In May 1925, the Electricity Department of the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) advertised in the well-known Shanghai newspaper Shenbao 申報. The advertisement (Figure 1) praised the advantages of electricity. At the center of the advertisement, we see the characters for electricity (dianqi 電氣) in a large font. Above these characters, we see a fan on which are written the advantages of electricity. These range from a low price (jialian 價廉), reliability (kekao 可靠) and not being troublesome (wu fannao 無煩惱) to not needing to be concerned about electricity stopping (wu zhongzhi zhi yu 無中止之虞). Moreover, electricity’s ease of use (rongyi shiyong 容易使用), immediate usability (ke like shiyong 可立刻使用), little waste (shao zaota 少糟塌), cleanliness (jiejing 潔淨) and cost-saving nature (shengfei 省費) are highlighted. Below the characters for electricity, the text of the advertisement encourages readers to try out electricity themselves.
SMC Electricity Department Advertisement (Shenbao, 3 May 1925).
This advertisement shows several of the features and themes that were used by the SMC’s Electricity Department (SMED, Gongbuju Dianqichu 工部局電氣處) and its successor, the Shanghai Power Company (SPC, Shanghai Dianli Gongsi 上海電力公司), in Republican Shanghai to advertise the use of electricity and electrical devices at a time when electricity was still relatively new to Chinese users. The themes highlighted in this advertisement formed part of what I call “electrical modernity”: a bundle of promises through which electricity was advertised, including, at times, explicit invocations of modernity by the advertisers.Footnote 1 In SMED/SPC advertisements, readers were not only educated about electricity, which has been called one of the “concrete ‘mechanical’ forms” of modernity in China,Footnote 2 but electricity was also connected to three recurring domains: the economy, hygiene, and the family and household, all of which historians have frequently discussed as sites central to the making of modernity in Republican China.Footnote 3 The aim of this article is to show how the SMED and SPC, a government institution and a private corporation operating within the foreign-governed International Settlement in Shanghai, used advertising to sell electrical modernity as purchasable virtues and practices, and how these claims were tailored to different audiences, specifically industrial users and household consumers.
Scholars studying the emergence of Chinese modernity in the Republican era have noted the importance of print culture and commerce for the production of modernity.Footnote 4 In particular, Leo Ou-fan Lee 李歐梵 has argued that an investigation of Chinese modernity demands the analysis of the “cultural imaginary” and should “not neglect the ‘surfaces,’ the images and styles that do not necessarily enter into the deepest of thought but nevertheless conjure up a collective imaginary,” with such “surfaces” including advertisements. Indeed, he points out that advertisements and other forms of print culture were instrumental in the formation of the “imaginary of [Chinese] modernity.”Footnote 5 Following Lee’s argument, this article treats newspaper advertisements as historically consequential materials that contributed to this imaginary. Moreover, building on works by historians that have specifically highlighted the important role of commercial actors in the making of Chinese modernity,Footnote 6 this article studies how the SMED and SPC as institutions engaging with the market promoted electrical modernity.
The question of how electricity, often seen as an important facet of Chinese modernity,Footnote 7 was advertised in modern China has so far received little attention from historians. Scholars studying the history of Chinese electrification have so far largely neglected how electricity was marketed through advertising. Many of these scholars have primarily focused on the supply of electricity and the development of the Chinese electricity grid in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Footnote 8 My recent study of the early development of the industry for electric lamps in China only briefly mentions advertisements for electrical devices.Footnote 9 Frank Dikötter has very ably discussed the introduction of electricity into people’s lives and rightly noted that electricity emanated “an aura of modernity.” However, his analysis focuses on the uses of electricity as opposed to how electricity was advertised to consumers and what characteristics were specifically ascribed to it.Footnote 10 Chen Baoyun’s 陳寶雲 and Chen Bizhou’s 陳碧舟 studies of the electrification of modern Shanghai also only discuss advertising by the SMED and SPC in passing.Footnote 11 A recent study by Liao Yuxiang 廖郁翔 focuses only on the electric refrigerator and explores how this new household appliance changed Chinese imaginations of the home. As part of this analysis, the article also studies a small number of advertisements by refrigerator manufacturers and describes how refrigerators were marketed in these advertisements.Footnote 12 While studies of advertising and visual culture in modern China have shed important light on how commodities like cigarettes or medicine were marketed and how advertisements spread visions of modern urban life, they have largely neglected electricity-related advertisements or treated them only in passing.Footnote 13 Overall, we still lack an article-length dedicated study of how electricity and electrical devices as new modern phenomena were advertised to Chinese consumers, and of how advertisers connected electrification to broader modern aspirations and everyday practices.
In this article, I use the case study of the SMED and SPC’s Chinese-language advertisements in the prominent newspaper Shenbao during the Republican period (1912–1949) before the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 to provide such a study. This article discusses the main characteristics and themes that can be found in the SMED and SPC’s advertisements for electricity and electrical devices, the latter having been the main conduits through which consumers used electricity, and thus provides an analysis of how electricity and electrical devices were sold to Chinese consumers in Republican Shanghai and how these claims were tailored to different audiences, namely industrial users and household consumers.
I have chosen to focus on the SMED and SPC, which successively supplied Shanghai’s International Settlement with electricity during the period under study, as they were “by far the largest power producer in the country.”Footnote 14 While Shanghai’s International Settlement was one of the foreign enclaves created by the treaty port system, in the period between 1912 and 1937 its population was mostly Chinese, with 1,141,727 Chinese inhabitants and only 39,242 foreign inhabitants in 1936.Footnote 15 Thus, it is an appropriate locale for studying the advertising of electricity to Chinese consumers. The choice of the period of this study is due to two factors. First, while electricity entered China first in the late nineteenth century, it was during the Republican period that it also more and more entered the private home.Footnote 16 Moreover, it was also during this time, in 1910 to be precise, that the SMED first started to advertise in Shenbao. Footnote 17 Therefore, the article begins in 1912 and ends in 1937, when the outbreak of full-scale war transformed Shanghai and China more broadly.
