchanting.Zh: 冷风轻轻地吹，上海的高楼大厦在夜空中闪烁着五彩的灯光，就像一幅美丽的画。En: A cold breeze blows gently, and the skyscrapers of Shanghai shimmer with colorful lights against the night sky, like a beautiful painting.Zh: 凌和伟站在外滩的人群中，望着对岸的浦东天际线。En: Ling and Wei stand amidst the crowd at Waitan, gazing at the Pudong skyline across the river.Zh: 他们刚刚结束了一天的忙碌，在春节前的这段时间，工作总是特别紧张。En: They have just finished a busy day, and in the period before the Spring Festival, work is always particularly hectic.Zh: 凌是个年轻的建筑师，刚搬来上海工作不久。En: Ling is a young architect who recently moved to Shanghai for work.Zh: 对她来说，这座城市既充满机遇，又让人有些不知所措。En: To her, this city is full of opportunities but also somewhat overwhelming.Zh: 伟是一名摄影师，也是凌的老朋友。En: Wei is a photographer and an old friend of Ling.Zh: 他在这里已经生活了一年，对城市的节奏早已习惯。En: He has been living here for a year and is accustomed to the city's rhythm.Zh: “我要拍一张完美的照片，参加公司的摄影比赛。”凌说，她的声音因为兴奋和一点点寒冷而微微发抖。En: "I want to take a perfect photo to enter the company's photography contest," Ling said, her voice trembling slightly with excitement and a little cold.Zh: 伟笑着答应帮助她，但外滩的人实在太多了，每个好位置都被占满。En: Wei smiled and agreed to help her, but the crowds at Waitan left every good spot occupied.Zh: “我们上次去的那个屋顶餐厅怎么样？”伟提议。En: "How about the rooftop restaurant we went to last time?" Wei suggested.Zh: 他知道凌不太想多花钱，但或许那里能让她拍到满意的照片。En: He knew Ling wasn't too keen on spending extra money, but perhaps she could get a satisfying photo there.Zh: 紧接着他们沿着熙攘的街道，来到那家餐厅。En: They soon made their way through the bustling streets to that restaurant.Zh: 登上屋顶，寒风更为刺骨，但视野开阔。En: As they climbed to the rooftop, the cold wind was even more biting, but the view was expansive.Zh: 眼前的景象让凌深深吸一口气，浦江两岸闪耀的灯光，几乎让她忘记了这里的拥挤与喧闹。En: The sight before them made Ling take a deep breath; the dazzling lights on both sides of the Huangpu River nearly made her forget the crowd and noise.Zh: 就在他们准备拍照的时候，夜空中突然绽放出绚丽的烟花，五光十色，绚烂无比。En: Just as they were about to take pictures, the night sky suddenly burst with vibrant fireworks, colorful and brilliant.Zh: 凌举起了相机，目标是那美丽的瞬间。En: Ling raised her camera, aiming for that beautiful moment.Zh: 可是，她的手却悬在半空中，迟疑了。En: However, her hand hovered in the air, hesitating.Zh: “是不是要常常通过相机来观看？”凌轻声问自己。En: "Do I always have to watch through the camera?" Ling quietly asked herself.Zh: 伟没有说话，只是静静地陪在她身边，看着夜空中纷飞的烟花。En: Wei didn't speak, just stood quietly beside her, watching the fireworks scatter in the night sky.Zh: 他们都知道，这一刻是珍贵的，有时仅仅去感受就已足够。En: They both knew this moment was precious, and sometimes just feeling it was enough.Zh: 凌放下相机，转过身来。En: Ling lowered her camera and turned around.Zh: 她微笑地看着伟，说：“没关系，我们可以改天再来。En: She smiled at Wei and said, "It's okay; we can come again another day.Zh: 今天就享受这份宁静吧。”En: Let's just enjoy this tranquility today."Zh: 最终，凌明白了，与其追求完美的瞬间，不如珍惜当下的陪伴。En: In the end, Ling understood that instead of chasing the perfect moment, it's better to cherish the companionship of the present.Zh: 两个老朋友在这个冬夜的屋顶上，迎接着新一年的到来，感受着彼此的温暖。En: The two old friends on the rooftop this winter night welcomed the new year, feeling the warmth of each other's presence. Vocabulary Words:enchanting: 迷人breeze: 轻风shimmer: 闪烁gaze: 望hectic: 紧张architect: 建筑师overwhelming: 不知所措accompanied: 陪trembling: 发抖expansive: 开阔dazzling: 耀眼hovered: 悬hesitating: 迟疑companionship: 陪伴present: 当下burst: 绽放brilliant: 绚烂tranquility: 宁静competing: 参加occupied: 占满bustling: 熙攘biting: 刺骨scattered: 纷飞cherish: 珍惜contest: 比赛amidst: 中skyline: 天际线climbed: 登fireworks: 烟花rhythm: 节奏

Before we get to the terrors of contemporary life, it's time for Kate and Brodie to chat about their holidays. Kate went to London, Cornwall, Paris, New York and LA, and Brodie went to Tokyo and Hanoi. They agree that Christine Vachon would've had a conniption at Pudong international airport in Shanghai, discuss the eras of Keira Knightley, rice porridge, Alexei Toliopoulos and Zachary Ruane's Refused Classification.There's a TV dispatch: on lying about owning Pioneertown in Selling Sunset, Perfect Couple and doing lots of Irish accents, lesbian witches in Agatha All Along and lesbian housewives in RHONY, (Ryan) Murphy's Law states we gotta talk about Monsters.Also: Alsos!Follow us at @seealsopodcast and join the Hogg Hive on Patreon to hear this week's bonus episode all about our holidays.Brodie is joining Lauren Taylor & Simon Winkler on Nov 16 at Hope Street for Good Question. See Also listeners can get 30% off their tickets for the Nov 16 workshop with the code SEEALSO. Get your ticket here.See AlsosBetween the Temples @ JIFFGuy Blackman's vinyl reissue of Adult BabyNew single from Harvey SutherlandAlso AlsosSoccer Mommy's new album EvergreenYou Beauty by Mish GrigorReal Housewives of Salt Lake City on HayuSabah Bolo slippersCabeau travel pillowMojave Ghost by Byredo Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

RAISING CAPITAL IN CHINA – THE INTERNATIONAL SHIPOWNER’S PERSPECTIVE Featured Moderator: Mr. Elton Chan, Partner – Stephenson Harwood Panelists : • Mr. Nick Daskalakis, Managing Director – Alpha Shipping Advisors • Mr. Michalis Livanos, Chief Financial Officer – DryDel Shipping Inc. • Mr. Nicholas G. Armaos, Chief Financial Officer – Lavinia Corporation/Laskaridis Shipping Co. Ltd. • Mr. Gautam Khurana, Chief Financial Officer – Precious Shipping Public Company Limited • Mr. Stavros Gyftakis, CFO – Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHIP); CFO & Director – United Maritime Corporation (NASDAQ: USEA) 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, ChinaHosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

CHINESE LEASING - FINANCING THE GLOBAL SHIPPING INDUSTRY Featuring Moderator: Mr. Christoforos Bisbikos, Head of the Asia Assets and Structured Finance Group – Watson Farley & Williams Panelists • Mr. Eahan Shi, Director, Shipping Business Department – Bank of China Financial Leasing • Mr. Charlie Tsai, Deputy Head of Shipping Finance – Bank of Communications Financial Leasing Co., Ltd • Mr. Zhang Jia, Vice General Manager, Ship Leasing Division – CDB Leasing Co., Ltd. • Mr. Yang Yi, Assistant to the General Manager, Shipping Business Department – CMB Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, ChinaMonday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

CHINESE SHIPYARDS & GLOBAL SHIPPING Featured Moderator: Mr. Gu Zheng Wang, VP, Commercial Manager East China, Marine & Offshore, Greater China – Lloyd’s Register Panelists • Mr. Sun Changqing, Chief Financial Officer – CSSC Cruise Technology Development Co., Ltd. • Mr. Huang Guoliang, Assistant to the Director, Marketing Department - Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co., Ltd. • Mr. Lin Qingshan, Vice President – Jiangnan Shipyard (Group) CO., Ltd. • Mr. Dimitris Vranopoulos, President & CEO – Marine Plus S.A. • Ms. Ingrid Liu, General Manager – Optima Shipbrokers (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

GOING INTO 2025 – FUELEU MARITIME & EU ETS Presented by: Mr. Ronny Waage, Global Sales Director – zero44 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, ChinaMonday, October 21, 2024Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

SEAFARERS OF TOMORROW – EMERGING PATTERNS AND TRENDS featuring: Mr. Terence Zhao, Managing Director – Singhai Marine Services 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

SHIPPING – THE INTERNATIONAL OWNER’S PERSPECTIVE featuring: Moderator: Mr. Nicolas Bornozis, President – Capital Link, Inc. Panelists • Mr. Mark Young, CEO – Cetus Maritime • Mr. Demetris Chrysostomou, Managing Director Asia Region – Columbia Shipmanagement • Mr. Emanuele (Manu) Ravano, Co- CEO – IFCHOR GALBRAITHS (IG) • Mr. Stamatis Tsantanis, Chairman & CEO – Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHIP); Founder, Chairman & CEO - United Maritime Corporation (NASDAQ: USEA) 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

OPTIMIZING SHIP PERFORMANCE Moderator: Mr. Keng Chen, Vice President & Area Manager, China South – DNV Maritime • Mr. Dario Bocchetti, Head of Energy Saving, R&D and Ship Design – Grimaldi Group • Mr. Bruno Bai, Head of Tankers, Asia Pacific – IFCHOR GALBRAITHS • Mr. Holger Jablonski, Business Development Manager – Intership Navigation Co. Ltd. • Capt. Vikas Kapoor, Business Development Director – Ishima 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

IMPLEMENT MARINE FUEL STRATEGY: WHAT IS YOUR PACE? Featuring: Mr. Shen Tao, Director, Global Sustainability - Eastern Hemisphere - ABS 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

SHIP FINANCE - THE CHINESE - HELLENIC RELATIONSHIP Presented by: Mr. George Xiradakis, President – Association of Banking and Financial Executives of Hellenic Shipping; Founder - Managing Director – XRTC Business Consultants 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

WELCOME REMARKS • Mr. Nicolas Bornozis, President – Capital Link, Inc. • Mr. Demetris Chrysostomou, Managing Director Asia Region – Columbia Shipmanagement • Mr. Terence Zhao, Managing Director – Singhai Marine Services 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

WELCOME REMARKS • Mr. Nicolas Bornozis, President – Capital Link, Inc. • Mr. Demetris Chrysostomou, Managing Director Asia Region – Columbia Shipmanagement • Mr. Terence Zhao, Managing Director – Singhai Marine Services 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

SHIP FINANCE - THE CHINESE - HELLENIC RELATIONSHIP Presented by: Mr. George Xiradakis, President – Association of Banking and Financial Executives of Hellenic Shipping; Founder - Managing Director – XRTC Business Consultants 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

IMPLEMENT MARINE FUEL STRATEGY: WHAT IS YOUR PACE? Featuring: Mr. Shen Tao, Director, Global Sustainability - Eastern Hemisphere - ABS 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

OPTIMIZING SHIP PERFORMANCE Moderator: Mr. Keng Chen, Vice President & Area Manager, China South – DNV Maritime • Mr. Dario Bocchetti, Head of Energy Saving, R&D and Ship Design – Grimaldi Group • Mr. Bruno Bai, Head of Tankers, Asia Pacific – IFCHOR GALBRAITHS • Mr. Holger Jablonski, Business Development Manager – Intership Navigation Co. Ltd. • Capt. Vikas Kapoor, Business Development Director – Ishima 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

SHIPPING – THE INTERNATIONAL OWNER’S PERSPECTIVE featuring: Moderator: Mr. Nicolas Bornozis, President – Capital Link, Inc. Panelists • Mr. Mark Young, CEO – Cetus Maritime • Mr. Demetris Chrysostomou, Managing Director Asia Region – Columbia Shipmanagement • Mr. Emanuele (Manu) Ravano, Co- CEO – IFCHOR GALBRAITHS (IG) • Mr. Stamatis Tsantanis, Chairman & CEO – Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHIP); Founder, Chairman & CEO - United Maritime Corporation (NASDAQ: USEA) 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

RAISING CAPITAL IN CHINA – THE INTERNATIONAL SHIPOWNER’S PERSPECTIVE Featured Moderator: Mr. Elton Chan, Partner – Stephenson Harwood Panelists : • Mr. Nick Daskalakis, Managing Director – Alpha Shipping Advisors • Mr. Michalis Livanos, Chief Financial Officer – DryDel Shipping Inc. • Mr. Nicholas G. Armaos, Chief Financial Officer – Lavinia Corporation/Laskaridis Shipping Co. Ltd. • Mr. Gautam Khurana, Chief Financial Officer – Precious Shipping Public Company Limited • Mr. Stavros Gyftakis, CFO – Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHIP); CFO & Director – United Maritime Corporation (NASDAQ: USEA) 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, ChinaHosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

GOING INTO 2025 – FUELEU MARITIME & EU ETS Presented by: Mr. Ronny Waage, Global Sales Director – zero44 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, ChinaMonday, October 21, 2024Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

