A group of Chinese dissidents has founded a new party that challenges the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and advocates Shanghai independence.





Since Xi Jinping took office in 2012, the Chinese government has tightened its grip on civil society and the media, cracking down on free speech , hardening its stance towards Taiwan and launching an all-out assault on Uighur society. However, the Party's increasingly oppressive policies are causing a backlash.





In the United States a group of Chinese dissidents have formed the Shanghai National Party (上海民族黨), also called Humindang (滬民黨), from the character Hu (滬), the short name for Shanghai.







The party, registered on July 18 in New York, United States, promotes the overthrow of the Communist regime and the independence of Shanghai. The slogan of the party is: "Leave China, return to Europe, comprehensive Westernization" (脫華歸歐，全盤西化), a reference to Shanghai's past as a meeting point between East and West.









Shanghai was formally opened to foreign trade on November 17, 1843. The first British merchants founded what later became the International Settlement, a strip of land north of the Chinese city where foreign subjects enjoyed extraterritorial rights. By the turn of the century the area was inhabited by people from various countries: the UK, France, the United States, Japan, Germany, Russia, India, etc.





In the early 1920s a new Westernized Chinese elite emerged in Shanghai, consisting of bankers, industrialists, businessmen, lawyers, accountants, managers etc., some of whom were educated overseas (Wen-Hsin Yeh, Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843-1949 , 2007, p. 30).