The choice of Shenbao as the newspaper through which to study how electrical modernity was marketed stems from Shenbao’s prominence amongst newspapers at the time. Its distribution increased from 7,000 copies in the year of 1912 to 50,000 ten years later and 150,000 in the year 1931, when it was one of only two newspapers in China that had a circulation of over 100,000.Footnote 18 Of these 150,000 copies, around 86,000 remained in Shanghai and, as Huang Kewu 黃克武 has estimated, given that copies were read multiple times, around 15 percent of Shanghai’s ca. 3.3 million inhabitants in 1931 read Shenbao. Shenbao and the advertisements it carried thus had quite a considerable reach in Shanghai.Footnote 19 This assures that the advertisements analyzed in this article reached a relatively large readership as far as newspaper advertisements went.
Moreover, as Figure 2 shows, the SMED, with somewhat of a low between the mid-1910s and early 1920s, and the SPC were relatively regular advertisers in Shenbao. According to the data assembled in Figure 2, the SMED advertised 635 times in Shenbao between 1912 and 1929, while the SPC did so 645 times between 1929 and 1936. While both institutions occasionally also published other content as advertisements in Shenbao, the vast majority of their advertisements dealt with electrical devices (including electric light) and the use of electricity.Footnote 20 Although constraints of space mean that I can only focus on a limited number of advertisements in detail in this article, the relative regularity and the overall number of SMED and SPC advertisements in Shenbao show that the advertisements used in this article were not a marginal phenomenon but rather something Shenbao readers would encounter relatively often—with the caveat of the relatively low number of SMED advertisements between 1914 and 1921 just mentioned. The main aim of this article is to probe how advertisers marketed electricity and electrical devices through advertisements. However, taking a step further, while it is not possible to ascertain who exactly read the advertisements of the SMED and SPC and what the exact impact of these advertisements was on readers, I also contend that the reach of Shenbao in Shanghai and the frequency of electricity-related advertisements indicate that the advertisements in Shenbao were part of the everyday print environment in Shanghai and played an important role in shaping the public imagination of electricity in modern Shanghai.Footnote 21 Moreover, this article argues that these advertisements both served an educational function and framed electrification through recurring promises associated with modern life, particularly in the domains of the economy, hygiene, and the family and household.
Number of Advertisements of the SMC Electricity Department and the Shanghai Power Company in Shenbao, 1910-1936. Source: I used the advertisement search function of the Shenbao database of the Green Apple Data Center (www.egreenapple.com/, accessed 2 December 2024) and counted the number of advertisements by the two institutions.
Finally, it should be noted that the market for electricity in Republican Shanghai was uneven. During the period under study, Shanghai’s burgeoning industry became the primary recipient of electricity provided by the SMED and SPC. In 1915, industrial use already made up 61.5 percent of electricity sold.Footnote 22 By 1934, over 87 percent of electricity went into industry.Footnote 23 This matters for how the evidence in this article should be read and understood. The advertisements analyzed here are not treated as an indicator for the breadth of adoption. Rather, they are analyzed as evidence for how electrification was framed and promoted within a segmented market, in which industrial users and urban households were addressed in different ways. As will be discussed below, this segmentation also meant that the imagery and vocabulary used in SMED/SPC advertisements differed between these two audiences. This distinction is important because advertisements directed at industrial users and urban households connected electricity to different aspects of modernity: factory modernization and industrialization in the former case, and hygiene and the modern home in the latter.
This article proceeds as follows: First, it provides the historical context for the SMED and SPC, their provision of electricity to the International Settlement, and their connection to the sale and renting out of electrical devices. The next section discusses how advertisements at their most basic level educated readers about electricity and its advantages. The remaining sections of the article highlight three larger themes that emerge in SMED and SPC advertisements, namely electricity’s importance for the economy; electricity’s cleanliness and role in hygiene; and its role for the modern home and family. The last section of the article is the conclusion.
Electricity in Shanghai
In 1882, the first power station in China was established in Shanghai’s International Settlement. It was operated by the Shanghai Electric Company, China’s first electrical utility, which started to provide electric lighting in the International Settlement. However, the company ran into problems, including competition with the Shanghai Gas Company, and was reorganized as the New Shanghai Electric Company. Eventually, the Company was taken over by the Shanghai Municipal Council in 1893 and the SMC’s Electricity Department took its place.Footnote 24 The Electricity Department operated under the Shanghai Municipal Council and was responsible for all undertakings for the provision of electrical power in the International Settlement. The Department and its power supply saw rapid growth between 1893 and 1929.Footnote 25 For instance, as Figure 3 shows, the electricity units sold—one electricity unit equaling one kilowatt-hour—grew from 568,669 in 1901 to 535,787,562 in 1929.Footnote 26 However, during the late 1920s, the SMC was concerned that China’s political unification and the possible recovery of the International Settlement might threaten its control of the SMED. At the same time, heavy municipal debts, labor unrest, taxpayer complaints, and the need for substantial investment in further expansion made continued municipal ownership increasingly difficult. Therefore, the SMC came to the conclusion that the sale to a powerful international utility company would reduce its political and financial exposure while safeguarding the continued operation and development of the electricity system in the International Settlement. Subsequently, the SMC sold the Electricity Department to the American & Foreign Power Company. Following privatization, the SMED became the Shanghai Power Company.Footnote 27 In many ways, the SPC was a continuation of the SMED. For instance, in 1929 all employees of the SMED were retained by the SPC. There were, however, also some discontinuities, for example in the organizational structure, the financing, and the increased reliance on local Chinese employees. The most important difference of course was that the SPC was no longer a municipal institution under the Shanghai Municipal Council but an American private enterprise that operated under the supervision of a board of directors in New York.Footnote 28
Electricity Units Sold by SMC Electricity Department and Shanghai Power Company, 1901-1936 (Source: SPC, “Shanghai Power Company Annual Report 1937,” 15, Shanghai Municipal Archives, U-1-4-1720).