CHINESE SHIPYARDS & GLOBAL SHIPPING Featured Moderator: Mr. Gu Zheng Wang, VP, Commercial Manager East China, Marine & Offshore, Greater China – Lloyd’s Register Panelists • Mr. Sun Changqing, Chief Financial Officer – CSSC Cruise Technology Development Co., Ltd. • Mr. Huang Guoliang, Assistant to the Director, Marketing Department - Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co., Ltd. • Mr. Lin Qingshan, Vice President – Jiangnan Shipyard (Group) CO., Ltd. • Mr. Dimitris Vranopoulos, President & CEO – Marine Plus S.A. • Ms. Ingrid Liu, General Manager – Optima Shipbrokers (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

SEAFARERS OF TOMORROW – EMERGING PATTERNS AND TRENDS featuring: Mr. Terence Zhao, Managing Director – Singhai Marine Services 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, China Monday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

CHINESE LEASING - FINANCING THE GLOBAL SHIPPING INDUSTRY Featuring Moderator: Mr. Christoforos Bisbikos, Head of the Asia Assets and Structured Finance Group – Watson Farley & Williams Panelists • Mr. Eahan Shi, Director, Shipping Business Department – Bank of China Financial Leasing • Mr. Charlie Tsai, Deputy Head of Shipping Finance – Bank of Communications Financial Leasing Co., Ltd • Mr. Zhang Jia, Vice General Manager, Ship Leasing Division – CDB Leasing Co., Ltd. • Mr. Yang Yi, Assistant to the General Manager, Shipping Business Department – CMB Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. 8th Annual International Shipping Forum - Pudong - Shanghai, ChinaMonday, October 21, 2024 Grand Kempinski Hotel - Shanghai, China Hosted by Capital Link & The Export-Import Bank of China With the support of the Shanghai - Pudong Government In Partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement & Singhai Marine Services https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2024china/

Last time we spoke about the capture of Shanghai and Nanking. By early 1927, the NRA concentrated around Sungchiang, feigning a major assault on Shanghai while secretly preparing to attack Nanking. Capturing Nanking would isolate Sun Chuanfang's forces. By February, Sun's battered armies awaited reinforcements, while the KMT incited disorder in Shanghai. The city's large workforce, influenced by the CCP, opposed Sun's alliance with northerners and foreign powers. On February 19th, the CCP launched a general strike, which was violently suppressed by Sun's forces, leading to hundreds of deaths. Despite the failed uprising, the NRA advanced, exploiting defections within Sun's ranks. By March, NRA forces captured key positions, closing in on Nanking and Shanghai. Amidst this, Chiang Kai-Shek faced internal strife with the CCP and KMT leftists, leading to disunity in the First United Front. The Wuhan faction undermined Chiang's authority, further complicating the Northern Expedition. By late March, the NRA seized Shanghai, while ongoing conflicts hinted at a potential collapse of the First United Front.   #114 The Northern Expedition Part 5: Collapse of the First United Front Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Last we left off, Chiang Kai-Shek was basically at war with this new CCP run cabal in Wuhan. They were taking away his authority one notch at a time. To counter the communist Wuhan cabal, Chiang Kai-SHek appealed to the center and right wingers in the KMT. Before the capture of Shanghai a anti-communist group with members such as Wu Chihui, Niu Yungchen and Yang Quan who had headquarters within the city had been investigating how the CCP was subverting the KMT authority. On March 6th, they began questioning the CCP leader Chen Duxiu and his Shanghai based subordinate Lo Yinung what exactly the intentions of the CCP were. Chen Duxiu said they would turn China communist, but it would take more than 20 years and thus cooperation with the KMT was a necessity. After it was found out the CCP had fomented some worker attacks upon areas in Shanghai, this produced anti KMT demonstrations along the Nanking road. Chiang Kai-Shek was gaining more loyal followers to his side as the anti-communism grew amongst the KMT members. When Shanghai was taken, Chiang Kai-Shek sent letters to members of the Wuhan cabal that he considered not under the influence of the CCP that they should come to Shanghai. On March 24th, Chiang Kai-Shek addressed a letter sent to Tan Yenkai at Wuhan “Please forward this letter to the National Government. Shanghai and Nanking have been occupied and there is much work to be done here. I hope committee member T'an and Ministers Sun [Fo] and Soong and Ch'en [Eugene] will come to Shanghai to handle affairs here so I can devote my attention to military matters” Yet he neglected to mention the insubordination running through the NRA ranks and the ongoing Nanking incident that was occurring that very day. Most of the men who received letters at Wuhan had a lot of grievances against the CCP, particularly because they felt betrayed. This of course was because initially the CCP had colluded with the left wing KMT faction, led by Wang Jingwei. But he and the rest of the left wing had been left in the dust as the CCP simply took charge. By the end of March the civil war between Wuhan and Chiang Kai-Shek was becoming more and more visible. Both Wuhan and Shanghai began using the press to attack another. From Wuhan Borodin was accusing Shanghai of being reactionaries and Shanghai was calling into question how the communist influence emanating from Wuhan could be put to an end. The Wuhan cabal then began dismissing officers loyal to Chiang Kai-Shek and turning military authority to the new Wuhan military council. Shanghai had their own cabal in the form of committees who retaliated against Wuhan. This saw a sort of battle over Jiangxi as both cabals tried to dismiss each other's favored officers. Yet the CCP within Shanghai began organizing a provisional municipal government and appointing CCP members to key positions. Upon discovering this new attack, Chiang Kai-Shek labeled the CCP committees as the enemy of the KMT and not to be recognized by the political party nor the NRA. April brought violence to the situation. In Shanghai the CCP used its new found cabal there to undermine Chiang Kai-Shek's regime. Chiang Kai-Shek responded by placing a curfew over the city and declaring publicly he would suppress all irregular movements. Word spread Chiang Kai-Shek had invited a large group of KMT civil and military leaders from Guangzhou to Shanghai where they were forming plans to counter the CCP threat in the two cities. Then word came that the CCP were seizing merchants in Wuhan and ransoming them and taking their businesses. In Shanghai non-communist workers began complaining that they were being persecuted and even physically beaten by CCP unions. So the KMT unions began gathering non-communist workers and created a labor organization with the intent of completely replacing the communist labor union at Shanghai. Thus if we see this all as a war, one front of it because the labor front. From there general strikes broke out at Shanghai and Hangzhou, on the part of the CCP to try and oust Chiang Kai-Shek. The KMT unions retaliated by burning down the CCP union HQ's in Hangzhou and Ningpo. After this the Wuhan joint council declared recent elections in Guangzhou to be illegal on the basis they had already been ordered to disband and reorganize. In response Guangzhou's government arrested agents that had been sent by Wuhan and refused to comply with Wuhans orders. Chiang Kai-Shek now was deeply concerned about the stagnating northern expedition. Each day the NRA delayed, the NPA grew larger and more coordinated. Chiang Kai-Shek still hoped to convince key KMT leaders to turn away from the CCP. To this purpose, in March, Chiang Kai-Shek sent his close colleague Zhang Jingjiang to find Wang Jingwei and ask him to come back to China. Zhang Jingjiang wrote to Wang Jingwei, notifying him the CCP were trying to take over the entire movement and that they needed him to return from Europe. Wang Jingwei returned to Shanghai by April 1st as Chiang Kai-Shek notified his agents “Comrade Wang has returned and I have had a serious conference with him about the Party and the country. From now on he will be responsible for the Party as well as political affairs. I will devote my attention to military operations. The military and civil administration, finance and diplomacy will all be under Wang and be consolidated in the central government. My armies and I will obey unanimously. Military authority and operation orders, however, I will direct as before. Wang has indicated that he thinks there should be no intra-Party conflict until the military operation has been completed and that everyone should support the C-in-C until a discussion of the matters involved can be held”. Can you say what a 180? Wang Jingwei did not trust Chiang Kai-Shek at all, and I am sure the feeling was mutual. These two guys after all had been rivals fighting for leadership over the movement. One crucial problem for Wang Jingwei, was the fact he was the leader of the leftists in the movement and only really had power when combined with the CCP. Now when Wang Jingwei came back home, he took a route going through Moscow and Vladivostok. Borodin had telegraphed him from Wuhan, telling him the CCP did not want to displace the KMT nor sought to create a communist China. Wang Jingwei stated later on that he came back to China hoping to bring the Wuhan faction back into the fold. On April the 15th Wang Jingwei took up his new position. Chiang Kai-Shek pushed Wang Jingwei to call for an all KMT gathering at Nanking to purge the CCP from the ranks. However at that time, the northern expedition had units advancing against Honan and quite a few of them had CCP officers. Wang Jingwei stated if they purged now it would threaten said units. Thus the second week of April saw an increase in violence between the two groups. Riots broke out in Guangzhou, Zhejiang and Jiangsu between unions leaving hundreds dead and wounded. The military forces at Shanghai began quelling armed workers as Chiang Kai-Shek called upon the communist unions to disband the near 5000 armed worker militias or else “they would be regarded as a conspiratorial organization … not to be permitted to exist.” On April 6th, Chiang Kai-Shek ordered some troops to raid and close down the CCP's political department in Shanghai led by Kuo Mojo. On the same day, Zhang Zuolin raided the Soviet embassy at Beijing and the Shanghai and Tianjin international concession police raided their Soviet consulates. All of the evidence found was handed over to the KMT at Shanghai. Chiang Kai-Shek hoped to use the information to prove the CCP were subverting the KMT and bring about a purge. In early April the Shanghai Control Committee urged Chiang Kai-Shek to nip the bud of what looked like a CCP uprising. Many large meetings amongst the top KMT leaders followed and all came to the conclusion the CCP was trying to seize leadership over the movement and suppress the KMT. Now I should mention by this point, this is all heavily contested. Current day CCP historians would paint a picture that Chiang Kai-Shek was the aggressor, whereas Taiwanese historians would say the opposite. What is known and I think I have fairly portrayed it, is that a sort of civil war emerged in the First United Front. Both sides from the beginning had goals they wanted to achieve at the cost to the other side. Its really one of those “who pulled the trigger first moments”.  For quite some time the Chinese and foreign press had covered the battle between the CCP and Chiang Kai-Shek. During the first two weeks of april multiple warnings had been sent by both sides openly that action would be taken. On April 11th 5000 armed workers led by the CCP were warned military response was imminent. The armed workers currently picketing were warned and their CCP leadership put out alerts in the major suburbs of Zhapei, Putung, Woosung and south shanghai. While the KMT prepared a purge against the CCP in Shanghai, the NPA launched a counteroffensive in northern Jiangsu. This would see the NRA face a succession of defeats through april. From April 3rd to the 11th the NRA fell back 100 miles through Jiangsu and Anhui, closing in towards the Yangtze.  On April 5th Wang Jingwei had landed in Shanghai, invited by Chiang Kai-Shek, however he quickly met in secrecy with Chen Duxiu. After their meeting they both agreed to issue a joint declaration re-affirming the cooperation between the left KMT and CCP. Wang Jingwei departed for Wuhan on the 6th and it was at this point Chiang Kai-Shek met up with his old buddy Du Yuesheng, the leader of the Green Gang. They formed a rival union to face the CCP unions in Shanghai. On the 9th, Chiang Kai-Shek declared martial law in Shanghai as the Central Control Commission proclaimed “party protection and national salvation”, denouncing the Wuhan CCP backed government. On the 11th Chiang Kai-Shek secretly issued orders to all the provinces under NRA control to purge communists from the KMT.  At dawn on the 12th Green Gang Members began to assault district offices controlled by the CCP unions in places like Zhabei, Pudong and Nanshi. Using the martial law decree, Chiang Kai-Shek unleashed the 26th army upon the city who quickly rounded up, disarmed and fought armed worker militias. 300 people were killed and wounded as the CCP unions tried to organize a resistance. On the 13th they denounced Chiang Kai-Shek's actions as thousands of workers demonstrated in front of the 26th army HQ. The soldiers there opened fire upon the demonstrators killing perhaps 100 or so people and wounding many more. Chiang Kai-Shek then dissolved the provincial government of Shanghai, the CCP backed labor unions and any organization with ties to the CCP. He then reorganized a network of new unions, allied to his faction of the KMT and had Du Yuesheng manage said operation. Some sources claim over 1000 CCP members and left wing supporters were arrested, 300 were executed and more than 5000 went missing. As you can imagine that figure out 5000 is also claimed by many to be 5000 dead communists. Others claim the number could have been as high as 10,000. The entire incident became known as the Shanghai Massacre. Now this event effectively ended the First United Front and ushered in the Chinese Civil War. However because of how I have been tackling the warlord Era, I'd prefer to put the civil war on the backburner. We most certainly will come back to it. After the break our their alliance, the Wuhan government still stood, but now Chiang Kai-Shek formed a separate government at Nanking. It came to no surprise when Wang Jingwei condemned Chiang Kai-Shek for the purges and became the leader of the rival Wuhan government. This formally split the KMT right-left wings and their associated NRA forces. To celebrate the dire situation of the revolutionaries, Zhang Zuolin began artillery bombarding Nanjing from across the Yangtze. Now saw a rather chaotic situation where two groups of NRA would both continue separate northern expeditions, completely uncoordinated against a far larger NPA foe.  Now another aspect of all of this, perhaps less sexy to say, was the financial disparity between the CCP and KMT. Shanghai was a reliable fiscal base, a repository of Chinese capital whose tax revenues far surpassed that of Wuhan. Especially since Wuhan was seeing unbelievable worker strikes, pushed by the CCP, her economy was free falling. Wuhans total annual revenues from affiliated provinces had shrunk to a fourth of that of Shanghai. Over at Guangzhou the Central Bank continued to hold the majority of the KMT hard currency and her silver reserves. Wuhan had been printing money like crazy, devaluing it, something a Canadian like I, knows a lot about cough cough. The KMT finance minister T.V Soong had moved to Wuhan in the beginning, but was quickly frustrated with the situation and fled for Shanghai as soon as the city was captured. Chiang Kai-Shek managed to win over the bankers and leading businessmen, which was not hard given his opponent was communism.  When violence broke out at Nanking against the foreign community, Chiang Kai-Shek was between a rock and a hard place. He needed to avoid any confrontation with the foreign powers, but his KMT base and the people of China wanted to break the chains of foreign imperialism. Thus he made some speeches stating “the objective of the national revolution is to seek international equality…. If a nation treats China fairly, China will return friendship.…as long as foreign troops and warships undertake to protest … we will not be responsible…. Incidents are unavoidable in a revolution.” Chiang Kai-Shek walked a tightrope with the foreign powers. On one hand he constantly was negotiating with them to return concessions, but he always made sure to thwart any rationales for them to militarily intervene. Whereas at Wuhan they found themselves suffering from large scale unemployment, a crumbling economy, political tensions, revenues disappearing and quite a lot of hostility from the foreign powers, Shanghai looked a hell of a lot more stable in all said categories. Borodin watched as the Wuhan regime was collapsing and began advising the CCP to ease up with labor and peasant movements to allow the economy to recover. The Wuhan government had been dealt many terrible blows, but was still standing. Come May of 1927, Wuhan began massing their troops in an attempt to showcase to the movement they could continue the northern expedition. They wanted their troops to be the first ones in North China, hopefully that would win over more support. The timing of Wuhans offensive into Honan just so happened to coincide with some of Wu Peifu's forces in Honan defecting. The commander in chief of the Wuhan forces, Tang Shengchih then performed their first offensive serving Wu Peifu a defeat near Chumatien. Tang Shengchih then advanced north, meeting defensive lines defended by Zhang Xueliang, the son of Zhang Zuolin. Within the center of this line was the town of Xiping, where the Beijing-Hankou railway crossed a formidable river. The Wuhan forces pushed Zhang Xueliang further back after 3 days of battle, until he withdrew north of Yencheng on May 15th. Zhang Xueliang again took up a defensive line along a river. He placed heavy artillery behind fortified positions and tried to hold out against the incoming NRA forces. The NRA advanced towards the river and went downstream from Yencheng, threatening to out flank Zhang Xueliang and his rearway station to his rear. Yet the Wuhan forces were not the only ones in the fight, for the Old Christian warlord, Feng Yuxiang unleashed his army from Shaanxi. Feng Yuxiang came out of the Wei River valley with his Guominjun and passed through the Tungkuan pass on May 6th. He first captured Kuanyintang, a mountain gateway leading to Luoyang. After taking Luoyang on May 28th, Feng Yuxiang was 70 miles from Chengzhou, which held the Beijing-Hankou railroad bridgehead along the Yellow River. Zhang Xueliang responded to the new threat to his rear by withdrawing further north. When Zheng Xueliang took up a position north of the Yellow River he now had a secure and shortened railway supply line, thus he could face a two front war against Wuhan and the Guominjun. Advancing quickly across northern Honan, Feng Yuxiang's cavalry vanguard beat Wuhan's NRA forces to Chengzhou and Kaifeng by late May. From there Feng Yuxiang's forces straddled the Lunghai Railway.  Meanwhile on May 10th, Chiang Kai-Shek's 1st and 6th NRA armies crossed the Yangtze into Anhui. On the 16th, Li Zongren advanced into western Anhui to attack Hefei. By the 20th Li Zngren captured Bengbu, while Chiang Kai-Shek unleashed a 4-pronged offensive through Jiangsu to reach Shandong. He Yingqin led the 1st NRA army to capture Haizhou by late may. On the 28th Li Zongren took Xuzhou. With the Beijing-Hankou railway under NRA and Guminjun control, the line of communication extended to all 3 forces. Feng Yuxiang began receiving offers from both Wuhan and Nanking at this point. Feng Yuxiang first met with Wang Jingwei and Tang Shengzhi at Zhengzhou on June 10th, before traveling to Xuzhou on the 19th to meet Chiang Kai-Shek. Both needed his help if they hoped to take North China. Feng Yuxiang of course was entirely dependent on the Soviet Union, so it seemed clear Wuhan was more in line for him. However he really needed to pick a faction that could satisfy his interests. For example, which revolutionary movement would survive its little civil war? What if Chiang Kai-Shek won over more of the Wuhan leadership and defeated the CCP cabal there? Could the Wuhan government actually challenge Chiang Kai-Shek when he held all the resource rich territories? Feng Yuxiang looked upon Wuhan's numerous economic and political issues. He also saw how aggressive their CCP peasant unions were in Hunan, constantly confiscating land. He looked at Nanking, it had enormous resources, hell Nanking promised him 2.5 million dollars a month to maintain his Guominjun, plus military aid and a nice position as chairman over the new provisional government over Honan. Despite Feng Yuxiangs takeover of Honan's lucrative Kungxien Arsenal within the Lo Valley, he had a very poor industrial foundation. He did not really have much Shaanxi personnel equipped to make the arsenal shine so to say, so he would be dependent on external aid for sometime. His aid from the Soviets in the north was quite vulnerable. The aid had to be transported over an incredibly long distance overland from the north, any intelligent warlord could cut this. Feng Yuxiang started to calculate which one would be more profitable: stick with the Soviet aid, thus join Wuhan or break with the Soviets for Nanking.  Now something else occurred that would have dire consequences for the Wuhan regime. On June 1st, Joseph Stalin sent a secret telegram to Borodin and his associate M.N Roy with orders for the Wuhan government. Without consulting Borodin, M.N Roy revealed the telegram to Wang Jingwei and it held the following instructions. Insistence that every effort be made for land to be occupied by the Communist Party. However, actions that are too aggressive should be avoided, and officials and soldiers' lands should be exempted. Make concessions to artisans, merchants and small landlords. Mobilize 20,000 communists and 50,000 revolutionary workers and farmers to raise an army. Recruit new leaders from the workers and farmers of the lower stratum to join KMT so as to alter the composition of the party. Expel all those of "old mindsets". Establish a revolutionary military court headed by well-known party officials and non-communists, to punish reactionary officials   Wang Jingwei believed following these instructions would be the death of the Wuhan government, but continued to negotiate with the soviets, because hell he had little choice when they were providing so much needed assistance. Wang Jingwei demanded the Soviets provide 15 million roubles in aid, but the Soviets only agreed to 2 million. This prompted a angry Wang Jingwei to threaten to send Borodin back to Moscow. The event became known as the “may instructions” and it compelle Wang Jingwei to break off from the USSR. However even doing so, he certainly was not joining Chiang Kai-Shek. In a vain effort to counter the CCP and Chiang Kai-Shek, Wang Jingwei sought Feng Yuxiangs help. Without informing his CCP colleagues, Wang Jingwei dispatched Deng Yanda to meet with Feng Yuxiang at Zhengzhou, offering every possible concession he could think of. Wang Jingwei had no idea Feng Yuxiang was in talks with Chiang Kai-Shek. Now Wang Jingwei was not the only one unhappy with the Soviet instructions, even Chen Duxiu would go on the record to say he did not think they fit the reality in China and telegram moscow it would be nearly impossible to implement them. The Soviets were very displeased with the situation in China, particularly that the CCP-KMT union had more or less collapsed. By late June the Soviets were considering breaking ties with the Wuhan government. This prompted a panicked Chen Duxiu and Borodin to try and quell radicals within the Wuhan clique to try and retain the small united front between the Leftist KMT and CCP. They frantically told workers and peasant unions to stop activity for a while just so things could stabilize. However ironically the Soviets saw all of this as opportunism and recalled Borodin and by early July were pulling out of the KMT deal. Needless to say, Feng Yuxiang chose to ally himself to Chiang Kai-Shek. He did so by sending a joint telegram in late June to Wang Jingwei telling him and demanding the Wuhan government expel all its soviet advisors and purge itself of communists so they could all together continue the northern expedition.  While this was going on, Tang Shengchih's forces were being mauled by heavy artillery in north china. Tang Shengchih was wounded badly, and believing Feng Yuxiang would not help them out, Wang Jingwei withdrew the forces back over to Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi. After taking some time to recover, Tang Shengchih advanced his forces out of Wuhan through Jiangxi to face Nankings forces near Anking in Anhui. Chiang Kai-Shek had his forces respond to the threat defensively. On July 13th Chiang Kai-Shek pulled his front line forces trying to enter Shandong back. Meanwhile the civilian population of Wuhan were no longer supporting the government. Tang Shengchih began to dig in around Anking threatening Nanking. When Chiang Kai-Shek moved his frontline units near Shandong south to defend against Tang Shengchih the NPA began to claim lost territory. In early July the NPA recaptured Tengxien, Lincheng, Tsaochuang and the Tianjin-Pukou railway. Despite losing Honan in June, the NPA now enjoyed a shorted logistical line and front, allowing them to deploy their heavy artillery in concentration while Nanking was fighting a two front war. The NRA forces were being battered by the NPA. In the face of mounting losses, both the Wuhan and Nanking governments began negotiations. Wang Jingwei had procrastinated as long as he possibly could, but Feng Yuxiang was not going to help him, Chiang Kai-Shek was certainly not and the CCP and their Soviet overlords were trying to take over. Thus on July 15th, Wang Jingwei held a KMT meeting and formally published the May Instructions letter while condemning the CCP. He unleashed a purge, though he did so less bloodily compared to what had happened at Shanghai. The Wuhan and Nanking governments met and passed the “policy of uniting the party”, while all communists were kicked out of the KMT and NRA. The Wuhan government sent all their Soviet advisors back to Moscow as Wang Jingwei proclaimed the CCP had ruined the revolution publically. KMT forces loyal to Chiang Kai-Shek took over Wuhan and by July 18th the Wuhan area was cleansed of communists. However Wang Jingwei had made one demand to reunite the KMT, he demanded Chiang Kai-SHek resign from his post as commander in chief and relinquish all other political titles. Chiang Kai-Shek did just that on August 12th, the Generalissimo was no more. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. The First United Front had come to an end, a new Civil War was born. Because of the war between Wuhan and Nanking, the NPA got the upper hand again, reclaiming vast amounts of territory. To reunify the KMT Wang Jingwei demanded Chiang Kai-Shek walk away, and walk he did, what would happen now to the northern expedition?

