The gangsters who were really officials and the officials who were really gangsters: the ‘faceless fellow’ of Chinese espionage
Andrew Nathan, 24 June 2004
Frederic Wakeman has long been fascinated with the police and criminals of pre-Communist Shanghai, who were as often each other’s allies as opponents. His first book on the subject, Policing Shanghai 1927-37 (1995), described the self-subverting involvement of the new Kuomintang government’s municipal police bureau in both the opium trade and the civil war against the Communists.