It is important for our purposes of analyzing the advertising activity of the SMED and the SPC to note that both entities were involved in the renting out of electrical devices. Early in its history, the SMED in fact even sold electrical devices, such as electric fans. However, in 1904 the ratepayers of the SMC criticized “That in entering into competition with local and other firms for the sale and hire of electrical fans and other fittings, and accepting deferred payments for the same, the Council is exceeding the limits of legitimate Municipal Trading.” As a result, the SMC was only allowed to sell its remaining stock via public tender and “the sale of fittings of every description … ceased.” While the criticism of the ratepayers also pertained to the renting out of devices, this business of the SMED continued.Footnote 29 Indeed, as a way of increasing electricity sales, both the SMED and the SPC offered electrical devices for hire at low rates, including devices like electric motors or electric water heaters.Footnote 30
Another important aspect of the SMED and SPC’s activities that is significant for understanding their advertisements is the showrooms they operated. In 1910, the SMED established a showroom on Nanjing Road “primarily for the encouragement of the use of electricity for power purposes, i.e. for motors and heating and other domestic appliances.”Footnote 31 The showroom proved valuable to the SMED. Already in 1911, the annual report of the SMC notes that the showroom “affords a means of bringing to public notice the newest applications of domestic electricity which before the inauguration of the showroom were deficient in Shanghai.”Footnote 32 Through the showroom, the SMED not only displayed electrical devices but was also directly connected to businesses that sold such devices. As early as in 1910, the SMC’s annual report noted that “the leading Electrical Contractors have been pleased to take advantage of this Depôt [the showroom] to show the various appliances and fittings that they are Agents for.”Footnote 33 In 1920, the annual report reiterated that “contractors and supply houses” provided devices for display at the showroom and “this support has been fully recompensed by the business which has resulted” for these sellers of electrical devices.Footnote 34 In fact, the showroom would even refer customers to sellers of electrical devices.Footnote 35 Thus, we see that clearly cooperation existed between the actual sellers of electrical devices and the SMED. By 1936, the SPC operated five different showrooms.Footnote 36
What also needs mentioning before we delve into the analysis of the advertisements is the existing energy mix in Shanghai. While it has been argued that electricity was accepted comparatively quickly in China,Footnote 37 it was certainly not without competition from other energy sources, such as coal, organic fuels, kerosene, and gas. In the field of industry, the SMC early on promoted the electrification of industry and the renting of electrical power proved popular amongst factories. As the Commissioner of Customs for Shanghai wrote in 1932:
The present industrial prosperity of Shanghai is in a great measure due to the foresight and energy of the Electricity Department of the Shanghai Municipal Council—now the Shanghai Power Company. Were it not for the plentiful and cheap supply of electrical power available, there is little doubt but that many of the existing concerns would be unable to carry on and the capital burden borne by all greatly increased, since coal—the very life-blood of industry—is unobtainable locally and is, in consequence of its transportation from distant ports, expensive. Nor are other fuels, such as oil or wood, available at a more economical rate.
Nevertheless, this process of electrification of industry through the SMED and SPC remained a work-in-progress and in particular steam power and self-owned electricity generation also played a role. Even by the 1930s, this process had not been completed.Footnote 38 This explains why, as we will see, even in the 1930s the SPC still ran advertisements promoting the electrification of factories through its services.
When it comes to energy use outside of the field of industry, the picture is more varied. While gas was available in Shanghai from 1865, its use remained relatively limited. Likewise, until the 1930s, coal played a minor role, with organic fuels like firewood being more important. Only during the 1930s did coal become the most popular fuel amongst residents. The private and public sector also gradually shifted to coal. As for lighting, kerosene lamps were popular, while gas and electric lamps were mainly employed by certain businesses, certain factories and the middle and upper classes.Footnote 39 Indeed, the limitations of electrification in the Shanghai International Settlement should be noted. In 1923, when the population of the Shanghai International Settlement stood at 855,825, the number of premises connected to the SMED came to 39,929.Footnote 40 We have already seen that in 1936 the population of the Shanghai International Settlement had reached 1,180,969. However, the number of customers connected to the system of the SPC at the end of 1936 only came to 78,934.Footnote 41 Thus, outside the area of industry, there also existed potential for further growth in the use of electricity, which explains the advertising efforts of the SMED and SPC.
Finally, there is the question of who produced the advertisements of the SMED and SPC. Unfortunately, the picture here is not particularly clear. While some businesses at the time had their own in-house advertising departments, others relied on independent advertising agencies, which appeared in China from 1914.Footnote 42 At least in the early Republican period, Shenbao also had its own designers who designed advertisements.Footnote 43 For the SMED, we know very little about the production of its advertisements. There is no evidence that would tell us whether or not the SMED had an in-house advertising department or worked directly with Shenbao or with an independent advertising agency. What we can ascertain is that in 1914 it worked with the Oriental Advertising Agency, a French advertising agency, for outdoor advertisements.Footnote 44 This would at least suggest that early on the SMED had a relationship with an independent advertising agency. We have some more details for the SPC. While we again do not have any clear evidence on a potential in-house advertising department or direct work with Shenbao, we do know that the SPC cooperated with both the Chinese China Commercial Advertising Agency (CCAA, Huashang Guanggao Gongsi 華商廣告公司) and with the British advertising agency Millington at least for some of their advertisements.Footnote 45 However, beyond these puzzle pieces, it cannot be ascertained who exactly produced the advertisements discussed in this article for the SMED and SPC. Given these uncertainties, when this article uses the term “advertiser,” it primarily refers to the institution in whose name a given advertisement appeared, rather than necessarily to the specific individuals or agencies involved in producing it. Moreover, these uncertainties and the lack of relevant historical evidence also mean that it is not possible to determine whether the advertisements analyzed in this article represent a transnational transfer or local adaptation of foreign advertising features.Footnote 46
Introducing Electricity and Its Uses to Consumers
Before turning to the three recurring themes of economic modernization, hygiene, and the family and household, this section first discusses how SMED and SPC advertisements introduced readers to the uses and advantages of electricity and electrical devices. This educational function was not separate from the three themes discussed below, but rather a general function of these advertisements.Footnote 47 Indeed, in 1911 the Electricity Department stated that part of its “constant endeavour … to keep abreast of the times” lay “in bringing to the notice of consumers the latest applications of electricity for industrial and domestic purposes.”Footnote 48 A good early example of such an advertisement can be seen in Figure 4, which is an advertisement for electric lighting. Like most early SMED advertisements, this advertisement comes without any imagery besides the SMED logo. Another common early feature we see here is the structure, with large font above the SMED logo that states what this advertisement is about, with the text below the SMED logo giving more information.Footnote 49 In this case, at the top, the reader’s attention is grabbed with a call to pay attention (zhuyi 注意) to the electric light (diandeng 電燈), the latter of which is written in an extra-large font, clearly showing what this advertisement is about. Below this, we find the SMED logo before the main text starts with the first description of and information about the electric light being convenient (bianli 便利) and low in cost (feilian 費廉). These two attributes, written in a font somewhat bigger than the rest of the main text of the advertisement, stick out to the reader and quickly communicate two main advantages of the electric light.