The image of the skyscraper is the hallmark of the modern city. Futuristic depictions of urban landscapes nearly always feature towering structures high above the clouds. Today, however, developing countries seem to be putting the greatest effort into building the most impressive skyscrapers, from the Burj Khalifa in the UAE, to the future Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia. Whether you love them or hate them, it's worth asking why we build skyscrapers and what their role will be in future cities. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I sit down with Jason Barr, author of Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers.Barr is a professor of economics at Rutgers University – Newark, and is a member of the Rutgers Global Urban Systems PhD program. He is also the author of Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan's Skyscrapers.In This Episode* Demand for the skyscraper (1:35)* The end of the skyscraper (9:00)* Pillars of commerce (14:05)* The sky's the limit (18:36)* Manhattan extension (23:04)* Trends and styles (24:23)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationThe image of the skyscraper is the hallmark of the modern city. Futuristic depictions of urban landscapes nearly always feature towering structures high above the clouds. Today, however, developing countries seem to be putting the greatest effort into building the most impressive skyscrapers, from the Burj Khalifa in the UAE, to the future Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia. Whether you love them or hate them, it's worth asking why we build skyscrapers and what their role will be in future cities. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast, I sit down with Jason Barr, author of Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World's Tallest Skyscrapers.Barr is a professor of economics at Rutgers University – Newark, and is a member of the Rutgers Global Urban Systems PhD program. He is also the author of Building the Skyline: The Birth and Growth of Manhattan's Skyscrapers.Demand for the skyscraper (1:35)Pethokoukis: You obviously love skyscrapers, you're fascinated by them. You wrote a whole book on them. So I want to just start the very basic question: Why do skyscrapers fascinate you, and the people who aren't fascinated by them, what are they missing?Barr: Great questions. Well, I grew up on Long Island, and so I was always really fascinated with Manhattan. I grew up in the '70s, and so New York back then was a very dark, mysterious place for a youngster. So when I grew up, actually when I was in college, I started hanging out in the city. So to me, the skyline of Manhattan and New York City, they're just two sides of the same coin. I really developed an interest in tall buildings through my interest and fascination with Manhattan's and New York City's history.So when I came to Rutgers Newark, I just started doing research on tall buildings, especially in New York City: what was driving the heights of these buildings; there's all these interesting height cycles over the last 150 years. So I wrote my first book on the Manhattan skyline, that was called Building the Skyline, and then after that I thought, let's see what's happening around the rest of the world. So to me, the tall building is an interesting thing because it's part and parcel with urbanization, and I just personally don't think you could have one without the other.I think some people might think that skyscrapers are, at least for rich countries, that they're kind of a 20th-century thing that we did as we were growing, and cities were getting bigger, and skyscrapers are a part of that, but now they're for other parts of the world, parts of the world which are still urbanizing, which are still getting richer. Are skyscrapers are still a thing for America?The short answer is yes, but, given how dense cities are, tall buildings are just being added a lot more slowly. In New York, the population's kind of slowly growing, and so tall buildings are either replacing old buildings that are wearing out, or there's always this push by big global corporations to be in the newest and latest tall building. And obviously there's this international demand from people abroad to have an apartment — or national demand — global demand to have some kind of residential presence in New York. But the thing is, people in other countries: cities, planners, residents in other countries, they look to New York, they look to Chicago, and I think, for many of them, they see New York as something they want to emulate, and New York is, on just about almost any metric, it's probably the top global city. And so I think cities today, especially in China, and Asia more broadly, they're trying to kind of replicate that, what you might call “the Manhattan magic,” and I don't really think people in this country realize how much tall building construction is going on in other cities around the world. People in this country are a little bit more cynical about the role of the tall building in urban growth and in housing affordability and stuff like this, but other cities are basically going gangbusters, is a way to put it.Is that driven by fundamental economic forces? Is it kind of a “national greatness” kinds of signaling projects? Are there fundamental reasons, not just to build skyscrapers, but to build very, very tall skyscrapers?“All of the above” is the answer. Fundamentally, if there's many, many people who want to be working, living, playing in the center, the only way to accommodate the demand to be in the center is to make more land in the center, so the skyscraper, at its heart, is what I would say is “land in the sky.” You just go vertical because there's constraints on how much land there is in the center.Having said that, definitely the skyscraper is seen as a kind of way to advertise, a way to increase confidence in the place, and so you boost foreign direct investment. Observatories are huge money makers, there's a big tourism component. A lot of critics will say, “Oh, it's all about spectacle and ego.” But really, for the book, and just more broadly my research, when you drill down on the economics of these super tall buildings, not all of them are profitable or profit-maximizing, but they all have a strong economic rationale.Now, I just also want to say, China has its own thing going on, which sort of compounds the skyscraper construction-building there because of their unique governance structure and land ownership structure, but China is building tall buildings because, at the end of the day, there's a kind of, what I call, a “tall building bling.” There's just something that says, “This city is growing, this city is drawing population.” So we build a tall building and we boost confidence in the city. And it works, really.The pictures don't have to be too old, if you look at a picture of Shanghai, it looks a lot different not too long ago. It's almost as if a whole other city just kind of fell from the sky, a city of skyscrapers, and where there were once goats or something grazing, there's now a bunch of massive skyscrapers.Yeah, absolutely, and there's a few reasons for this. One is, I think Chinese residents more broadly see tall building as a natural way to live. I've talked to many Chinese residents, whether it's Shanghai or other cities, and to them, to own an apartment in the sky is like the greatest thing. It's their equivalent of the single family home in the United States. Living in the clouds is something many people aspire to. The other aspect of it is, Shanghai, and the Pudong neighborhood in Shanghai, was chosen basically to become a financial hub. Basically, the leaders were looking at Hong Kong and they thought it was a, to quote, I forgot the author, but to quote him in the book, the Shanghai officials and the National Party officials saw Hong Kong as that frustratingly free city, and so they wanted to create a kind of a financial hub in Shanghai. And so the Shanghai Tower, for example, is part of that plan to really draw people's attention to Shanghai, itself. So it was part of a master plan.The end of the skyscraper (9:00)I certainly remember that, after 9/11, I heard about “the end of the skyscraper,” and then during the pandemic, I heard about “the end of the city.” Now I'm guessing that cities will continue to exist and we're going to continue to build tall buildings.Absolutely. What 9/11 did was just make sure that we make our building safer with fire protection measures. In many Asian countries, every 20 floors, let's say, are mechanical floors, so you have the electric equipment, and the heating, and the cooling, and water tanks. They can also surround these in concrete, and so if something's on fire, if a floor is on fire, they can go to this hermetically sealed floor, a refuge floor, and stay there and be protected. And the elevator cores, they're made of concrete, and so you wouldn't have something like what happened on 9/11. So it didn't really impact the demand; 9/11 didn't impact the demand for the tall building, it just made us make tall buildings safer. And of course the downside is if you want to go into an office building, you have to have a swipe and you have to have an entry, so the negative of 9/11 was more about heightened security and increasing protections in a way that engenders a little bit more mistrust of us. But the demand didn't go away.Same thing with Covid. For big cities like New York and San Francisco, I'm sure the empty-office problem is going to dissipate. It'll take a while. This may be an overly broad statement, but the truth is, our present and future is in cities. The funny thing about the internet and social media and all that, it was supposed to allow us to suburbanize more, or run away from these big, overcrowded cities, but the truth is, social media and internet technology has just made cities even more important. So, as long as cities are growing, there'll be a demand for tall buildingsOf the tallest, I don't know, half-dozen buildings, have you been to all of them?That's a good question. I've been to the Shanghai Tower, which was the second-tallest building in the world, now is the third-tallest. The one that replaced it, I think it's [Merdeka 118] in Kuala Lumpur, I believe. I didn't go to that one yet because that just opened up recently. I've been to the Burj Khalifa, which is the world's tallest building. I'd have to look at the list. I've been to the Sears Tower, Empire State Building . . . Anyway, so I've been to a handful of them. I can't say I've been to every single one of the super-tall buildings in the worldAnd in any of those super-tall buildings, can you open a window? Why can't you open the windows in these skyscrapers?Well, the wind forces are just tremendous! The biggest problem engineering tall buildings is making sure that the building doesn't sway so that people feel it. The really fascinating thing about engineering tall buildings is this question: How do you allow the building to sway enough so that you don't have to — you don't want to over-engineer a building so that you make it perfectly stiff because that's just completely uneconomic to do that, but you want to make sure the building sways just enough so if you're sitting there reading a newspaper or drinking a cup of coffee on the top floor, you don't feel it. And so the wind forces high, a thousand feet in the air, are just so tremendous. I think if you open the window, everything would just would just blow away.I was thinking about some of those very, super-skinny residential buildings, which I guess seem to be becoming more popular, and do those people really feel the motion?From what I can tell, the short answer is no. There's one lawsuit in Manhattan, in particular, where the engineering wasn't exactly perfectly right, but I think that represents the exception that proves the rule. The building is safe, that's not the problem, it's just that, when you're dealing with these super-skinny buildings — these are kind of a new kind of breed of super-tall buildings, so sometimes the engineering isn't perfectly right, so they will figure out ways to kind of fix those problems. The problems are solvable, but sometimes if you don't get it 100 percent right, people complain, and obviously there's lawsuits and you have to go back in and tweak the engineering. But these things are selling for 70, 80, 100 million dollars for a penthouse on the 90th floor, so people still value them, and if motion sickness was a problem, they'd be worthless.Pillars of commerce (14:05)In the book, you run through a number of myths: tall buildings being only for the rich, that they drive up housing prices in cities, again, that you mentioned a little bit earlier, that they're somehow bad economic deals. All these myths all tend to be very negative.I'm not going to rename your book, but I could call it “Cathedrals in the Sky,” I mean, I think these are beautiful buildings that say a lot about human aspiration and to create a sense of awe. Boy, but some people just do not see it that way.I think there's a few strands; I've been thinking about this. There's a kind of a NIMBY strand, and sort of a NIMBY/gentrification strand. So people in the middle income, let's say, they see their housing prices going up, their rent going up, and then they see these billionaire condos, and so they, in my opinion, or based on my research, there's a confusion of correlation and causation. So the most visible manifestation in people's minds of gentrification and affordability problems are the super-slim buildings, but New York City has something like 3.6 million housing units, and if you look at the outlying areas of Queens and Staten Island, they're just covered in one- and two-family homes. Those neighborhoods have added barely any housing. So all of the housing — I'm exaggerating here when I say the word “all,” but the vast majority of new housing units happens in the center where either the zoning is more permissive, or old industrial sites come online and things like this, so people don't realize that the problem of housing affordability is citywide, it just looks naturally to be in their neighborhood where high rises are going up.Then there's another strand, which I would say is kind of the “Jane Jacobs strand” / the anti-public-housing strand. Jane Jacobs has some great points in her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities about walkability, about eyes on the street. She wasn't a big fan of tall buildings, and this has kind of given rise to this whole movement of “human scale,” where five-story Greenwich Village buildings, or 10-story Parisian mansard-roof-type buildings are perfect, and any other deviation from that is somehow destroying the city. So there's that part of it, that people see tall buildings as somehow destroying the feel or the perfect fabric of the city. And lastly, obviously, some of the failures with the public housing policy has made people convinced that it's unhealthy to live in these tall buildings. I think that gets at what you're inquiring about. I think there's those different strains.I wonder if part of it stems for a confusion about what are cities for, and I mean cities are, for a large part, are where people to come together for jobs and to conduct commerce. And if you think of them that way, then certain things make sense; but if you think of them as, I don't know, some sort of urban retreat, where it's kind of like a garden or . . . I don't know, but it's a very different view, and perhaps it is not just about bike paths, but it's about what facilitates people to connect.Without jobs, without a labor market, there's no purpose to have a city. Maybe in the 18th or 19th century, you can create a city for the king or the empire, as are many examples, or the Vatican or something like this; so you can have these sort of political capital cities, or even Washington DC, but, fundamentally, 99 percent of the world's cities are places where people go to work, and so, if you don't allow the labor market to function properly, which means having a functioning housing market, then all these ideas about “the good city” and “the perfectly crafted city,” they kind of are irrelevant.So you have to start with: what makes a city grow, what makes people productive, and then how do we accommodate that? To the extent that we can improve design, all the better. There's always a million ways to make things better for people design-wise. I think bike lanes are great, and I think pedestrian-friendly cities are better than car-centric cities, but you can't start with designing the city first and then seeing what happens. You have to start with “let's make an attractive place to live and work” first, and then work on the design feature second.The sky's the limit (18:36)How tall are these buildings going to get?Okay, well, the next world's tallest building is going to be one kilometer: The Jeddah Tower, which had started, I think back in 2013 or 2015, had been stalled, there was some sort of political turmoil in Saudi Arabia, and they've just restarted this Jeddah Tower in the city of Jeddah. And so when that's completed, that's going to be one kilometer. There were some plans floated to have a two-kilometer building in Riyadh. I don't think anyone really thinks that's going to happen.How long does it take to get up to your office in a two-kilometer building?Well, that's the thing. They're coming up with new ways to get people up there faster. The old conventional steel cables could maybe go 500 meters or something like that, which is maybe 80 floors or something. Maybe if you had a really good cable, you can get people to 80 floors and then they'd have to switch. Now they have these composite . . . it's KONE UltraRope, which could go 1000 meters, which could go basically one kilometer continuously. So if you can get people from the ground floor to wherever their destination is within a minute, that's kind of like the golden rule here. People are not willing to wait more than a minute once they get in the elevator. The trick really is the ear pressure, and that's probably the hardest part because you're going up so quickly, the air pressure changes, so you have to figure out ways to make sure the cabin remains pressurized, and then there's the air pressure up on the highest floors. So that, I would argue, is the fundamental issue that's going to be coming next on the horizon is how to efficiently pressurize the highest floors. Let's say you're a mile high; if you're a mile high on the top floor, that's the equivalent of going from New York to Denver in a minute, or two minutes. So you have to figure out a way how to pressurize the entire building so it has a constant air pressure.If I were to look at the skyline of major American cities 50 years from now, would you expect them to be radically different, futuristic looking, maybe not two-kilometer buildings, but a lot of very, very tall buildings? Or is it again, if they're not growing, if population isn't growing, then that won't happen?People are always asking me what I think about the doom loops and all that. Pick New York as one end of the spectrum: It's always going to be adding new buildings, that's just in its DNA, and so you're going to have this kind of collage of different building styles. But other cities, smaller cities, maybe where people are moving now because working from home, they'll add a few tall buildings here, they'll have mini-skylines. Then the other cities, like a St. Louis, that's just going to have to kind of figure out a plan for growth. So I don't see the world as a kind of Jetsons-type world.I mean, you never know what's going to happen with the technology. There's one company, TK or Thyssenkrupp elevators, they're working on Maglev elevators, and this can actually be a game changer because you have these shafts, so the Maglev elevator cars, they can go up or down or they can go horizontal. Part of the goal with that is that everybody has their own — if it's an apartment building, they have their own elevator car, it takes them up to their apartment, it becomes the door. So that could be a real game changer . . . And then you could run these things horizontally. So if you have these Maglev elevators, you can not only run them horizontally within the building, but, in principle, if you could