Of this film, Anna May Wong told Hollywood Magazine, "I like my part in this picture better than any I've had before ... because this picture gives Chinese a break --- we have sympathetic parts for a change! To me, that means a great deal."
For her second film for Paramount, Daughter of Shanghai (1937), Anna May Wong played the Asian-American female lead in a role that was rewritten for her as the heroine of the story, actively setting the plot into motion rather than the more passive character originally planned. The script was so carefully tailored for Wong that at one point it was given the working title "Anna May Wong Story."
Written and produced as a star vehicle for Anna May Wong. Earlier the same year she had been rejected for the lead in The Good Earth (1937), a role she strove to land. Losing the part to a white actress was a bitter pill for her to swallow.
In a press release, the Library of Congress said: "B-films during the studio era often resonate decades later because they explore issues and themes not found in higher-budget pictures. Robert Florey, widely acclaimed as the best director working in major studio B-films during this period, crafted an intriguing, taut thriller. Anna May Wong overcame Hollywood's practice at the time of casting white actors to play Asian roles and became its first, and a leading, Asian-American movie star in the 1920s through the late 1930s. Daughter of Shanghai (1937) was more truly Wong's personal vehicle than any of her other films. In the story she uncovers the smuggling of illegal aliens through San Francisco's Chinatown, cooperating with costar Philip Ahn as the first Asian G-man of the American cinema."
In 2006, Daughter of Shanghai (1937) was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."