SMC Electricity Department Advertisement (Shenbao, 2 May 1912).
The rest of the main text of the advertisement starts with the claim that the brightness, low cost, and convenience of electric lamps are already known by everyone (jinren jiezhi 盡人皆知). The text continues by highlighting the universal applicability of electric lights in the home, store, and factory setting. The advertisement’s main text then moves from electric lighting to electrification more broadly and urges those who had yet to connect their premises to electricity to do so quickly. It explains then that this allows the use of not only electric lamps but also other electrical devices, such as fans or irons, whose advantages, according to the advertisement, are many. The advertisement closes with reference to the SMED showroom as a source for more information.Footnote 50 Altogether, this advertisement highlights the advantages of electric lighting and electrical devices more broadly, even if it is not specific as to the latter’s benefits.
Other SMED advertisements from around this period were similar in structure and focused specifically on other electrical devices, such as electric heating stoves or irons. These advertisements at times highlighted similar attributes, such as convenience and low cost.Footnote 51 At the same time, they could also be much more specific in content and in their explanations of the advantages of electricity than the advertisement in Figure 4, which was possibly the case as electric lights, as opposed to other electrical devices, were more widely known by this time. For instance, an advertisement for electric heating stoves from October 1912 explains that “the electric heating stove is the most wonderful article for defending against the cold, because its heat is sufficient and does not dissipate and it is unlike other stoves where the heat disperses through the chimney.” Making another, if implicit, comparison to non-electric heating stoves, the advertisement also stresses that the electric stove produced “no ashes” (wu yanhui 無烟灰) and “no smells” (wu qiwei 無氣味). It also highlights that one only needs to turn on the switch and the heating will start.Footnote 52 Similarly, an advertisement of electric irons from April 1918 stressed the superiority of this device compared to other older irons, emphasizing, amongst other things, the fact that there was no need to light a fire when using electric irons and that no ashes were produced.Footnote 53
If we move into the 1920s, SMED advertisements show greater variety in their structure and use images more often, as we can already observe in Figure 1. This reflected a larger trend in Chinese advertising, whereby the use of images became more important starting from the 1920s.Footnote 54 However, their basic function of informing readers about the uses and advantages of electricity remained. A good example from the late period of SMED advertisements is an advertising campaign titled “Please listen to Mrs. Wang talk about her experiences” (qing ting Wang furen zhi jingyan tan 請聽王夫人之經驗談), which ran from 1927 to 1928. It consisted of eight different advertisements with the same title and dealt with the electric cooking stove.Footnote 55 As we can see in Figure 5 and Figure 6, two examples from the advertising campaign, at the center of the advertisements, we see Mrs. Wang standing on the right side of an electric cooking stove and explaining the stove to another woman. On the right side of the advertisements, we see the title “Please listen to Mrs. Wang talk about her experiences” and the number of the advertisement in the series, in this case numbers one (Figure 5) and seven (Figure 6). At the top of the image, there is a quotation from Mrs. Wang and on the left side information about the SMED.
SMC Electricity Department Advertisement (Shenbao, 5 December 1927).
SMC Electricity Department Advertisement (Shenbao, 27 December 1927).
In the respective quotation in each of the advertisements, Mrs. Wang explains the advantages of the electric cooking stove. In the example in Figure 5, she tells the other woman: “In the beginning, my family used a coal-powered stove to cook food and the smoke affected people and it was very dirty. Afterwards, we changed to an electric cooking stove. There is no smoke or smell and also no dust in the food. Its cleanliness can truly not be achieved by other kinds of stoves” (我家初用煤爐燒飯。烟氣薰人。污穢不堪。後改用電灶無烟無臭。食物中亦無灰塵。其清潔决非別種爐灶所能及). In the advertisement in Figure 6, Mrs. Wang explains: “When my family used a coal stove in the past, you had to order coal regularly. If we occasionally forgot to, we felt inconvenienced. Since we changed to an electric cooking stove, once it was installed, until today after several years, we haven’t ordered coal once. May I ask, what kind of coal stove can be so convenient?” (我家昔用煤爐之時。須按時呌煤。偶爾遺忘。即感不便。自改用電灶之後。一次裝好。至今數年。並未呌煤一次。試問何種煤爐。能如此省事). In both cases the fictitious Mrs. Wang shares her positive experiences with the electric cooking stove. Contrasts are drawn between the old coal-stove and the electric cooking stove, introducing the latter’s cleanliness and convenience to the reader. Thus, we see once again how advertisements are used to introduce the use and advantages of electricity to potential consumers and customers of the SMED.
