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Inside the chapter: Shanghai
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Inside the chapter: Shanghai

In which we talk about China’s transformation, a bad walking tour of China’s richest city, and a deleted scene
Shanghai fashion as seen from one of the city’s last early 20th century lane houses (Zhang Peng/LightRocket/Getty)

Once again we’re diving behind the scenes of Gangsters of Capitalism in podcast form. Racket researcher Annie Malcolm — herself an anthropologist of China — talks to me about the making of Chapter 16: Shanghai.

In that chapter Smedley Butler goes from the lights of Hollywood to some of the darkest days of the early Chinese Civil War between the Communists and the Nationalists, with the bloody involvement of both the Japanese Army and Shanghai’s notorious opium-smuggling Green Gang. We talk about Shanghai’s glitz, our varied experiences in China, a scene that ended up on the cutting room floor, and more.

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This newsletter has left Substack. Read it at TheRacket.news
This newsletter has left Substack. Read it at TheRacket.news
Fearless reporting and analysis in audio form by Jonathan M. Katz. For written issues and to support the pod subscribe at theracket.news