Crow, Carl

Carl Crow (1884–1945) was an American newspaperman, businessman & author who was a pioneering Western presence in Shanghai, influential in its transformation into a major international commercial centre during the early 20th century. He arrived in Shanghai in 1911, where he founded the first Western advertising agency and the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury, in which capacity he interviewed many of the major players of the time, including Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, the Soong sisters, and Mao Zedong's second-in-command Zhou En-lai. He attended the negotiations in Peking which led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty, scooped the Japanese interference in China during the First World War and negotiated the release of a group of western hostages from mountain bandits. He acted as a go-between for the American government, and worked for US intelligence in China during World War Two. His book 400 Million Customers encouraged a wave of Western investment into China. His Travelers Handbook for China, first published in 1913, contained a number of detailed plans of Chinese cities. In 1935, the Shanghai Municipal Council published a map for visitors to the city which they commissioned Crow to produce