During the era of the SPC, advertisements generally became graphically more complex in terms of the images they used.Footnote 56 This can easily be seen in Figure 7, which is an advertisement for electric cooking stoves from November 1934. Nevertheless, the SPC continued to use advertisements in the educational way we have seen above. In the advertisement in Figure 7, we see “electric cooking” (dianqi pengren 電氣烹飪) written in large font on the left side of the advertisement. We also see two images. At the top of the advertisement, we see a chef holding a plate with steaming food and a spatula. At the bottom of the advertisement, there is an electric cooking stove. Below the image of the chef, the advertisement highlights that electric cooking is safe (anquan 安全) and reliable (wentuo 穩妥). Further below, the main text of the advertisement explains that an electric cooking stove is a must-have (bixupin 必需品) for the modern home. The cleanliness, safety, and convenience of the electric stove are stressed, and it is emphasized that it is easy to have it installed and cheap in rental cost. The advertisement’s text, combined with the image of the chef with the steaming plate of food, which suggests that delicious food can be prepared with the electric stove, communicates the uses and advantages of the electric stove for the consumer. The SPC ran advertisements that had a similar educational purpose for other devices as well. For instance, another SPC advertisement, this time from February 1933, shows a child in a bathtub with an electric water heater next to the bathtub. The advertisement explains that an electric water heater makes it possible to obtain warm water at all times.Footnote 57 Yet another example is an advertisement for electric irons from October 1935, which shows two men, one having burned a hole into his new clothes with an old-style iron. The other man suggests that an electric iron should be used as it does not hurt clothes or leave marks or stains. The advertisement further explains that electric irons are safe (anquan 安全) and clean (qingjie 清潔), and save trouble and time (shengshi shengshi 省事省時), and that every household should have one (jiajia yibei 家家宜備).Footnote 58
Shanghai Power Company Advertisement (Shenbao, 15 November 1934).
All in all, at their most basic, SMED and SPC advertisements explained the uses and advantages of electricity to consumers. Common characteristics of electricity and electrical devices that are highlighted include the convenience, cleanliness, low cost, safety and reliability of electrical devices. These characteristics were not separate from the larger themes found in electricity-related advertisements and discussed below but formed part of the vocabulary through which advertisements connected electricity to economic modernization, hygiene, and the family and household.
Electricity and Economic Modernity
A first major theme in the advertisements of the SMED and SPC is that electricity is connected to economic modernization, most clearly through appeals for the electrification of factories. Building on Margherita Zanasi’s work on economic modernity as a key register of Republican-era modern aspirations, this section of the article shows how SMED/SPC advertisements translated related aspirations into concrete claims about productivity, efficiency, reliability, and cost savings through electrification.Footnote 59
Early on, the SMED noted the growth potential in the use of electric motors. The SMC’s annual report for 1912 noted the rapid increase in the use of electric motors from a driving force of 60 horse power in 1904 to 3,028 horse power in 1912 but also the potential for further growth: “From very small beginnings made in 1904, when a few small motors were obtained and hired out to consumers, the present position has been reached … Satisfactory as this is, however, it is nothing compared with what we may expect within the next few years.”Footnote 60 This belief in the potential for the electrification of industry in Shanghai was also reflected in the SMED’s advertisements. Early SMED advertisements for electric motors stressed how good for profits, efficient, convenient and economical they were. For example, an advertisement from 9 February 1912 highlights that the electric motor increases profits (zeng liyi 增利益) and saves costs (jie feiyong 節費用), citing the testimony of a factory manager that “compared to steam driving power, electric driving power can save twenty percent in costs and the profits are large” (用電氣運動力可較用水汽運動力省費百分之二十且所得利益極大). The same advertisement emphasizes the small space electric motors take up and their convenience of use, including the fact that the SMED provided a reliable constant supply of electricity.Footnote 61 In a similar vein, an advertisement from March 1913 explained the advantages of the electric motor. First, it was advertised as saving space (sheng weizhi 省位置), taking up only a third of the space of other kinds of motors. Second, its convenience (bianli 便利) was highlighted. The electric motor could be easily turned on and there were no problems with loud noises or odors. Third, the advertisement explained how cost-effective (shengfei 省費) the electric motor was.Footnote 62
In 1919, the SMC could report that “practically all the new mills and factories which have been established during the past five years operate by electric power purchased from the Electricity Department rather than from individual steam power plants of their own.”Footnote 63 The 1920s and 1930s saw less advertising for electric motors but nevertheless such advertisements continued to appear. For instance, in 1924, an advertisement stressed that “the effect of the usage of electric motors for running all kinds of machinery is reliable, stable, flexible and economical.”Footnote 64 Under the SPC, advertising for the electrification of factories continued, albeit with more complex graphical means. In the example from September 1933 that can be viewed in Figure 8, we see an industrial scenery in the background, including a crane, factory, and factory carts. In the forefront, we see an electric motor on the left that drives a pulley with a belt, symbolizing that it is electricity and the electric motor that drives the industrial complex in the background but also, more abstractly, signifying that it is electricity that drives industrialization in Shanghai. At the top of the advertisement we find the heading “The advantages of factory modernization” (gongchang modenghua zhi liyi 工廠摩登化之利益), which directly invokes the idea of the modern (modeng 摩登), followed, below the industrial imagery at the center of the advertisement, by the explanation that the electrification of the factory leads to products being cheap and quickly produced (gongchang dianqihua chupin kuai er lian 工廠電氣化出品快而廉). Thus, the advertisement not only highlights the importance of electricity for industrialization, but also directly connects modernization with electrification and foregrounds two specific advantages of electrifying industry. Given that at the time in China “industrialization was widely considered the ultimate form of economic modernity,”Footnote 65 we therefore see how electricity and the electric motor were put at the center of economic modernity in this advertisement.
Shanghai Power Company Advertisement (Shenbao, 22 September 1933).
We see similar themes in the advertisement from December 1933 shown in Figure 9. On the right side of the advertisement, we find the same advertising heading: “The advantages of factory modernization” (gongchang modenghua zhi liyi 工廠摩登化之利益). The rest of the advertisement text then focuses on the cheap price of electricity and its universal applicability in industry. The image used in the advertisement shows an electric motor that is connected through a belt to the city of Shanghai, recognizable through the buildings of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Customs House at the Shanghai Bund that can be seen at the front of the buildings that the motor’s belt is bound around. With the belt enveloping Shanghai, the image symbolizes that Shanghai is driven by electricity and electric motors. This likely speaks to Shanghai’s status as an industrial hub powered by electricity. Indeed, in one of its publications, the SPC proclaimed that “the present modern generation and distribution system [for electricity] has been necessary to keep pace with Shanghai’s growth to one of the world’s most important industrial and commercial centres … the availability of a cheap, abundant and highly reliable supply has been an important factor which has made Shanghai’s industry possible.”Footnote 66 Thus, the advertisement symbolizes how Shanghai’s industrial development is driven by electric power, putting electricity at the heart of economic modernity once again.
