Was Shanghai the financial center of Asia in the 1920s and 1930s?

In the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai was the second largest city in the Far East after Tokyo.

If you need a more emotional statement, I can tell you that Hollywood blockbusters will appear in Shanghai cinemas within three days after they were listed in the United States. Secondly, since the reform and opening up, almost all the modern marketing and advertising techniques you can learn and see can be found in Shanghai at that time.

What impresses me most is that if you look at the advertising creativity of national enterprises at that time, you will find that China people are no strangers to the market economy, and we achieved great success in the fierce competition as early as 60 years ago.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai was known as "Paris in the Far East", so it was often used by newspapers and magazines to describe the importance of Shanghai on the international stage at that time. Listening to my grandmother talking about some past events, it is said that Hong Kong was still in the low tide of development at that time, and many people of insight in Hong Kong were eager to make Hong Kong as prosperous as Shanghai one day, so the local newspapers once described Hong Kong as "little shanghai" to encourage the public.

Since then, thanks to the reform and opening-up policy put forward by Comrade Deng Xiaoping, there has been another wave of immigration in 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, the opening-up of the country has made China people further appreciate the charm of Hong Kong's rapid development. However, due to objective factors such as the Cultural Revolution, the gap between Shanghai and Hong Kong accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s. In the early days of reform and opening up, "Greater Shanghai", once known as "Paris in the Far East", could only face Hong Kong's rock-solid status as an international financial center.