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For "number crunchers", and all those with an interest in Shanghai's economic development, it will be worth checking out the web site set up by a group of economists at Yale University on the Shanghai Stock Exchange."The project is about Chinese capital markets (1870-1940). The Shanghai Stock Exchange History Research Project is an on-going research     effort by the International Center of Finance       to collect price and dividend information on stocks that were listed in the      Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) during the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries."          "The market for securities trading in Shanghai begins in late 1860s. More      specifically, in June 1866, a list of thirteen companies, including the Hong Kong     &#38; Shanghai Banking Corporation, appeared in a local newspaper under the      'Shares and Stocks' section. According to the English newspaper in Shanghai,     The North-China Herald this is the time that a 'regular system of dealing in Shares sprang up'.     The operation of Shanghai stock exchange comes to a halt on December 8, 1941 when the      Japanese took hold of the International Settlement. After the war ended, China assumed      full control over Shanghai, the legal privilege and means of enforcing financial contracts      for foreign businessmen had gone. The Shanghai Stock Exchange, as a foreign share brokers'     association, never reopened again."         The web site provides downlable annual price data for all the securities listed in the      Shanghai Stock Exchange from 1870 to 1940, as well as constructed indexes for the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which can be also be     downloaded. This is a very rare project in Chinese economic history.