Shanghai Power Company Advertisement (Shenbao, 31 December 1933).
While the early advertisements for electric motors by the SMED focused mainly on the practical advantages of electric motors, such as their stability, low costs and small size, they also advertised electricity and the electric motor as an important means for improving and modernizing Shanghai’s industry. Later advertisements published by the SPC continued the highlighting of benefits like cost-effectiveness but added the explicit dimension of electricity as a driver for Shanghai’s industrialization, thereby more clearly placing electricity at the center of economic modernization in Shanghai. Taken together, the advertisements discussed in this section demonstrate that the marketing of the practical benefits of electricity was tied to broader aspirations for the improvement of industry, so that electrification was not only promoted as a technical choice for industrialists, but also as a broader purchasable solution for economic modernization. From the advertisements analyzed in this section, we can also discern that the SMED and SPC used specific vocabulary and imagery when addressing industrialists. The vocabulary stresses productivity, reliability, efficiency, and cost, and the imagery centers on the factory and industrialization. This is markedly different from the other major audience for SMED/SPC advertisements, namely urban households, as we will see in the next two sections.
Hygiene and Electrical Modernity
As Ruth Rogaski has shown, hygiene (weisheng 衛生) became a core part of Chinese visions of modernity in the early twentieth century, including the “mastery of health technologies” and the consumption of and advertising for hygiene-related products.Footnote 67 A second major theme that appears in the advertisements of the SMED and SPC is the connection between electricity and electrical devices and cleanliness and hygiene. The fact that electricity and electrical devices were not only cleaner than other forms of energy previously used, but could also help keep spaces, things, and people hygienic recurs throughout the period under study.
Early examples include advertisements that praise the cleanliness (jiejing 潔淨) of electric cooking and electric irons, due to them not producing any ashes.Footnote 68 Other devices praised for their cleanliness were electric heating stoves and fans. In the case of electric fans, the SMED pointed out in an advertisement from June 1915 that “the weather is hot and the air most easily gets turbid, this is bad for hygiene” (天氣炎熱空氣最易混濁於衛生有礙故), then explained that the electric fan was the best tool for “causing the air to circulate and be clean” (使空氣流通清潔).Footnote 69 During the 1920s, discourses around hygiene continued to appear in SMED advertisements. An advertisement from April 1922 that stressed the usefulness of electrical devices ranging from electric heating stoves to electric toasters for family use also pointed out their cleanliness.Footnote 70 Another example, an advertisement from the following year, explained that the use of the electric vacuum cleaner was good against “dust and germs” (aichen ji weishengwu 埃塵及微生物).Footnote 71 Similarly, the advertisement in Figure 1 mentions cleanliness as one of the attributes of electricity. As we have also already seen, the series of advertisements featuring Mrs. Wang discussed above also discussed the connection between electricity and cleanliness. As in the advertisement seen in Figure 5, the fifth advertisement in the series, which can be seen in Figure 10, also discusses cleanliness and hygiene, stressing that the electric cooking stove’s “benefits for hygiene cannot be expressed in just one sentence” (於衛生方面之利益。决非一言所能盡也). The advertisement not only states that the electric stove is clean, but also that cooking with it preserves the nutrients in the food.Footnote 72 This is not surprising as weisheng 衛生, the term I generally translate as “hygiene” in this article, could also pertain to nutrition during the Republican period.Footnote 73
SMC Electricity Department Advertisement (Shenbao, 4 May 1928).
After the SPC took over, hygiene remained an important theme in their advertisements. For instance, electric cooking continued to be advertised as clean and hygienic.Footnote
74 A particularly good example is the advertisement from 1933 that can be seen in Figure 11, which draws a stark contrast between old forms of energy and electricity. The advertisement is divided into two main parts. On the left, we see a cook next to a cooker that uses an old form of energy, in this case firewood, to prepare food. The cooker emanates a lot of smoke that envelops the cook, who shows an unhappy facial expression, clearly signaling how uncomfortable it is to use old fuels. On the ground, we not only see firewood, but also what appears to be ashes from the cooker, which illustrates the unhygienic nature of this method of cooking. This visual imagery is amplified by the text on the left side of the advertisement, which reads: “Old-style fuels have flames, therefore the heat is pressing, the smoke hurts the eyes and the pot soot dirties the hands” (舊式燃料有火焰所以熱氣逼人
霧刺眼鍋煤污手). In contrast to the discomfort and dirtiness of using old fuels for cooking stands the imagery on the right part of the advertisement. Here, we see a cook with a smiling face cooking in a clean environment without large amounts of smoke or other signs of dirtiness. This is once again amplified by text, this time situated within the arch that divides the two parts of the advertisement. In this arch, it says: “Electricity has no flames, therefore it is cool, hygienic and clean” (電氣無火焰所以涼爽衛生清潔). Thus, the advertisement clearly highlights the cleanliness and hygienic nature of using electricity, in this case for cooking.
Shanghai Power Company Advertisement (Shenbao, 4 May 1933).
In the 1930s, the electric refrigerator appeared in SPC advertisements and was also portrayed as an electrical device that was beneficial for living a hygienic lifestyle.Footnote 75 This can be seen in the 1937 advertisement shown in Figure 12. The advertisement shows a doctor with his wife and suggests that one can attain similar protection a doctor provides for his family for one’s own family by buying an electric refrigerator. The advertisement explains that when stored in an environment above a certain temperature, food spoils (shi fuhuai 使腐壞) and can transmit diseases (jibing zhi mei 疾病之媒).Footnote 76 Thus, we see here how the electric refrigerator is portrayed as the protector of the family’s health and the provider of a hygienic lifestyle free from disease.Footnote 77
Shanghai Power Company Advertisement (Shenbao, 12 May 1937).