work out property rights or whatever, you could connect these things across buildings. But at the end of the day, it's really about preferences and a kind of cultural perception of the tall building, and I just don't see us in the United States us having a dramatic, country-wide rethinking of where we live. There's always going to be this desire for the single-family home in the suburbs. Now maybe that'll diminish to some degree, but as long as people see their own little house as their own little castle . . .Unlike China, where there seems to be a great desire to live in these kinds of buildings.Manhattan extension (23:04)Have you had any takers about your proposal to make Manhattan bigger?No.You would extend it by about 2000 acres and maybe build some tall buildings on that, I don't know.The idea would be to create a new mini-Manhattan extending Manhattan into New York Harbor. Just briefly, the idea was both to add more housing and add more land, and to protect lower Manhattan against sea level rises and so forth. I proposed this in a New York Times op-ed piece, and, naturally, I would say the majority of commenters and people had this sort of kneejerk reaction against it.I had a kneejerk reaction for it! I loved it!You are part of a small, select core of appreciators, let's say. Having said that, in the 21st century it's just not something I think most people are willing to wrap their heads around. SoTo me, that's an idea with the future, and I think you should not be dejected that it was not initially well-received. I think that kind of idea might actually have some legs.Trends and styles (24:23)Finally, let me ask you, whether it's because of computers or new materials, would we expect skyscrapers in the future to look any differently? I think some people would love to go back to the 1930s style. They love that style of skyscraper, and they don't like the glass-and-steel, very rectangular skyscraper; they want it to look like Gotham City or something.Actually, if you look in Manhattan, in Brooklyn there's one, I think they're calling it something like the “Dark Knight Tower” or the “Gotham Tower.” It's in Brooklyn and it has this almost art deco sort of —It slipped my mind, I was thinking art deco, yes.And there's a high rise apartment near Columbia University, which uses the same color masonry as the surrounding buildings. I think it's the Union Theological Seminary, which sold some of the land to build a high rise. It sort of blends in. So I guess the question is really architecturally speaking, and it's sort of hard to say. I think maybe there'll be some neo-historical buildings coming up here or there, but there's two things: One is that people like glass windows. People love to have light and views, and so that's really just pushing the glass buildings. I think developers like glass too, because it's easy to work with, and architects — if you're a developer and you want a super-tall building, you usually go to a handful of architects and you have some kind of design competition, and, chances are, you're going to get something that looks full of glass and has some funky geometry to it.But they seem more twisty than they used to, so they're not just perfect rectangles.Right, so you're creating a lot of illusion. The interesting thing is, at the end of the day, you can only have certain internal shapes because you need functional spaces, so you have to have illusion with the twisting and these sort of Jenga towers, and a lot of that is due to massive improvements in computer technology; so the rendering software has dramatically improved, the engineering know-how, the engineering technology improved, you can send your designs right to the manufacturer where they can then use the computer programs to design exactly the shapes and sizes.So it's the learning curve of every building that you do adds to the knowledge of how to do something a little bit different, or some version of something before, and also just massive computer power. I think there'll be a lot more of these sort of funky architectural shape. How they hold up, only time tells. In the '80s there was this massive postmodern boom with all kinds of pastiche-type buildings with all kinds of references to old buildings, and funky buildings, and some of those haven't held up as well.Frankly, I'm from Chicago, and I know exactly what you're talking about. Also being from Chicago, I appreciate you calling that building the Sears Tower rather than what other name they try to put on it. Last question: Do you have a favorite skyscraper?I'm from New York and I like the Empire State Building, and it's not just because architecturally a classic building, but it speaks to New York as a city of strivers. And the more research I did into the Empire State Building, the more I appreciate the sheer guts of these guys who built this building. And the thing is, when it was completed in 1931, Great Depression was really starting to kick into high gear, and so the building was unrented, and it kind of gave this whole mythology about how these guys didn't know what they were doing, but when you crunch the numbers, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew what the landscape looked like for New York, and the costs, and the revenues. Nobody saw the Great Depression coming, and so to say that the Great Depression showed how foolish these were, I just think it's a bad standard to hold them to. And if you look at the revenues and them building value over its 90-whatever, 93-year history, it's been a money-maker for almost a century. After the Great Depression, it recovered and has become an icon and a moneymaker, so what's not to love about that?Faster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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In this episode of Student Affairs Voices From the Field, Dr. Jill Creighton hosts Dr. Yisu Zhou, an accomplished university professor from the University of Macau. Dr. Zhou shares his unique journey from being an international student to becoming a professor and provides insights into the transitions in higher education, particularly in China and Asia. The episode begins by introducing Dr. Yisu Zhou's background and educational journey. He highlights his early experiences as an English teacher in rural China, which sparked his interest in education. He pursued his PhD in the United States, which ultimately led him to his current role as a professor at the University of Macau. Dr. Zhou emphasizes the impact of internationalization in higher education, discussing how the economic growth in China over the past two decades has created a demand for high-quality education. This demand has led to an increase in Chinese students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees abroad, especially in the United States. He also touches on the various stages of this trend, starting with Chinese students seeking doctoral programs overseas and later expanding to undergraduate programs. The podcast delves into the differences between teaching styles in the West and East, highlighting the smaller class sizes and active communication in Western universities compared to the more lecture-focused approach in many Eastern institutions. Dr. Zhou suggests that educators and student affairs professionals should understand these cultural differences and proactively support international students in adapting to the new learning environment. Dr. Zhou encourages student affairs professionals to be patient and understanding when working with students from different cultural backgrounds. He explains that while students from Asia may initially appear passive, they are actively processing information and sometimes take longer to initiate help-seeking behavior due to cultural differences. The podcast concludes with Dr. Zhou emphasizing that international students can be valuable assets to higher education programs, as they bring strong work ethics and a commitment to academic excellence. He also highlights the need for international students to develop skills for navigating diverse and complex educational systems, which can differ significantly from their home countries. This episode offers valuable insights for student affairs professionals and educators, providing a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities that come with the internationalization of higher education and the diverse cultural backgrounds of students. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Jill Creighton [00:00:02]: Welcome to Student Affairs Voices From the Field, the podcast where we share your student affairs stories from fresh perspectives to seasoned experts. This is season 9 on transitions in student affairs. This podcast is brought to you by NASPA, And I'm doctor Jill Creighton, she, her, hers, your essay voices from the field host. Welcome back to another episode of SA Voices from the Field, where today I'm delighted to bring you a conversation with an accomplished university professor from the University of Macau. Isoo Cho is an associate professor at the faculty of education and by courtesy, the department of sociology at the University of Macau. He earned his PhD team from Michigan State University's College of Education. Joe's doctoral dissertation focused on the teaching profession, specifically out of field teachers and utilize a large scale survey from OECD. Before attending MSU, Joe received his bachelor's degree in statistics from East China Normal University and worked as an English teacher in rural Shanxi province from 2005 to 2006, where his passion for understanding the educational process bloomed. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:01:06]: Joel employs a sociological perspective when examining various policy issues, including school finance, teacher professionalization, and higher education cation reform. His work has been published in Discourse, Sociological Methods and Research, Chinese Sociological Review, international journal of educational development, and other notable journals. Zhou has also been feasted on various Chinese media outlets, such as the paper Peng Pai Xing Wen, Beijing News, Xing Jing Bao, and China Newsweek, Zhongguo Xing Wen, Zhoukan. In the University of Macau community. Joe is deeply committed to teaching and service. He created the 1st generation course aimed at raising global awareness for undergraduate students across all majors and departments. And with an innovative approach to nurturing students from diverse backgrounds, this course is widely accepted by those students and running at full capacity every year. Professionally, he's actively engaged across the university and scholarly community, and he received the outstanding reviewer award from occasional researcher in 2015. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:04]: Joel's service work reflected his thinking of higher education as an ecology of knowledge experts. He's penned a 5 year strategic plan, advise on a library strategic plan, and architected a doctoral of education program. He is the recent recipient of the faculty service award for 2017, 18, and also so 21/22. Isu, we're so glad to have you on the show today. Yisu Zhou [00:02:25]: Thank you very much for having me, Jill. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:27]: And even better for me that we're in the same time zone, that as a gift I don't get on the show a lot. Yes. Yes. You had lots of international people appearing on our show. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:35]: And you're at the University of Macau, how so folks know listeners who are not familiar with the geography of China. Macau is in the southern part of China. It's a beautifully warm place. It's also famous for casinos, amongst other things. Yisu Zhou [00:02:48]: Like Orento, Las Vegas, if you want a short metaphor. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:52]: You can even go to, like, the MGM in The Venetian in Macau. Yisu Zhou [00:02:55]: It's actually the same. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:02:56]: But that is not the reason you're in Macau. No. So So we're glad to talk to you today about your experiences as a professor of higher education studies. And normally, I think our listeners are exposed to professors of higher ed who are pretty western centric. So this is a great opportunity to learn more about higher education and the study of higher cation in Asia. But before we talk about your expertise in the transformations and transitions of higher ed in China, I'd love to talk to you first about how you became a professor. Yisu Zhou [00:03:25]: Oh, yeah. No problem. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:03:27]: So what's the story? Yisu Zhou [00:03:29]: I think you can say part of that is is running through the family. So both my Parents are academe, working in the, academia, which give me some exposure to how institutions work in the Chinese setting when I was little. But I I didn't actually made up my mind before well, I think well into my PhD program. When I grow up, I wanna be a scientist. So I think in college, I study, statistics. So, kind of the applied field of, mathematics in a sense that I wanna things, and, I wanna run data. I'm really interested in data as a kid, when I grow up. But, after college, I also wanna get some exposure about Interacting with people. Yisu Zhou [00:04:07]: I'm kind of, you know, in that, gap sort of a mentality, that I'm interesting a lot of things, but I really I had a mid in my mind about what I'm going to commit my life to doing. So I spent a year actually teaching in a rural village in the Western China, which kind of a place they have a poverty line, which give me a lot of experience working with, rural children, rural parents. And I taught English at 6th grade, in that particular school, for the year. So I really start to think about how I can observe social life, Particularly school life. That is, I I think the main motivation and the main sort of event that, direct me toward a study of education. So after that year, I went to the United States. I, went to Michigan State to do my PhD degree. I first Enrolled in, psychometric program because of my statistics background, and people really want me to contribute to that. Yisu Zhou [00:05:03]: And after 2 years, I found that my passion and my interest has, sort of shifted toward international and competitive education. So I'm trained as an international comparative, educator in my PhD program. And, well, Macau sort of come as a supply because I am the part of the, post, What we call, 2008 survivors of the, economic meltdown so that many, US universities, freeze hiring during the time. It's been actually, they fed. It's quite, last quite, for some time. So when I was in the job market in 2011, The the domestic job market is basically so competitive that there are only very handful places openings in that particular year. So when I was searching the catalog job postings on Chronicle, this place called University Macau sort of, appeared in my search. I actually have never heard of this university before, And this is really a new experience. Yisu Zhou [00:05:59]: I know places in Hong Kong because they are more established. They have university of Hong Kong and Chinese university of Hong Kong are the 2 sort of the star universities in a region, and people already know that. But never heard of University of Macau. So I did a little bit of research. I think, well, maybe I should try that mostly because it's close to home And it's an international environment which allows me to conduct international research and to teach in English and, had the opportunity to with a lot of, international colleagues. And, well, when I I didn't expect a lot, you know, when I submit my application, but think, like, 2, 3 weeks later, I got a call from my former dean, and he says, he just moved from, University of Virginia, actually, to Macau. And he's really looking for people who have received a very rigorous American style academic training to work with him. So, you know, we had a nice conversation. Yisu Zhou [00:06:48]: And he invited me over for a job talk. And, well, the rest is history. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:06:53]: And you have since become quite an accomplished publisher share amongst many other things. I would encourage all of you to go look up Zhou Isu on, Google Scholar. You can see he's just got quite picture related to education in the Chinese region. But thinking about what you're studying now, what's your focus now in your work? Yisu Zhou [00:07:12]: So because I'm getting older and my also my role with inside institutions sort of transitioned toward more of the administrative side, I've been involving a lot of, program administration, my faculty administration, and, of course, some university side of business, which I think it give me a kinda unique Sort of an insider perspective in terms to understand how institution work. So my interest gradually shifts toward this institutional perspective about university, I think higher, education because my current working situation and the network I've been building because of my professional lives. So I think recent years, my interest gradually shift toward, understanding, higher education development in China, in Particular internationalization of higher education in China. I think that's one thing currently I'm doing some research at the moment. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:08:00]: The institution I'm working for currently is a great example of internationalization. Yisu Zhou [00:08:05]: Exactly. I really had a privilege and opportunity to visit DKU during the summer. And it's really impressed me and opened my mind. We have so much to learn from you guys, a top elite private institution and working in China And catering to a lot of Chinese student demand and, to really establish yourself as an em embracer of this movement of, internationalization of higher ed in China. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:08:29]: And the joint venture universities in China are varieties of years old. We have a neighbor, Shaqingqiao, Liverpool, which is much to older than us, but our closest most similar university, NYU Shanghai, is the same age as us, and that's a decade. So it's to a wide variety. There's also the University of Nottingham Ningbo down the road, which, again, also much older than us, Wenjoking, and then some that are younger than us like Tianjin Juilliard. So it's all over the map. Yisu Zhou [00:08:54]: Yeah. It is. It's it's all over the map. And I think from a policy perspective, China really sort of embraced In, multifaceted, you can say, strategies in terms of working with international partners. We have American University, European University, Right. Coming to China, setting up joint ventures. There are also several, Hong Kong institutions. They have different levels of cooperation in China. Yisu Zhou [00:09:16]: Right. They have joint ventures. They have sites like campus. But most of them actually have a research institution set up in China. