Shanghai, China's History of a Jewish Haven Now Micro Chip Capital?

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

                                        A place to save a Jewish Life;  Shanghai

                            Back in 1841, Shanghai became a treaty port. 

                                                                         

              Harbin's Old synagogue.  Harbin is very far from Shanghai.  Harbin is the capital of Heilongjiang, China’s northernmost province. The city grew in the late 19th century with the influx of Russian engineers constructing the eastern leg of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Perhaps those Russian engineers were Jewish?  As it happened, the chief engineer of the building board of the Chinese Eastern railway was Alexander Yugovich. Born into a Jewish family that converted to Orthodox Christianity, he was a civil engineer and specialist in constructing of railways in deserts and highlands.  

A Jewish community had existed in Shanghai since the late 1800s, but that population exponentially grew as Russian Jews fled the Bolshevik Revolution and tens of thousands more fled Europe as Hitler rose to power in the mid-20th century. As one of the only places in the world that was continuously open to Jewish refugees, Shanghai was a popular destination. In the 1930s, “20,000 or so European Jews found their way to the city.”                                                                

                                                                       

      Sephardim of Baghdadi Jews in Shanghai established themselves there--largely under the aegis of the SASSOON  FIRM---SHORTLY AFTER IT BECAME A TREAT PORT.  

The Sassoon family, known as "Rothschilds of the East" due to the immense wealth they accumulated in finance and trade, is a family of Baghdadi Jewish descent. Originally based in Baghdad, Iraq, they later moved to Bombay, India, and then spread to China, England, and other countries.  From the 18th century, the Sassoons were one of the wealthiest families in the world, with a corporate empire spanning the entire continent of Asia.

Sephardim Jews, mainly of the Baghdadi origin, established themselves by 1841 in Shanghai.  They were followed after 1917 and World War I by Russian Jews.  For a time, Shanghai was among the most prosperous Jewish communities in the world.  

                                                                 

           Sassoon House, Shanghai, China
                                                                                                

Between the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai became known as "The Paris of the East, the New York of the West".  Economic achievements included the city becoming the commercial center of East Asia, attracting banks from all over the world. When movies and literature depict the golden days of by-gone Shanghai, it is generally associated with this era.                           

In the period immediately preceding World War II, Shanghai was one of the few places to which access was possible without a passport, and very large numbers of refugees settled there.  

In 1936, Shanghai was one of the largest cities in the world with 3 million inhabitants. Of those, only 35,000-50,000 were of European origin, but these controlled half the city under the unequal treaties that provided extraterritoriality until 1943.                                                      

End of Old Shanghai (1937–1945)  World War II started.    The Japanese Navy bombed Shanghai on January 28, 1932, nominally to crush Chinese student protests against the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. The Chinese fought back in what was known as the January 28 Incident.                                         

The Polish Jewish Ghetto in Shanghai along the port.  1941-1945.  

                                                                        

Shanghai in WWII, Chinese and Jewish girls playing in ghetto on left; on right in Harbin, China with a Jewish and a Chinese girl playing together

During the Japanese occupation in 1934-1945, modified anti-Semitism was introduced and most Jews were interned.  The community later re-established itself but after the Chinese occupation, Shanghai's special status ended and its Jews emigrated to other safe places. 

The ghetto was officially liberated on September 3, 1945. The Government of Israel bestowed the honor of the Righteous Among the Nations to Chiune Sugihara in 1985 and to Ho Feng Shan in 2001.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and China in 1992, the connection between the Jewish people and Shanghai has been recognized in various ways. In 2007, the Israeli consulate-general in Shanghai donated 660,000 Yuan, provided by 26 Israeli companies, to community projects in Hongkou District, in recognition of the safe harbour provided by the ghetto. The only Jewish monument in Shanghai is located at Huoshan Park (formerly Rabin Park) in Hongkou District. Note:  Favorite names seem to come and go, depending on who's in and who's out.  So much for remembering history of the Jews of Shanghai.  

                                                                

Today, Shanghai wants in in the micro chips manufacturing business.  "As China charges forth to achieve "semiconductor independence" in the face of punishing global sanctions, the city of Shanghai is vying to be the place where Chinese chips get made.                                                 

On April 7, the Shanghai local government held a Global Investment Promotion Conference at which 16 semiconductor deals were signed. The deals include companies that manufacture critical materials for chipmaking, like photoresists or silicon wafers.

 In March 2021, the Lin-gang government released a 5-year plan that pledged to build a local semiconductor industry that by 2025 would be worth more than $15 billion and host 5 world-leading chip manufacturing companies. In the inter-provincial race to dominate China's domestic semiconductor industry, Shanghai is mostly competing with its neighboring province, Jiangsu, which has long produced the most chips among all Chinese provinces. Shanghai, a city whose government has the status of a province, ranked 4th in 2020.

                                                             

Microchip Technology Inc. has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Shanghai Haier Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. (SHIC) of Shanghai, China. The suit, filed in the Shanghai Number 1 Intermediate People’s Court, alleges that SHIC has made unauthorized copies of the microcode embedded in Microchip’s proprietary PIC16CXXX microcontrollers, and the datasheets that detail the use and operation of those microcontrollers. Microchip’s datasheets and microcode are copyright-protected in both the U.S. and in China.Concurrently, Microchip has filed a related legal action against Linkage Technology Co. Ltd. of Hsinchu, Taiwan. Linkage Technology is noted as the Taiwanese distributor for SHIC.

According to the China Internet Information Center (described as the "authorized government portal site to China"), a senior manager with the Haier Group, commented, "...so-called intellectual propriety protection is a tool for multinational companies to lambaste others in order to retain their technology monopoly. This tool is more lethal than trade barriers and 60% of Chinese export companies are suffering this kind of technical barrier set by foreign countries."         

                      US President Joe Biden has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping.  US President Joe Biden has warned that China will “eat our lunch” if America doesn’t “step up” its infrastructure spending.  Mr Biden was speaking on Thursday with a group of senators about the need to upgrade infrastructure in the US.

A quiet trade war is going on between China and the USA.  "In addition to traditional espionage, China partners civilian Chinese companies with American businesses to acquire technology and economic data and uses cyber spying to penetrate the computer networks of U.S. businesses and government agencies; an example is the December 2009 Operation Aurora. U.S. law enforcement officials have identified China as the most active foreign power involved in the illegal acquisition of American technology. On May 19, 2014, the United States Department of Justice announced that a Federal grand jury had indicted five People's Liberation Army officers for stealing confidential business information and intellectual property from U.S. commercial firms and planting malware on their computers.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Shanghai#:~:text=End%20of%20Old%20Shanghai%20(1937%E2%80%931945),-Battle%20of%20Shanghai&text=The%20Japanese%20Navy%20bombed%20Shanghai,as%20the%20January%2028%20Incident.

https://www.protocol.com/china/shanghai-china-chip-capital

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassoon_family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States

https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e204683/Place/Harbin?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=jews%20in%20harbin&utm_campaign=g&device=c&gclid=CjwKCAjwq7aGBhADEiwA6uGZp4bBhbSmMUG9YA9-cYECGqthuSja_DJHwJKp6xbW43OERQbjvteM4hoCV7YQAvD_BwE

https://www.eldridgestreet.org/blog/jewish-communities-in-china-harbin-and-shanghai/