URBAN COLLABORATION
To be sure, the Blue Shirts had already witnessed the sorry spectacle of Chinese collaborators working closely with the enemy during the Japanese Occupation of Shanghai's northern Zhabei district from January to May 1932. During the attack on Zhabei, the term hanjian was applied to Chinese who looted in the wake of the assault by Japanese marines and soldiers on Shanghai's North Station. It was quickly extended to cover collaborators who were said to have gone into the combat zones to "make trouble" by working for the Japanese. Two hundred of these hanjian were believed to be Chinese secret agents from northern Jiangsu (Jiangbei or Subei) and Anhui, and a number of them were rounded up and shot by the Shanghai Public Security Bureau and the Nationalist Army.[22]
Once the Japanese drove the Nineteenth Route Army out of Shanghai and established a military occupation, a group of Chinese collaborators formed the Zhabei Citizens Maintenance Association, which was also known as the Shanghai Northern District Citizens Maintenance Association. It began as a street-cleaning operation at a time when Zhabei's thoroughfares were littered with corpses. On March 24, 1932, the Japanese army engaged 150 Chinese coolies to sweep the streets from Suzhou Creek all the way up to North Station. They were supervised by Chinese foremen, probably Subei gangsters, and paid with funds generated by a monthly tax levied on all of the street traders in Zhabei. The operation was run out of the former Zhabei municipal finance office by an organization called the Great Japan New Political Affairs Bureau, which was a puppet "municipal organ"
The identification of these collaborators with natives of Subei—an ethnic subgroup already treated with negative prejudice by other Shanghainese sojourners—reinforced the connection between hanjian and outsiders beyond the pale.[24] Three prominent racketeers were involved in the puppet organization: Gu Zhuxuan, his brother Gu Sungmao, and Wei Zhongxiu. Gu Zhuxuan, the "emperor of Subei," was one of the most infamous gangsters in Shanghai. His brother Gu Sungmao was a former rickshaw coolie who now worked as a foreman in the Star Rickshaw Company and owned a theater that featured Subei dialect performances. Wei Zhongxiu, also a native of Subei, was the former chief detective of the Public Safety Bureau and a disciple of the Green Gang boss Du Yuesheng. Shanghainese and foreigners alike, then, spoke of "Jiangbei traitors" as if their corrupt collaboration with the Japanese Military Police could be explained by the men's darkskinned faces and hillbilly manners.[25] The public had by April 10 become so "dissatisfied with the foul tactics of these traitors" that the Japanese decided to dissolve the Maintenance Association while they prepared to return Zhabei to the Chinese Nationalist régime.[26]