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:09:22]: So let's go back and think about the transition of the movement to begin opening doors for internationalization of education in this part of the world. What can you tell us about that history? Yisu Zhou [00:09:34]: I think from our perspective, there is a demand and the, sort of, the need for a high Quality, higher education really came, dates back to early 2000 when, economically, China took off, Which cultivated a very strong local base of parents who have done business with, western, partners, Or they have traveled the world. They have seen places elsewhere, and because of free flow of information allows them to understand and to see how Western education sort of, opens up a different kind of possibility for their child. So I think this is so, you know, if if if you count that, it's been about 20 years up to this point. And I think we can divide it into, like, several stages because at first, it's most about sending your kids overseas. And that trend first started with the PhD programs because most parents just cannot afford, Right. A 4 year, college life for their kids in the United States. And the PhD and some master program, they do offer very generous, scholarships For those academically talented Chinese students, so you know? But the the numbers are usually not very large, right, because their Resources is all are always limited. And then starting, I think, a decade into the 1st decade of 21st century, really sees that Chinese parents, they, they become richer, and the opportunities really open up. Yisu Zhou [00:11:05]: Because if we count the kind of international program that is available to Chinese student, Australia and the UK are the 1st large market that sort of opens fully embrace, you know, to the, Chinese student, and they embrace them very Politically in the US because the selectivity and different tiers and such large and diverse system also is very attractive gradually to Chinese student. And because I I think one big attraction about the US higher education is this economy. It's so robust and it's so diverse, which means the student can always think about, right, what I can do after graduation. That, you know, if you go to some smaller places, 2, 3 years later, you need to find a job. Right? And that might not be enough those kind of high quality jobs around. So I think the the 2010 really sees kind of a a higher peak for Chinese student, undergraduate student going overseas. And, of course, this trend also spill over to other segments. So we also, you know, if you read the news, there are Private high schools, in US or even public schools, they cater to international student. Yisu Zhou [00:12:13]: Chinese student, of course, because of the large number, A Korean student, a Japanese student, a student from Middle East, you know, these places where they see a large economic booms and a student wants to have an different opportunities. So I think that sort of these trends sort of coalesced together, making the 2nd decade of 21st century really, really is about international students going into US and going into other western market sort of in large numbers. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:12:40]: So with that transition of of this trend of students going abroad, when they come back with those skills, How has that impacted always of life, always of being with that education and skill set coming back? Yisu Zhou [00:12:54]: I think from my own traction with students and my observations with private business owners or, just talking to graduates coming, you know, Having obtained a western education degree, I think this is really a process of different cultures kind of, mingling together And creating a kind of a hybrid person that they many Chinese students still have a very strong Chinese identity, you know, growing up And coming back to home, but their years, in America, in Australia, or in other places sort of open up their horizon in a sense that they understand, Things such as diversity, things such as, critical thinking. These things are not did not play such an important role in a domestic higher education. So, You know, when we compare them and with their friends who didn't choose to go to abroad. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:13:45]: And we have some incredible universities around this region as well places like Tsinghua, Peking, Pudong, etcetera. What do you see as the biggest difference between the different styles of teaching in the undergraduate frame. Yisu Zhou [00:13:58]: 1st, I I think the institutional setting is really different. Right? So the one thing with DKU and, and, for instance, NYU really struck me is the how small the class size are. The class size are really small, which means individual instructor can give a sort of a tailored Or individualized time to a student to catering to a wide range of needs. Right? Questions you can ask a question immediately. All Almost always. Right? And you can get instant feedback on these kind of things. But I think in China, kind of a broader if you wanna situate this question in border eastern Asian context, A kind of lecture style larger classroom is the standard format of teaching and learning. And in that kind of format, Students' own diligence and their own hardworking is kind of required by default. Yisu Zhou [00:14:46]: So no matter what kind of questions you Have you need to think about the solution your by yourself first. This is the, like, your first option. And then if you can solve it, maybe you can try to look for help from the instructor. Right. So the teacher's role really different because of such large classrooms and because I think mainly towards in century old kind of educational philosophy about how people should learn. But I think the, institutions such as DKU and, like I said, NYU, they offer us a different kind of possibility of how teachers can interact with student and how teacher a student can learn. And based on my Oh, understanding. Student really love that. Yisu Zhou [00:15:23]: And, that sort of enriched their experience and helped them to overcome a lot of, difficulties, I didn't go study. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:15:30]: You've also been an international student yourself, and I'm wondering if you have any advice for our student affairs professionals who are listening on how best to support tuning into US education or US study or even just living in a new country. Yisu Zhou [00:15:44]: I think study abroad is really a very important lesson of my life. I have a lot of struggles, but I think overall, it is a very positive experience. I think for, student affairs, colleagues working in the US, you need to understand that student from the east and China and other parts of the, Asia, they're coming from quite different cultural background, Which means the student are accustomed to the kind of expectations in their home country or home culture. Most of these places sort of a Student are expected to follow an authority to not to sort of challenge the authority and not to break or to question the the rules the rules of the classroom, the rules of the institution, or even interhuman kind of, rules. So they might seem like these student are a little bit passive. I think the student, taking myself as an animal, we're always actively thinking about the situation, trying to decode a situation. It's just that our experience situate us through a certain kind of conditions that we Convinced essentially our mind convinced us, oh, you shouldn't ask this question at this particular time. You should find another, point. Yisu Zhou [00:16:52]: But I think in the US, it's always the communication part is always real time. Right? You can always throw a question. You can always seek any clarification. You can always seek help. This is not something embarrassing. This is actually supported. And, many institutions actually have developed and have very capable professionals to try to help student to do that. But I think the first step is I mean, the the expectation is the student need to make the first move. Yisu Zhou [00:17:19]: Right. They need to go out to reach out to seek clarifications, but that first move sometimes can happen quite late. Not the first day of the orientation may be not even the 1st day of the class. Might you know, it happened 2 or 3 weeks after class sort of started After some, after the student is confident enough that they convince themselves they have interpreted the situation correctly, and then they they trying to go out to say, Hey. I can't I don't really understand this. Can you really help me? So I think a lot of hand holding and to opening up yourself to the international student is really something very important. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:17:53]: I really appreciate that advice because the perspective taking of what I might expect from an authority figure in my home country is truly very different in the US compared to a lot of cultures in this part of the world, which means that help seeking behavior here that we're always trying to draw out of our students. We might need to go an extra step or 3 in order to explain why that's appropriate and why that is culturally spected. Yisu Zhou [00:18:17]: My own experience tells me that in many cases, in the question and answer sessions, in orientation, in a big event When we sort of prepare a lot of materials, we tell the students, sometimes we don't receive sort of a warm kind of a response It which might happen actually in the US context. Right? The US student are most time, they are very active, and they won't hesitate to throw questions at you. But in this Part of the world, sometimes the student a little wants to sit back and they want to deliver their questions in different channels. So that's something I think for any student affairs officers or people who travel, to this part of the world to teach and to engage with student, I think they should realize That's kind of the cultural difference. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:19:00]: Are there any other thoughts you'd like to share on the transitions of higher education that you study in in China, in East Asia, or just any thoughts for our mostly western audience. Yisu Zhou [00:19:09]: I think the Chinese student and many, Asian student, they will be a big asset to the program. These are hard workers, and they sort of really cherish the kind of, academic excellence because they have been expected to perform at relatively high level since they're a kid. The kind of things I think they will learn, and definitely, I think that's that's something they should learn, is the communication skills, the kind of skills how to navigate themselves in a very complex system from the studies of a competitive education. This is one takeaway message that US education system is so different. A comprehensive high school system actually gave the student quite early on experience. I mean, It's not all positive, but it gives most student experience to navigate through a bunch of peers, which are heterogeneous. Right? And they have very diverse interest, And they formed little clicks, and then you need to find your best friend and find the resources and to find the teachers that you can work with. And most Asian students, they don't actually learn that until the university level because they have been segmented in a sort of uniformly set up format throughout a lower secondary an upper secondary school. Yisu Zhou [00:20:19]: So this is really a challenge for them. That is for them to develop the kind of skills to work in a diverse environment. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:20:27]: And that's not to say 1 is better or worse than the other, just the systems are entirely unique and different. Yisu Zhou [00:20:33]: Exactly. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:20:34]: And that means the students are coming with different skill sets. So you might have, you know, 1 student who's better at help seeking behavior, but the other who is just quite a lot better at absorbing information. And it just depends on the strength that we need in the moment. Yisu Zhou Definitely. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:20:46]: It's time to take a quick break and toss it over to producer Chris to learn what's going on in the NASPA world. Christopher Lewis [00:20:52]: Thanks, Jill. So excited to be back in the NASPA world. And as always, there's a ton of things happening in NASPA, and I always love being able to share with you Some of the great things that are happening. The 2024 Dungey Leadership Institute DOI faculty application is currently live. The Dungey Leadership Institute is a signature initiative of the NASPA undergraduate fellows program with the following learning outcomes for fellows gaining Foundational knowledge of the history and functions of student affairs in higher education, gain knowledge of contemporary issues in higher education, Participate in intergroup dialogue around issues of equity and social justice, collaborate with peers to research and present ethical resolutions to current administrative and leadership issues in student affairs. Reflect on and articulate the influence of personal identities and histories on effective student affairs leadership and engage in professional networking with student affairs faculty and administrators. DLI directors, selected faculty members, and NASPA staff plan this 6 day leadership institute to develop leadership skills, enhance cultural competency, and prepare fellows for a career in student affairs. Specifically, faculty will colead a cluster of 8 to 10 students through the DLI experience And provide support to all students attending the institute. Christopher Lewis [00:22:16]: Travel, meals, and housing are provided by NASPA and our host institutions. Faculty within this program are all current NASPA members. Applicants need to have at least 5 full time years of professional experience post your masters at the time of application. NEUF alumni are also eligible to apply with at least 2 years of professional experience post masters. If you apply for this, you must be available June 20th through 26, 2024 for the actual institute. You can apply through Friday, November 13th, and go to the NASPA website to be able to submit your demographic information, your resume or CV application questions and reference information for consideration. NASBA is currently looking for committee members For the mid level administrators steering committee. In 2022, NASPA established the mid level administrators A steering committee to partner with NASPA staff to shape the ongoing development of NASPA's mid level initiatives. Christopher Lewis [00:23:17]: The steering committee works To ensure that mid level relevant programs are offered during regional and national events, NASPA's mid level administrator steering committee Strives to encourage excellence in the mid level positions through professional development, knowledge creation and sharing, networking opportunities, and recognition aimed at the roles of mid level administrators. The steering committee is comprised of 24 mid level administrators who serve at A wide variety of institutional types throughout NASPA's 7 regions. Steering committee members will serve staggered to your terms. If this sounds like something that you're interested in, I highly encourage you to go to the NASPA website to learn more about this. Typically, the time commitment is about 2 to 3 hours per month. I highly encourage you to consider this. Think about it as an opportunity to be able to give back to the association And help to steer NASPA toward providing quality professional development opportunities for mid level professionals. Every week, we're going to be sharing some amazing things that are happening within the association. Christopher Lewis [00:24:23]: So we are going to be able to try and keep you up to date on everything that's happening and allow for you to be able to get involved in different ways because the association is as strong as its members. And for all of us, we have to find our place within the association, whether it be getting involved with the knowledge community, giving back within One of the the centers or the divisions of the association. And as you're doing that, it's important to be able to identify for yourself Where do you fit? Where do you wanna give back? Each week, we're hoping that we will share some things that might encourage you, might allow for you to be able to get some ideas that will provide you with an opportunity to be able to say, hey. I see myself In that knowledge community, I see myself doing something like that or encourage you in other ways that allow for you to be able to Think beyond what's available right now to offer other things to the association, to bring your gifts, your talents to the association and to all of the members within the association. Because through doing that, All of us are stronger, and the association is better. Tune in again next week as we find out more about what is happening in NASPA. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:25:44]: Another wonderful NASPA world segment from you, producer Chris. Thank you again and again for giving us the updates on what's going on in and around NASPA. Alright. Isu, we have come to our lightning round. I have 7 questions for you to answer in about 90 seconds. You ready? Yisu Zhou [00:26:01]: Wow. I'm ready. Yes. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:26:03]: Alright. Question number 1. If you were a conference keynote speaker, what would your entrance music be? Yisu Zhou [00:26:09]: It's gotta be Oasis. I've been a fan since 1994. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:26:13]: Number 2. When you were 5 years old, what did you want to be when you grew up? Yisu Zhou [00:26:17]: A scientist. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:26:18]: Number 3, who's your most influential professional mentor? Yisu Zhou [00:26:21]: I gotta be my PhD supervisor, Amita Sugar. Professor Sugar, if you're listening, you really made my world. You've taught me about professionalism with and care to the student, a true role model. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:26:33]: Number 4, your essential student affairs read. Yisu Zhou [00:26:36]: I think any educator will benefit and read from John Dewey. I've been rereading Dewey a lot for our research project. And for nonfiction, actually, this summer, I've been reading a lot of La La Gwynne. She's my favorite American author, and her fantasy series, Earthsea, really gives this kind of a feminist kind of a perspective about how to approach different people. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:26:55]: Number 5, the best TV show you binged during the pandemic. Yisu Zhou [00:26:59]: The slow horses on Apple TV starring Gary Old man. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:27:03]: Number 6, the podcast you've spent the most hours listening to in the last year. Yisu Zhou [00:27:07]: Okay. There are 2. So there is a Chinese podcast. It's called left You're right. It's a very good conversational kind of intellectual podcast. The English podcast I spend most of time I think it's from NPR. I'm a big fan of their all sounds considerate Podcast. I've been I've been following them for over a decade. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:27:23]: And finally, number 7, any shout outs you'd like to give personal or professional? Yisu Zhou [00:27:27]: I wanna give a shout out to my student, my master and PhD student. No matter if if you are crunching numbers in your little cube or doing field interviews or working on Guys, I hope really hope that you've been enjoying the studies in these universities or anywhere in the world. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:27:43]: It's been a wonderful and donating conversation today. I know I learned a lot from you. I'm sure that others have as well. If anyone would like to contact you after the show, how can they find you? Yisu Zhou [00:27:52]: I think the easiest way is to To search my name, Yisu Zhou on Twitter. I have a Twitter handle. You can also send me an email by, yisuzhou@gmail.com. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:28:00]: Thank you so much, Isoo, for sharing your voice with us today. Yisu Zhou [00:28:03]: Really happy to be here. Thank you for hosting me. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:28:07]: This has been an episode of SA voices from the field brought to you by NASPA. This show is always made possible because of you, our listeners. We are so grateful that you continue to listen to us season after season. If you'd Like to reach the show, you can always email us at essay voices at NASPA.org or find me on LinkedIn by searching for doctor Jill L. Creighton. We welcome your feedback and topic and especially your guest suggestions. We'd love it if you take a moment to tell a colleague about the show, and please like, rate, and review us on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It really does help other student affairs professionals find the show and helps us become more visible in the larger podcasting community. Dr. Jill Creighton [00:28:47]: This episode was produced and hosted by doctor Jill L. Creighton. That's me. Produced and audio engineered by doctor Chris Lewis. Assistance by Lu Yongru. Special thanks to the University of Michigan Flint for your support as we create this project. Catch you next time.

