Shanghai , or Shang-hai, Municipality with provincial status (pop., 2006 est.: city, 11,283,714; 2009 est.: municipality, 18,880,000), east-central China. The municipality, on the East China Sea, is bordered by Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and has an area of 2,400 sq mi (6,200 sq km). The city is located on the Huangpu River, which gives oceangoing vessels access to it. The site was settled during the Bei (Northern) Song period (960–1127 ce), and later under the Ming dynasty it was an area of intense cotton production. This changed when it became the first Chinese port opened to trade with the West after China’s defeat by Britain in the Opium Wars (1842); it came to dominate the nation’s commerce. The site of the Chinese Communist Party’s founding in 1921, it saw severe fighting in the Sino-Japanese War of 1937–45 and was occupied by Japan during World War II. Since 1949 it has become China’s chief industrial and commercial centre and one of its leading centres of higher education and scientific research. In 2010 the city hosted the Expo Shanghai 2010 world exposition.
