This pathbreaking study offers the first in-depth view of the urban revolution during the pivotal Nanjing Decade, refuting the notion that cities played only a supporting role in Mao Zedong's brilliant conquest of the countryside. Focusing on China's largest and most cosmopolitan city, Stranahan examines how the Party organization in Shanghai_severed from the central leadership and pursued by Guomindang and foreign authorities alike_survived through a flexible organizing strategy attuned to the changing local environment. By redesigning and integrating itself into the city's political, economic and cultural life, the Shanghai Party organization not only endured but became an essential component in the city's anti-Japanese patriotic movement.
Patricia Stranahan is professor of history and director of the Asian Studies Program, University of Pittsburgh.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Going Underground (1927–1928) Chapter 3 The Shanghai Party Emerges (1928–1931) Chapter 4 The Dark Days (1931–1934) Chapter 5 The Red Mass Leagues (1932–1935) Chapter 6 The High Tide of National Salvation (1936–1938) Chapter 7 Conclusion Chapter 8 Glossary of Major Figures
What People are Saying About This
Michael Schoenhals
A rare double treat: a superb scholarly work—the first comprehensive history in the English language of a crucial phase in China's communist revolution—that is bound to impress a specialist readership, as well as a true thriller that will engross readers with a weakness for tales of political intrigue, heroism, betrayal, and survival in an extremely hostile environment.
Parks M. Coble
This remarkable study rescues the history of the Shanghai Communist Party underground from the shadows into which it has been relegated by the orthodox, Mao-centered history of the revolution. Stranahan has mined a wealth of archival and newly published material in demonstrating how the underground survived the 'white terror,' even though Communist Party policies often placed members in the gravest danger of exposure and arrest. Stranahan reveals how the small but significant group, even though cut off from the Party Center, re-emerged as a force with the National Salvation Movement of 1935. The work provides an important balance to current scholarship which emphasizes only rural revolution.