GLOBALIZATION OF CHINESE SHIP FINANCE AND ITS ROLE IN THE CHINESE-HELLENIC RELATIONSHIP Mr. George Xiradakis, President - Association of Banking and Financial Executives of Hellenic Shipping ??????????????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2023china/audio/am/globalization-chinese-final.mp3

CHINESE SHIPOWNERS ROUNDTABLE Moderator: Mr. Terence Zhao, Managing Director – Singhai Marine Services ???? ??????????????? Panelists Mr. Xu Tao, Deputy General Manager – Shandong Shipping Corporation ;Chairman – Shandong Shipping Tanker CO.,Limited Mr. Zhou Bin, CEO – Zhong Gu Shipping Group ??????????????? Mr. Lu Xusheng, General Manager – COSCO Shipping Green Digital Intelligence Ship Services Co, Ltd.???????????????????????? Mr. Zhao Chunji, Assistant General Manager – China Merchant Energy Shipping Co., Ltd. (CMES); General Manager – Sinotrans Container Lines Co., Ltd. ????????????????????????????????????? Mr. Wang Yanguo, Vice President – CSSC Cruise Technology Development Co. Ltd. ????????????????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

CHINESE SHIPYARDS - MEETING THE NEEDS OF INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING Moderator: Mr. Ioannis Koufalitakis, Foreign Ship Owners Liaison, Greater China – Lloyd’s Register ???? ????????????????? Ioannis Koufalitakis ?? Panelists ????: Mr. Xu Aizhong, Head of Shipbuilding Department – COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry Co., Ltd.???????????????????????? Mr. Zhang Heng, Vice Director of Business & Marketing Department – HudongZhonghua Shipbuilding Co., Ltd CSSC ??????????????????? ?? Mr. Lin Qingshan, Vice President – Jiangnan Shipyard (Group) CO., Ltd ???? ????????????? Mr. Dimitris Vranopoulos, President & CEO – Marine Plus S.A. Marine Plus ?? ????????? Dimitris ?? Mr. Yuan Xiaofei, Newbuilding and S&P Broker– Toepfer Transport Toepfer Transport ??????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2023china//audio/pm/chinese-shipyards.mp3

