Shanghai’s history of urban development forms a grand chapter of the rural to urban transition in Asia. Studies pertaining to Shanghai’s history and social evolution have become an important topic for discussion in the study of modern Chinese cities. Since 1843, when its treaty port opened and twenty-six British merchants arrived in Shanghai, transnational exchanges accompanying Western migration to this city have continued, leading a series of urban changes. Among many historic events and moments, including the Sino-Japanese War started in 1937, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, and China’s Economic Reform in 1978, three historical periods stand out and had far-reaching impacts on Shanghai’s urban formation. [...]@en

China faces a number of impressive challenges in dealing with climate change: rising energy use, growing emission levels of greenhouse gases, dangerous levels of air pollution over cities and low resilience against flood and drought. Sustainable urbanization has been adopted as a keyword in handling these challenges. The Chinese central government has undertaken a variety of measures, including the launch of large Sino-European programs to learn from ‘developed nations’. In the wake of these partnerships, a great variety of cross-national and cross-city agreements were signed. Sino-European cooperation does not often run as smoothly as initially hoped because of diverging interests, cultural misunderstandings and practical limitations. In the background, a mismatch in normative conceptions Chinese and European participants have of ‘good governance’ plays a role. In this contribution, insights taken from Montesquieu’s ‘The Spirit of Laws’ regarding checks and balances and trias politica (updated to ‘sextas politica’ for the 21st century) are used to comprehend how the exertion of power is distributed and expected to be distributed differently in Chinese than in European administrative traditions. The article will end with conclusions on how European misconceptions of Chinese governance complicate Sino-European collaboration in sustainable urbanization policies.@en