We thus see that in advertising electrical modernity in Republican China, both the SMED and SPC connected electricity and electrical devices with hygiene. Electrical devices like electric cooking stoves, vacuum cleaners, or refrigerators were advertised as providing a hygienic environment and as protecting people from dirt, germs, and disease. In doing so, the advertisements tied electricity to the contemporary prominence of hygiene as a marker of modern life. Furthermore, rather than just connecting electricity with cleanliness, these advertisements marketed it as a modern regime of bodily comfort that could protect urban households against uncomfortable weather, dirt, smoke, germs, and disease and even help with nutrition. In short, electricity and electrical devices were framed as health technologies for producing a healthier domestic environment. Finally, in contrast to the previous section, we see a clear shift in the vocabulary and imagery used by the SMED and SPC. The hygiene-related advertisements discussed in this section address an audience of urban households and use a vocabulary focused on cleanliness, bodily comfort, and protection from dirt and disease, paired with domestic scenes and appliances, ranging from electric fans and cookers to the doctor-and-wife motif in Figure 12.
Electrical Modernity and the Home
A final larger theme we find in the advertising of electrical modernity by the SMED and SPC is the electrification of the modern family and home. During the early twentieth century, Chinese conceptions of the family underwent stark changes. Many Chinese thinkers criticized the old large-scale multi-generational family unit and instead favored nuclear families of small scale. Old conceptions of the family, represented by the concept of jia 家, made room for the new concept of the jiating 家庭, “a neologism borrowed from Japan that could mean family, house, or the new modern concept of home, depending on the context.”Footnote 78 As Elizabeth LaCouture has shown for the case of Tianjin, the modern home was used by Chinese people as a space to assemble and articulate their vision of modernity.Footnote 79 Starting from the 1920s, SMED and then, more importantly, SPC advertisements often played on the theme of the modern family and home and portrayed electricity and electrical devices as something essential for modern home dwellers.
During the 1920s, the SMED started to advertise electrical devices specifically for use in the family (jiayong 家用). For instance, an advertisement from April 1922, already briefly mentioned above, specifically speaks of the family use of electricity in its headline (jiayong dianqi 家用電氣), before listing different electrical devices and praising their cleanliness, usability at all times, convenience and cost-effectiveness.Footnote 80 While earlier advertisements had, of course, spoken to individual household dwellers as well (see Figure 4), here, the family (jia 家) is explicitly mentioned and highlighted. That being said, under the SMED, we still do not find references to the newer term jiating. Thus, Mrs. Wang also only ever speaks of jia when referring to her household (see, for instance, Figure 10).
This changed under the SPC, whose advertisements often referred to the new concept of the jiating. For instance, in the advertisement from December 1930 shown in Figure 13 we find the slogan of the “electrified home” (dianqihua zhi jiating 電氣化之家庭) at the top center of the advertisement. On the right side of the advertisement, we see images showing an electric refrigerator, electric water heater and electric cooking stove. The text at the center of the advertisement suggests that using electricity in the home is like gaining an extra servant. In addition, convenience (bianli 便利), comfort (shushi 舒適) and low cost are raised as the advantages of using electricity. Here we clearly see the connection that is established between the jiating as a new form and way of family living and electrification. Specific to the context of the home, we also see electricity portrayed as a servant that can, similar to a human servant, help and support life in the home. An advertisement from the same month and year paints the connection between jiating and electricity even more vividly. It shows the same three electrical devices (refrigerator, electric cooking stove and electric water heater) at the top. Its headline can be translated as “modern home” (xinjin zhi jiating 新進之家庭). The main text of the advertisement explains: “The electrified new home often uses the electric cooking stove, electric refrigerator and electric water heater. The family members all feel comfortable and happy, this is what is called the new home” (電氣化之新家庭常用電灶電氣冰箱電氣熱水器家人皆感覺舒適快意此所謂新家庭). Footnote 81 Here, we clearly see that the SPC portrayed electricity and the use of electrical devices as essential to modern living and the modern form of the home.Footnote 82
Shanghai Power Company Advertisement (Shenbao, 25 December 1930).
Other advertisements made the connection between modernity, the home and electricity even clearer. In the advertisement shown in Figure 14, the reader is informed that “if one wishes to modernize the home, then all kinds of electrical devices should be installed in the whole household” (要家庭摩登化全家應裝各種電氣用具), thus painting electrification as a prerequisite of a modern home. The background of the advertisement shows a house symbolizing the home from which seem to emanate different electrical devices, ranging from the electric cooking stove to the electric iron. The rest of the text of the advertisement lists common advantages ascribed to electricity: convenience (bianli 便利), cleanliness (qingjie 清潔), hygiene (weisheng 衛生) and economy (jingji 經濟). In turn, advertisements for specific electrical devices also connected them with the modern home. For instance, one advertisement from 1930 asked “Why does the modern home use electric cooking stoves? For no other reason than that they are clean, convenient and economical, unmatched by anything else” (現代家庭何故採用電灶無他以其清潔便當而經濟無出其右).Footnote 83 Likewise, the advertisement in Figure 7 we already saw also describes the electric cooking stove as essential for the modern home. Another example from 1934 highlighted that the electric iron “truly is an appliance the modern home cannot do without” (誠摩登家庭不可少之設備也).Footnote 84 Taken together, according to the SPC’s advertisements, if one wanted to dwell in modern fashion, one needed electricity and electrical devices.
Shanghai Power Company Advertisement (Shenbao, 4 September 1933).
