Carl Crow

Who was Carl Crow?

Carl Crow was a Missouri-born newspaperman, businessman, and author who managed several newspapers and then opened the first Western advertising agency in Shanghai, China. He ran the agency for 19 years, creating calendar advertisements and the so-called sexy China Girl poster. He was also the founding editor of the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Crow wrote 13 books, including the explanation of his Confucianism, Master Kung: The Story of Confucius; the anecdotal The Chinese are Like That, titled My Friends the Chinese in England; and his most popular book, 400 Million Customers. The latter won one of the early National Book Awards: the Most Original Book of 1937, voted by members of the American Booksellers Association. 400 Million Customers has been reprinted at least twice in the new millennium.

Carl Crow arrived in Shanghai in 1911 and made the city his home for a quarter of a century, working there as a journalist, newspaper proprietor, and groundbreaking ad-man. He also did stints as a hostage negotiator, emergency police sergeant, gentleman farmer, go-between for the American government, and propagandist. As his career progressed, so did the fortunes of Shanghai. The city transformed itself from a dull colonial backwater when Crow arrived, to the thriving and ruthless cosmopolitan metropolis of the 1930s when Crow wrote his pioneering book 400 Million Customers, which encouraged a flood of business into China in an intriguing foreshadowing of today’s boom.