Shanghai has attracted widespread attention with the impressive performance of its students in the OECD PISA. Increasing efforts have been made to study Shanghai's education system, particularly the reasons for its success and the implications of Shanghai's system for other societies. This study analyses three natures of the education system in Shanghai: selection, justice and independence. Against the backdrop of Chinese social change, Shanghai's reforms in the post-Mao era are analysed, and the special features of its education system compared with those in other regions of China are discussed. An analysis of the three natures of education suggests that they are intrinsically intertwined in Shanghai's restructuring of the schooling system to cater to socioeconomic development, but how to realise justice through education remains at the core of the educational changes that are continuously negotiated between different stakeholders in the education field.