What is a shanghai warehouse?

Shanghai is the biggest city of China, and it has been considered as a major city of China for centuries. Its geographical location on the Yangtze river estuary, where water, sea and land meet each other, has offered numerous advantages for trade. There is a very famous historical incident related to Shanghai, “Shanghai Warehouse”.

Around fifty years ago, when China just came into power, America decided to give aid to China. The total worth of the aid was approximately 12 million dollars. The total amount of aid which was to be sent was quite massive. There were more than 1,00,000 tons of goods, which covered almost 15,350000 cubic feet. This included around 1 lakh vehicles, machinery and other tools. China was really excited about this aid. All the goods from the United States had to be stored somewhere. Therefore, a warehouse in Shanghai was specifically allocated to store the total goods as it was China’s biggest city and also Shanghai was a major trading port.

But when Chinese government authorities actually opened the Shanghai warehouse, they were shocked to witness that there was nothing inside. The giant cargo ship which had supposedly sent the goods from America actually arrived in China empty. America and China had a deal that Shanghai warehouse would not be opened before two years. The deal went as planned, but America knew all this time that there were no goods inside the Shanghai warehouse. America never had the intention of sending any aid.

However, after two years, when Shanghai warehouse was opened and it was realized that there were no goods inside, the entire world condemned this act by the United States. There were no formal apologies made by America. All the American authorities did was to state that they were shocked to know about the incident and were really sorry for this happening.