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Building “New Shanghai”: Political Rhetoric and the Reconstruction of the Shanghai Racecourse, 1949–65

This article explores the communist reconstruction project that transformed the famous Shanghai Racecourse into the complex of public space that now includes the Avenue of the People, People’s Square, and the People’s Park. It examines the case of the Shanghai horse racing track as an example of the larger Chinese Communist effort to embed political power into Shanghai’s physical space. By demolishing colonial-era landmarks and refashioning them into public space, the CCP hoped to establish legitimacy and win the hearts and minds of the Shanghainese. By inscribing political promises into concrete structures in the center of Shanghai, the CCP attempted to infuse the daily activities of city dwellers with the new rhetoric of nationalism, patriotism, and internationalism. We argue that the racecourse reconstruction did contribute to the realization of these goals, as the urban corollary to land reform, which ostensibly transferred land and the built environment from the clutches of “old-society” rulers into the hands of the ordinary Chinese people. Ironically, however, the project still maintained and re-affirmed the spatial layout of the colonial city, highlighting how deeply the layered etchings of power are carved into the physical spaces of everyday life.