AmCham Shanghai 100th Anniversary – A Few Extras #4 – Hey Fellow Americans, you’re all “gangsters and savages”

As I’ve noted in previous posts the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai is celebrating its 100th anniversary and has been posting rather a lot of interesting articles on the glorious history of Americans in Shanghai. But they’ve been rather judiciously edited to prevent any talk of disagreements among the Americans in Shanghai. It seems worthwhile telling a few extra tales that somehow slipped off the official record!

In my posts on the real relationship between the AmCham and two notable American journalists in China, J.B. Powell, Carl Crow and Hallett Abend, we’ve seen how the organisation attempting to suppress opinions by Americans in Shanghai that they did not approve of. Indeed the letters pages of the major American-owned and run newspapers in Shanghai between the world wars, notably the China Press, are full of letters from irate AmCham officials complaining about their fellow Americans who refused to follow the “business first” line that has always been the leit motif of the AmCham in Shanghai (BTW: in this they are not exceptional – all Chambers of Commerce everywhere tend to be like this and Shanghai was no exception – the French Chamber of Commerce shamefully rallied to Vichy in 1940 claiming that resistance would damage business, whilst it is harder to imagine a more reactionary organisation than the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai throughout its incarnation which spent most of its time lamenting the end of the Qing Dynasty- i.e. a monarchy – and the birth of that awful thing, a republic!).

But AmCham didn’t just confine itself to trying to suppress American journalists and correspondents in Shanghai. Indeed, it went further and complained vocally and vociferously back in America about how the American media itself portrayed America! George Sokolsky (a most interesting character who veered in his lifetime from the extreme left to the extreme right) noted in 1955 how 30 years before the Shanghai AmCham had taken it upon its self-aggrandised self to tell the American media how it should report on its own country. A bizarre thing to do to say the least and calling for the American media to basically become a propaganda vehicle for the country so American business could sell a few more Parker pens, Buicks and insurance policies. I’m happy to report the American media paid no attention whatsoever to the Shanghai AmCham and carried right on reporting on America the way it saw fit….