Reading Shenbao: Nationalism, Consumerism and Individuality in China 1919-37

Reading Shenbao focuses on three dimensions of Chinese modernity, as reflected through the image of Shanghai urbanites in the Shenbaonewspaper's readership. The first is nationalism; the second the penetration of consumerism into the middle class of the Chinese urban society; and the third, the emergence of a new concept of citizenship, in which the individual was treated as the basic unit composing the nation.