Du Yuesheng

Du Yuesheng (杜月笙, Dù Yuèshēng) was the best known of the three Green Gang leaders who worked from the French Concession in the 1920s and 1930s. The Shanghai Concessions Gazetteer treats him as a figure of the French settlement’s Chinese elite: a banker, a member of its Municipal Council as a Chinese director, and a go-between in labour disputes.

Born in Pudong, he began as a fruit-shop apprentice in 1903 and rose through the Eight Strands Gang, swearing brotherhood in 1911 with Huang Jinrong (黄金荣) and Zhang Xiaolin (张啸林). The gazetteer records that in 1925 the three opened a company dealing in narcotics, and that in 1927 they formed an association that acted against communists and armed workers in the April incident. In the same year he was named a Chinese adviser to the French Municipal Council, and in 1930 a Chinese director. The gazetteer adds that he used this position to mediate several strikes in the French Concession.

In the 1930s he moved into finance and public posts: chairman of the Zhonghui Bank (1929) and president of the Shanghai Local Association (1934). He left for Hong Kong after Shanghai fell in 1937, returned after the war, and left again in 1949.