CHINESE FINANCE SOLUTIONS FOR THE SHIPPING INDUSTRY Moderator: Ms. Valerie Lee, Counsel – Watson Farley & Williams ??? ? Watson Farley & Williams ??????? Valerie Lee ?? Panelists • Ms. Sharon Guo, Director, Shipping Finance – BOCOM Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. ????????????????? • Mr. Jack Xu, Deputy Head of Shipping Finance – China Merchants Bank Leasing Company ??????????????????? • Ms. Bella Chen, Senior Manager, Shipping Finance Department – SPDB Financial Leasing Co., Ltd. ??????????????????????????CAPITAL RAISING OPTIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL SHIPOWNERS 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2023china/audio/pm/chinese-finance.mp3

CAPITAL RAISING OPTIONS FOR INTERNATIONAL SHIPOWNERS Moderator: Ms. Huay Yee Kwan, Partner – Stephenson Harwood ???? Stephenson Harwood ?????? Panelists: Mr. Alexis Stephanou, CFO – Goldenport ???? Goldenport ????? Alexis ?? Mr. Berlin Li, Managing Partner – HIT Marine ?????? ???????? Mr. Gautam Khurana, Chief Financial Officer – Precious Shipping Public Company Limited ?????????? Gautam ?? Mr. Stavros Gyftakis, CFO -Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (SHIP) Seanergy ??????? Stavros ?? Mr. George Xiradakis, Founder – XRTC Business Consultants LTD; Vice President -Hellenic Chinese Chamber of Commerce; President - Association of Banking and Financial Executives of Hellenic Shipping ?????????????? ????????????XRTC ??????? George ?? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

INTERNATIONAL SHIPOWNERS ROUNDTABLE Moderator: Mr. Luigi Mattera, Director, Greater China – RINA ???? ???????????? Luigi ?? Panelists ????: Mr. Mark O’Neil, President & CEO- Columbia Group; President- Intermanager ? ????????????????? Mr. Dieter Rohdenburg, CEO – Intership Navigation Co., Ltd. ??????? Dieter ?? Mr. Oeyvind Lindeman, Chief Commerical Officer – Navigator Gas Navigator ?? ????? Oeyvind ?? Mr. Stamatis Tsantanis, Chairman & CEO - Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp. (SHIP); Founder, Chairman & CEO - United Maritime Corporation (USEA) Seanergy ?????????? Stamatis ??; USEA ??? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

SIGNING CEREMONY-MOU- COOPERATION AGREEMENT Ms. Dong Xiaoling, Deputy Director – Shanghai Pudong New Area Shipping Service Office ???????????????????? Mr. Nicolas Bornozis, President – Capital Link, Inc ???????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

GREEN SHIPPING AND THE RACE TO ZERO Moderator: Jason Liu, Head of SMARTE Centre and Regional Digital Transformation Manager – ??? : DNV ??????????????? Jason ?? Panelists: Mr. Joe Wan, Business Development Manager – American P&I Club ?????? ???????? Joe Wan ?? Mr. Dario Bocchetti, Head of Energy Saving, R&D and Ship Design – Grimaldi Group ????????????????????????? Dario ?? Ms. Daisy Ge, Senior Consultant – Laskaridis Shipping Company Ltd. ?? Laskaridis ???? Daisy Ge ?? Ms. Judy Chen, Head of Dry Cargo China – Norden ????????????? ? Judy ?? Captain Xiaoxi Zhang, General Manager, Ship Management – Wah Kwong Maritime Transport Holdings Ltd. ???????????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

WELCOME REMARKS Mr. Nicolas Bornozis, President – Capital Link, Inc ?????????? ?? Mr. Mark O’Neil, President & CEO – Columbia Group; President – InterManager ????????&??????????? Mr. Terence Zhao, Managing Director – Singhai Marine Services ???? ??????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2023china/audio/am/welcome-remarks-final.mp3

OPENING REMARKS Mr. Wei Hao, Vice President – The Export-Import Bank of China, Shanghai Branch ????????????????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

OFFICIAL REMARKS Pudong Government Official ???? Host: Ms. Lin Lisheng ????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

CHINESE SHIPOWNERS ROUNDTABLE Moderator: Mr. Terence Zhao, Managing Director – Singhai Marine Services ???? ??????????????? Panelists Mr. Xu Tao, Deputy General Manager – Shandong Shipping Corporation ;Chairman – Shandong Shipping Tanker CO.,Limited Mr. Zhou Bin, CEO – Zhong Gu Shipping Group ??????????????? Mr. Lu Xusheng, General Manager – COSCO Shipping Green Digital Intelligence Ship Services Co, Ltd.???????????????????????? Mr. Zhao Chunji, Assistant General Manager – China Merchant Energy Shipping Co., Ltd. (CMES); General Manager – Sinotrans Container Lines Co., Ltd. ????????????????????????????????????? Mr. Wang Yanguo, Vice President – CSSC Cruise Technology Development Co. Ltd. ????????????????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

GREEN SHIPPING AND THE RACE TO ZERO Moderator: Jason Liu, Head of SMARTE Centre and Regional Digital Transformation Manager – ??? : DNV ??????????????? Jason ?? Panelists: Mr. Joe Wan, Business Development Manager – American P&I Club ?????? ???????? Joe Wan ?? Mr. Dario Bocchetti, Head of Energy Saving, R&D and Ship Design – Grimaldi Group ????????????????????????? Dario ?? Ms. Daisy Ge, Senior Consultant – Laskaridis Shipping Company Ltd. ?? Laskaridis ???? Daisy Ge ?? Ms. Judy Chen, Head of Dry Cargo China – Norden ????????????? ? Judy ?? Captain Xiaoxi Zhang, General Manager, Ship Management – Wah Kwong Maritime Transport Holdings Ltd. ???????????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

REVIEW & OUTLOOK OF SNP MARKET Mr. Winsome Wang, Head of Greater China – VesselsValue VesselsValue ??????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

EXIM BANK PRESENTATION Mr. Shen Xusheng, Director of the Transport Finance Department – The ExportImport Bank of China, Shanghai Branch ???????????????????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

SIGNING CEREMONY-MOU- COOPERATION AGREEMENT Ms. Dong Xiaoling, Deputy Director – Shanghai Pudong New Area Shipping Service Office ???????????????????? Mr. Nicolas Bornozis, President – Capital Link, Inc ???????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum

GLOBALIZATION OF CHINESE SHIP FINANCE AND ITS ROLE IN THE CHINESE-HELLENIC RELATIONSHIP Mr. George Xiradakis, President - Association of Banking and Financial Executives of Hellenic Shipping ??????????????????? 7th International Shipping Forum Pudong Shanghai, China. Organized in partnership with Columbia Shipmanagement and Singhai Marine Services and with the support of the Shanghai/Pudong Government. For more info please visit here: Capital Link Forum https://forums.capitallink.com/shipping/2023china/audio/am/globalization-chinese-final.mp3

英语新闻︱中国多地最新疫情防控措施Concrete and effective measures are being introduced tocurbthe spread of COVID-19 on the mainland during the summer holidays, as the government tries tocome to grips with multiple outbreaks and maintain its dynamic COVID-zero strategy.为做好暑假期间新冠肺炎疫情防控工作，政府继续采取精准有效措施遏制多地疫情暴发，继续实行动态清零政策。The mainland reported 65 locally transmitted confirmed cases on Saturday, with authorities indicating that the epidemic is stillgrimand complex.7月9日报告全国新增确诊本土病例65例，疫情形势仍然复杂严峻。In Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, health officials have urged locals not to visit high and medium-risk areas and regions that have reported COVID-19 cases within seven days during the summer holidays.广州市卫健委提醒民众，暑假期间避免前往中高风险区及7天内发生过本土疫情的县（市、区）。"Parents and their children should understand local epidemic situations and epidemic prevention policies before they start traveling to other cities and regions," Chen Bin, the city health commission's deputy director and spokeswoman, said at a news conference on Sunday.7月10日，广州市召开疫情防控新闻发布会。广州市卫生健康委副主任、新闻发言人陈斌表示，“暑假带孩子出门旅行是许多市民朋友的优先选择。疫情期间出行，特别是准备出省跨区旅行，一定要提前了解当地的疫情形势和防控政策，了解目的地近期是否有本土病例报告，避免前往中高风险区及7天内发生过本土疫情的县（市、区）。” "Also, those who return to Guangzhou are required to show a negative nucleic acid test and report their travel history to health departments and neighborhood committees," she said.“此外来（返）穗人员需要出示核酸检测阴性证明，并密切注意当地的疫情和政府、卫生、旅游等部门的通告，返穗后请按照34号通告的规定及时报备、检测核酸，按要求接受相应健康管理。”The official made the remarks after the southernmetropolisreported three new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections in the 24 hours leading up to 8 am on Sunday.The new cases have pushed the city's total number of infections to nine since Friday.7月9日8时至10日8时，广州本次疫情新增3例新冠病毒本土感染者。7月8日至今，本次疫情累计报告感染者9例。According to a statement released by the Guangdong Provincial Health Commission on Sunday, the province, known as the southern gateway of the motherland, reported 17 confirmed cases, plus eight asymptomatic ones on Saturday.7月10日广东通报全省累计本土确诊病例17例，新增本土无症状感染者8例。At a previous news conference held on Saturday, Chen said based on an epidemiological investigation and gene sequencing, medical experts believe the city's infections belonged to the same transmission chain that was imported by two couples who returned to Guangzhou on July 5 after taking a road trip outside the city.The couples were four of the five confirmed cases detected in Guangzhou on Saturday, she said.7月10日，陈斌在疫情防控新闻发布会上表示，“综合目前流调、核酸检测、环境采样、病毒基因测序结果等情况，上述新增感染者为同一传播链，经专家研判为自驾游外地市感染输入聚集性疫情。5名确诊病例中包括两对夫妻，于6月20日起结伴到外地市自驾游，7月5日晚返穗。”Zhang Zhoubin, Party secretary of the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said gene sequencing indicated the recent cases were infected with the Omicron BA.2.3 subvariant that is not homologous with previous cases detected in Guangdong.7月9日，在广州市疫情防控新闻发布会上，广州市疾控中心党委书记张周斌介绍，基因检测结果显示这次毒株是BA2.3，和广东省已经报告的感染者的基因测序结果均不同源。Shanghai reported the first local case of the Omicronsubvariantknown as BA.5, an infection related to previous imported cases, on Sunday.Zhao Dandan, deputy director of the Shanghai Health Commission, said that a COVID-19 infection registered in Pudong district on Friday was found to be BA.5.2.1.7月10日，上海市举行新冠肺炎疫情防控新闻发布会，上海市卫生健康委副主任赵丹丹介绍，综合分析流行病学调查和病毒基因测序比对结果，7月8日浦东新区报告的1例社会面感染者感染的病毒为奥密克戎BA.5.2.1变异株，是上海第一例奥密克戎变异株本土病例，为境外入境关联感染者。In light of a recent outbreak related to a karaoke bar in Xuhui district, which has led to more than 200 related infections since July 3, the city will implement massive nucleic acid testing in at least nine districts, including downtown Huangpu, Jing'an and Xuhui, twice from Tuesday to Thursday to stop potential virus spread, Zhao said.7月3日至7月9日，上海已经累计报告本土阳性感染者200多例，其中绝大部分与普陀区兰溪路148号KTV相关疫情存在关联性。为尽快控制疫情，上海市决定对黄浦区、徐汇区、长宁区、静安区、普陀区、虹口区、杨浦区、闵行区、宝山区全域以及其余行政区中有阳性感染者轨迹的街道(镇)开展全员核酸筛查。7月12日至14日开展“三天两检”。 In Anhui province, the Sixian county government issued a letter asking residents to continue toadhere to static management measures on Sunday after the county reported 10 confirmed cases and 71 asymptomatic carriers on Saturday.7月10安徽泗县报告确诊病例10例，无症状感染者71例。泗县新冠肺炎疫情防控发布通告请广大市民严格遵守疫情防控有关要求。Sixian has been Anhui's epicenter for its outbreak since June 26, local authorities said.6月26日起，泗县为安徽省疫情暴发中心区。 In Hainan province, its capital launched weeklong temporary control measures at indoor venues for public gatherings and entertainment on Saturday.7月9日，海口市新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情防控工作指挥部发布通告，自7月9日18时起实施7天临时性管控措施。公众娱乐休闲场所、人员聚集经营性场所和公共文化活动场所暂停营业一周。Travelers now need to have their body temperatures checked and present their health codes, travel records and negative nucleic acid test results from within 48 hours of their trips before they can leave the island, said local officials.根据海口市新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情防控工作指挥部通知要求，离岛旅客需出示健康码、行程卡，体温检测正常（

