SHASI, a city in the province of Hupeh, central China, in latitude 3o° 26' N. and longitude 112° 5' E., with an estimated Chinese pop. (1931) of 113,526. It is situated on the left bank of the Yangtze about 120 miles directly west of Hankow, though much farther distant by the river-route. It is admirably placed as an entrep8t centre in the low-lying cotton region of Hupeh amid a network of canals, one of which gives it direct connection with Hankow. These canal facilities have done much to restrict the development of Shasi as a river-port. Before the opening of Ichang (higher up the river) as a treaty port in 1895, Shasi was the usual transhipment centre for the Szechwan trade, but it subsequently lost much of its trade to Ichang. Shasi was opened to foreign trade by the treaty of Shimonoseki (1896) but only within the last 10 years has its total trade made really appre ciable advances, due to a steadily growing export trade, chiefly in raw cotton. The annual increase was maintained in 1926, despite civil war in Hupeh and Hunan.
The value of the total trade was in 1904, Hk. Taels 1,956,371; 1911, 2,948,656; 1924, Shasi is a distributing centre for salt, fibres and nutgalls, from Szechwan ; the import of salt averaging about 400,000 bags, and nutgalls about Ioo,000 chests annually. The foreign import trade is chiefly in cotton piece goods, kerosene oil, and refined sugar. The basis of an active export trade is raw cotton, which was shipped to the amount of 650,00o piculs in 1926. Seeds, especially rape and cotton seeds, are also exported. In 1913 a contract was signed for the construction of a railway from Shasi, via the Yuan-kiang valley, south-west ward to Kwei-yang, capital of Kweichow province. Work on this scheme was, however, held up by the World War. The construc tion of a railway westward from Hankow into Szechwan (via Shasi) is one of the railway projects most likely to materialize in the near future.