Watch The Growth of the Finance Industry

In the opening decades of the 21st Century, Shanghai has become an economic and financial hub for both North-East and South-East Asia. To play its role fully, Shanghai needs financial and trade rules which accord with its strategic location. A hundred years ago, such rules were dictated by the west, but in today's multi-polar world, China has its say, too.

Once the war was over, the alliance that the two parties, the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalists, had forged for their common struggle against Japan broke down. A new war was brewing between them and with it turbulence in China's financial markets on a scale that had never been seen before.

The Bund comprises of twenty buildings in a line. The Bank of China located right besides the Yokohama Specie Bank since 1937, that was the year of the start of the Sino-Japanese War. Alongside the military conflict, a financial struggle developed.

Early in the 1936, the Chinese bankers realized that there was going to be a war between China and Japan so they began to plan for it and to establish a management system for wartime banking. More than nine months before the war broke out, the Shanghai Commercial & Savings Bank had issued detailed instructions on how to respond to wartime conditions.

The Great Depression caused the price of silver to plummet. When the silver price fell, the Chinese dollar was effectively devalued. Chinese goods became cheaper and more competitive, exports increased and living standards improved. In East Asia in the 1930s, the Bund played a role within the region comparable to those of London and New York on a global scale.

Until 1933, China's currency was based on the silver standard. External and internal factors, financial pressure from the Untied States and Japan and the difficulty of financing military spending from tax revenue alone convinced the Nationalist Party that the silver standard would have to go.

In 1925, China's first President, Sun Yat sen died. When the commander of the Nationalist Army Chiang Kai shek formed his government in Nanjing, the Nationalists wanted to get their hands on Shanghai's wealth and resources.The events of the 1920s in Shanghai, the role played by Chiang Kai shek, had a significant influence on the way China's financial system developed.

The Bund, most of the giants of western finance were all here. By 1915, the Bund was no longer what it was. Foreign companies had been hit hard by the European War. Zhang Jia ao and the other Chinese bankers started organizing a daily Bankers' Luncheon, at which they exchanged information and discussed how to take advantage of the European War to expand Shanghai's banking sector.