Another important facet of the connection between jiating and electricity that we find in the advertisements of the SPC is the depiction of electricity and electrical devices as increasing happiness in the home. This speaks to the fact that home as a new concept “encompassed material culture and affect” and was often portrayed as a place of happiness. Likewise, positive feelings were attached to household objects.Footnote 85 Electricity and electrical devices, according to the SPC advertisements, could add to this vision of the happy home. We have already seen from one advertisement from December 1930 quoted above that electrical devices were portrayed as producing comfort and happiness amongst family members.Footnote 86 Another advertisement from 1931 described electrical devices as “beneficial goods that increase the happiness of the home” (zengjin jiating xingfu zhi lipin 增進家庭幸福之利品). The advertisement’s main text suggests that there were certain unpleasant tasks in the home but that the use of electrical devices would “increase the happiness of the home endlessly” (jiating xingfu zengjin wuqiong 家庭幸福增進無窮), also playing to the theme of electrical devices as servants that can help with chores in the home.Footnote 87 A final example is the advertisement from 1933 that can be seen in Figure 15. The advertisement is titled “A more enjoyable home” (geng shiyi zhi jiating 更適意之家庭). Below the heading we see images of an electric lamp, electric cooking stove and electric water heater in a domestic setting. Each image is captioned with a description of the image. Notably, in each case the term “modern” (modeng 摩登) is used, namely “modern water heater” (modeng reshuiqi 摩登熱水器), “modern cooking” (modeng pengren 摩登烹飪) and “modern lamp light” (modeng dengguang 摩登燈光). Below, it is then explained that all these modern devices or activities use electricity (quanyong dianqi 全用電氣). Modern electrical devices are depicted here as bringing the positive sentiment of enjoyment to the modern home.
Shanghai Power Company Advertisement (Shenbao, 28 November 1933).
We thus see how the SMED and, more importantly, the SPC connected electrical modernity to the modern home. While we can already discover the highlighting of the use of electrical devices by the family in SMED advertisements, the connection to the new phenomenon of the jiating or home is explicitly made in the SPC advertisements. The advertisements of the SPC not only emphasize the advantages of electricity and electrical devices for the home but also highlight that electrification and the use of electricity are an essential part of modern living and being. Moreover, the advertising of the SPC also speaks to the affective side of the home, depicting electricity as producing positive emotions. In terms of vocabulary and imagery, these advertisements, once again aimed at urban households, used some of the language we have seen in the previous two sections, ranging from cost-effectiveness to hygiene, but connected these claims explicitly with the jia and jiating, while also introducing new notions, such as happiness in connection with electricity. This vocabulary is paired with images of domestic scenes and appliances, similar to the advertisements in the previous section. Altogether, this mix of vocabulary and imagery presents electricity as a prerequisite of modern home life.
Conclusion
This article has shown how electricity and electrical devices were advertised in Republican-era Shanghai. It has done so by examining the advertisements of the SMED and SPC between 1912 and 1937. What we have seen is that, firstly, SMED and SPC advertisements had the general informative function of explaining the features and advantages of electricity and electrical devices to potential users. In doing so, advertisements had an important communicative role in the introduction of electricity and electrical devices in China. Secondly, this article has identified and discussed three larger themes we find in the advertisements of the SMED and SPC, namely electricity’s importance for the economy, hygiene and the home. Through their portrayal of electricity as advantageous for industrialization, hygienic living and the home and household, SMED and SPC advertisements in Shenbao linked electricity to wider aspirations central to Chinese modernity at the time.
The analysis of the advertisements of the SMED and SPC has also demonstrated that these institutions spoke to different audiences in different ways in their promotion of electricity. When speaking to industrial customers, they employed economy-related language with imagery connected to industrialization. In contrast, in their advertisements targeting urban households, domestic imagery was paired with language speaking more directly to this audience, in particular by highlighting electricity’s advantages for hygiene and the jia or jiating. We thus see that electrical modernity was not a single and uniform promise: Instead, it was articulated differently for industrial consumers and urban households, with distinct vocabularies and imageries that connected electricity to different domains of modernity.
As noted above, it is not possible to exactly pinpoint what the impact of these advertisements was. As Figure 3 shows, there was a rapid increase in the electricity units sold by the SMED and SPC in the period under study. In terms of the industrial use of electricity, the number of connected electric motors increased from 305 in 1912 to 8,494 in 1928.Footnote 88 For other electrical devices, some evidence exists as well. The number of connected electric heaters increased from 623 in 1913 to 9,981 in 1928. The number of connected electric cookers increased from 43 in 1913 to 799 in 1928 and 2,900 in 1934. Between 1932 and 1934, the number of refrigeration units in use rose from 1,872 to 3,451. By 1933, 295 water heaters were in use.Footnote 89 Thus, we see a positive development in the sale of electricity and the use of electrical devices in the period under study. This expansion cannot be traced to advertising alone. Other factors, such as pricing policy, the SMED and SPC rental program or the showrooms, will have also played a role.Footnote 90 The advertisements should therefore be understood as one component of a broader set of strategies through which electrification was promoted and normalized.
Even with these limitations, the advertisements of the SMED and SPC were part of the everyday print environment through which readers encountered electricity, and they contributed to shaping the imaginary of the modern in Republican Shanghai, in which electrification appeared as a desirable element of modern life. Taken together, these advertisements presented electricity and electrical modernity as a bundle of promises through which existing facets of Republican-era modernity were attached to the use of electricity and electrical devices. SMED and SPC advertisements in Shenbao thus sold electrical modernity as a set of purchasable virtues and practices key to modern life in Republican Shanghai.
Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge financial support from a Sin Wai-Kin Fellowship from the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and an Early Career Scheme grant from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (27601920). Part of the research for this article was carried out while I was a visiting scholar at Fudan University, supported by a Universitas 21 Fellowship. Some of the revising of the article was carried out while I held a Luce East Asia Fellowship at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. I presented previous versions of this article at the World Economic History Congress 2025 in Lund, and at two conferences held at the University of Hong Kong in 2025: the Enterprise and Economy in Modern China conference and the International Symposium on Transnational History of China. I thank the panelists and audiences at these conferences for their comments. For access to primary sources, I am grateful to Georg Godula and the Museum of Foreign Brand Advertising in the Republic of China (www.mofba.org). Finally, I would like to thank Stephen L. Morgan, the anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Chinese History, and Journal of Chinese History’s Associate Editor Zhao Ma for their comments on various versions of the manuscript. I am also grateful to Cécile Armand for her advice.
Funding statement
Sin Wai-Kin Fellowship, Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences; Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, Hong Kong SAR; Universitas 21 Fellowship; Luce East Asia Fellowship, National Humanities Center.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
Open access
