The attached graphs offer various ways of visualizing the professional distribution of Chinese members of the Rotary Club of Shanghai (funnel, bar charts, tree maps). Our analysis is based on a simplified version of the standard classification of professions devised by Rotary International in the early 1920s. The four first graphs shows the general distribution (all periods included), while the last one shows the distribution of professions across the three major periods we delineated in the history of the club from the perspective of Chinese membership: (1) the beginning of the club and weak Chinese membership prior to 1930 (2) growth of Chinese membership and climax of the club in the 1930s (1930-1937) (3) war and postwar period (1938-1948).

Data comes from rosters of members and membership lists available in the Archives of Rotary International, Evanston, Ill. The tables used for building the graphs are available in the "Tables" Section. 

The graphs reveal that the medical profession was by far the best represented occupation among Chinese Rotarians (20 members, 16%). The chemical industry and financial services (including banking, insurance and savings banks) formed the second largest professional group (11 members, 9% each), followed by printing/publishing (newspapers, publishing houses), and transportation/storage (9 members, 7% each). The fourth group included four main sectors represented by six Rotarians each (5%): the cotton industry, associations, education/hospitals, and local government. The latter referred mostly to officers in the municipality of Greater Shanghai, but there was also one member who worked for the Shanghai Municipal Council and two for the provincial government. The next group (representing less than 5% of Chinese members) comprised five branches of activities that were also well-developed in Shanghai during the Republican period: building construction and materials (including architecture) (five members, 4%), general merchandising (especially department stores), tourism (hotels, restaurants), silk industry (which probably reflected the proximity of Suzhou, major center for silk production), and machinery (four Rotarians, 3% each). Next, recreation (movie theatres) and communication services (radio, advertising) employed three Rotarians each (2%). The last group was made up of less-developed industries that employed two Rotarians each: metal, electrical, wool and clothing. The remaining Rotarians were scattered across miscellaneous sectors: fine arts, ceramic, coal and food industry. Two industrial branches made only a short appearance in the reorganized club in 1945 (grain and tobacco leaf distribution). In addition, there were two lawyers (H.C. Mei and W. Hung) and three honorary members, either government officials (C.T. Wang, Wellington Koo) or Y.M.C.A. leaders (Fong Sec). Although the by-laws stated that “Persons holding elective or appointive public office, for a specified term only, shall not be eligible to active membership as a representative of such office” it is interesting to notice that the Mayor of Shanghai (Wu Tiesheng) was a member of the club while he was in office, and that honorary members C.T. Wang and Wellington Koo were concurrently holding prominent positions in the central government at the time of their membership. The war did not affect much the professional distribution of members, except for the disappearance of the Printing/Publishing class - a longstanding, major sector of activity in Shanghai. After the war, therefore, medicine, the chemical industry, banking/finance and the cotton/textile industry still topped the list in the reorganized club in 1945. There were no major changes in 1948, except that associations had gained in importance due to the postwar reconstruction work, ranking third after medicine and the chemical industry, equaling banking and superseding the cotton industry.  

What can we draw from this analysis? The classification structure of Chinese Rotarians reflected quite faithfully the local industrial fabric and the social-professional make-up of Chinese elites in Shanghai during the Republican period. Indeed, the Rotary Club of Shanghai functioned as a microcosm of Shanghai business and professional elites, with only one (ideally the best) representative of each branch of activity, as the by-laws requested. It is interesting to notice, however, that some sectors remained utterly missing – especially agriculture-related activities – sectors that were poorly developed in Shanghai and among Chinese Westernized elites more particularly.