Shanghai will carry out Covid-19 testing on more than half of its 25 million residents this weekend, fueling fears of a return to more stringent restrictions just days after the financial hub emerged from two months of painful lockdown.The mass testing announcements sparked fears of a return to stringent, prolonged lockdown among Shanghai residents, many of whom had been confined to their homes for two months or more since March.Those fears have triggered panic buying. On Thursday, Shanghai residents rushed to supermarkets to stock up on food and other daily necessities, forming long lines at checkouts and leaving shelves empty, according to photos and videos that circulated on social media.At least seven of the city's 16 districts, with a combined population of 15 million people, will roll out mass testing over the weekend, Zhao Dandan, deputy head of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, said at a news conference Thursday. The districts include Shanghai's most populated areas and busy business hubs, such as Pudong and Xuhui.Districts that have reported positive cases since Shanghai lifted its citywide lockdown on June 1 will be placed under "closed management" during the collection of test samples, Zhao said. She did not specify how long the sampling period will last.In China's zero-Covid policy lexicon, "closed management" usually refers to restrictions that bar people from leaving their residential communities or workplaces.But the mass testing campaign extends far beyond the seven districts named by the Shanghai health authorities.On Thursday evening, Changning district, home to the Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport and 700,000 residents, announced on its official social media account that it will carry out mass Covid testing on Saturday."During the sampling period, closed management will be enforced on residential communities, where (residents) can only enter but not leave," the statement said.Earlier on Thursday, Songjiang district also said on social media that its 1.9 million residents are all required to undergo Covid testing over the weekend.Abrupt U-turnChinese leaders have repeatedly vowed to stick to the zero-Covid policy, which aims to swiftly stamp out local outbreaks with mass testing, snap lockdowns, extensive contact tracing and quarantining.Officials warn that a relaxation of the policy will lead to a surge in hospitalizations and deaths among the country's elderly population -- many of whom have yet to be fully vaccinated.But the strategy is facing increasing challenge from the highly transmissible Omicron variant, and causing mounting discontent among residents whose life have been frequently disrupted.In China, detection of a single positive case can send an entire building or community into government quarantine, and place several nearby neighborhoods into lockdown for two weeks.Since the easing of restrictions on June 1, Shanghai has continued to report Covid cases, including among residents outside quarantined areas. As a result, an increasing number of neighborhoods have been placed back under stringent lockdown.A video obtained by CNN shows high fences erected to cordon off a large section of the tree-lined former French Concession area in downtown Shanghai.On Thursday, Shanghai authorities reported six new local Covid cases, three of which were traced to a downtown hair salon. State media had earlier reported that three employees at the salon tested positive, likely resulting in the quarantine of 13 other workers and 502 customers -- and their close contacts -- who visited the salon in the past week.One Shanghai resident told CNN that more than 200 people living in two buildings in their neighborhood have been placed under lockdown, after two residents there were identified as close contacts of the hair salon cases.Meanwhile in Beijing, the city's largest district announced Thursday the closure of all entertainment venues, including bars, internet cafes and some...

The affluent city of Shanghai is going through a staggered lockdown this week as it battles its biggest surge of COVID cases in two years. – more than 5,000 new cases daily, a relatively huge amount for a city which had enjoyed near-zero cases for the last two years. The stringent quarantine measures include home isolation for all residents and cancellation of all public transport while authorities test all 25 million residents – first in the city's eastern Pudong district, then in western Puxi district starting Friday. The speed at which the lockdown was announced left the city's residents scrambling to secure food and supplies. Stay-at-home orders are also limiting residents from seeking medical care unrelated to COVID. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The affluent city of Shanghai is going through a staggered lockdown this week as it battles its biggest surge of COVID cases in two years. – more than 5,000 new cases daily, a relatively huge amount for a city which had enjoyed near-zero cases for the last two years. The stringent quarantine measures include home isolation for all residents and cancellation of all public transport while authorities test all 25 million residents – first in the city's eastern Pudong district, then in western Puxi district starting Friday. The speed at which the lockdown was announced left the city's residents scrambling to secure food and supplies. Stay-at-home orders are also limiting residents from seeking medical care unrelated to COVID. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China's financial hub of Shanghai announced a two-phased lockdown on March 27, a day after city officials denied they planned a citywide lockdown amid a surge in COVID-19 cases. https://ept.ms/3tMfcWE ​​

关注微信公众号 -【同桌雅思英语】1. 回复“ 当季题库 ”，免费领取5-8月口语预测题库，免费答案也会同步给各位哦。2. 回复“ PPT ”，免费领取5-8月口语素材范文PPT合集（内含P1-P2）。文本素材&亮点词汇：Describe a city that you think is very interestingYou should say:Where it isWhat it is famous forHow you knew this cityAnd explain why you think it is very interestingWho doesn't know Shanghai? When it comes to one of the best cities in the country, Shanghai could be on the top list. Shanghai, on China's central coast, is the country's biggest city and a global financial hub（全球金融中心）. Its heart is the Bund（外滩）, a famed waterfront promenade（海滨长廊 ） lined with colonial-era buildings（殖民时期的建筑）. Across the Huangpu River rises the Pudong district's futuristic（未来主义的） skyline, including 632m Shanghai Tower and the Oriental Pearl TV Tower（东方明珠电视塔）, with distinctive（有特色的） pink spheres（球）. Sprawling Yu Garden has traditional pavilions（亭台楼阁秋）, towers and ponds. It is China's commercial capital and most populous（人口众多） city. Alongside Beijing, Chongqing, and Tianjin, it is one of four municipalities（自治市） directly controlled by the central government.As a city dweller and a travel buff（旅行爱好者）, what I love about Shanghai is there are so many things to see and do. For example, tourists and locals can marvel at the popular tourist destination and renowned historical landmarks such as The Bund, City God Temple（城隍庙） and Yu Garden as well as the extensive（大量的） Lujiazui skyline, many skyscrapers, and major museums including the Shanghai Museum and the China Art Museum.Overall, this place is absolutely fascinating in all aspects.

Shanghai, Hangzhou Report New COVID Cases |上海新增3例本土确诊，张文宏发声Shanghai reported three locally transmitted COVID-19 cases on Thursday, after nearly four months of no new local coronavirus infections in the city.截至11月25日，上海市新增三例新冠肺炎本土确诊病例。此前四个月，上海均未出现新增本土病例。The three infected people had traveled to neighboring Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in the past week, Shanghai's top health official said at a media briefing.上海市首席卫生官员于媒体发布会上表示，这三名感染者在过去一周内曾前往与上海相邻的江苏省苏州市。"So far, there has been no evidence to show whether the cases are related to other local infections in the country. The city's disease control professionals are racing against time to proceed with in-depth epidemiological investigations and origin tracing," said Wu Jinglei, director of the Shanghai Health Commission.上海市卫健委主任邬惊雷表示，到目前为止，还没有证据表明上述病例是否与国内其他地区的感染病例存在关联。上海市疾控专业人士正在争分夺秒深入开展流行病学调查和溯源。The three infected women are all friends. The first two traveled to Suzhou from Friday to Sunday, and the third joined them on the last day of the trip.三名确诊患者均为女性，为朋友关系。其中两人从周五至周日前往苏州，第三人在行程的最后一天与二人会面。All three have been transferred to a hospital designated for COVID-19 treatment and on Thursday were in stable and good condition, Wu said.邬惊雷表示，目前三位患者都已转移到新冠肺炎定点医院接受治疗。周四，三位患者病情稳定，状态良好。The first patient is a 34-year-old resident of Xiamen, Fujian province. She traveled from Xiamen to Beijing on Nov 12 and arrived in Shanghai on Nov 15 and stayed at a residential community in Pudong district.病例一：女，34岁，福建厦门市居民，11月12日自厦门前往北京，15日自北京抵沪，并于浦东一居民区留宿。The second woman, 32, lives in Pudong's town of Sanlin, and the third is a 31-year-old resident of Zhaoxiang, Qingpu district, who was located through contact tracing.病例二：女，32岁，浦东新区三林镇居民。病例三：女，31岁，青浦区赵巷镇居民，由接触者追踪找到。Shanghai Center for Disease Control workers have traced 27 close contacts of the three women in Shanghai, 103 secondary close contacts and more than 10,600 individuals related to the cases. As of 5 pm on Thursday, all nucleic acid tests from contacts had shown negative results.上海市疾控中心工作人员已累计排查到该三名女性患者在沪密切接触者27人、在沪次密切接触者103人并筛查相关人员10,600余人。截至周四下午5点，所有接触者的核酸检测结果均为阴性。The three residential communities where the infections were traced to have been designated as medium-level risk areas for COVID-19 and on Thursday were placed under closed-loop management, which restricts the movement of residents.三位病患的居住区被定为中风险地区，于本周四开始实施封闭管理，限制居民活动。Zhang Wenhong, director of the infectious diseases department at Huashan Hospital Affiliated with Fudan University, said unexpected waves of infections may become normal in winter.复旦大学附属华山医院感染科主任张文宏表示，冬季突发的感染潮或成为常态。"CDC workers have experience in getting the virus' spread under control in the shortest time possible, while having the least influence on residents' daily lives," said Zhang.张文宏表示，中国疾病防控中心（CDC）工作人员有相关经验，能够在尽可能短的时间内控制病毒的传播，同时将对居民日常生活的影响降到最小。"Our country is still sticking to the strategy of rapid response and precise prevention and control," he added.张文宏补充道：“我们的策略不会改变——快速响应、精准防控。”Meanwhile, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, reported two new COVID-19 cases, local health authorities said on Thursday night.与此同时，浙江省杭州市卫生局星期四晚上报本地新增新冠肺炎病例两例。The two patients, surnamed Qu and Zhu, had traveled outside the city and returned to Hangzhou on Monday. They were later diagnosed as having asymptomatic COVID-19 and were sent to designated hospitals for treatment.两名患者分别为瞿某和朱某。二人曾在外地旅行，并于周一返回杭州，后被诊断为无症状感染者，并被送往指定医院治疗。One of the two works at Zhejiang University Museum of Art and Archaeology, which is on Zhejiang University's Zijingang Campus.两名病例中，其中一位为浙江大学紫金港校区艺术与考古博物馆工作人员。The museum and the campus were closed on Thursday afternoon, the university said.浙江大学表示，博物馆和校园已于周四下午封闭。Xuzhou, in Jiangsu, also reported an asymptomatic COVID-19 case on Thursday night, according to local authorities. That patient had eaten a meal on Saturday at a restaurant where the confirmed patients from Shanghai had eaten on the same day.据当地政府称，江苏徐州周四晚上也上报一例新增无症状感染病例。该患者曾在周六于某家餐厅就餐，而数名来自上海的确诊患者也曾于当日在该餐厅就餐。重点词汇：epidemiological英 [ˌɛpɪdiːmɪəˈlɒdʒɪk(ə)l]；美[ˌɛpədimiəˈlɑdʒɪkəl] adj. 流行病学的，流行病学方面的residential英 [ˌrezɪˈdenʃl]；美[ˌrezɪˈdenʃl] adj. 住宅的；适合居住的；需要在某地居住的；提供住宿的nucleic英 [njuːˈkleɪɪk]；美[nuˈkleɪɪk] adj. 核的；核酸asymptomatic英 [ˌeɪsɪmptəˈmætɪk]；美[ˌeɪsɪmptəˈmætɪk] adj. 无症状的