The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949–1954

Although the Chinese Communist Party had achieved victory over their military foes in 1949, they faced the daunting task of getting the urban population, which had not participated in the largely peasant revolution, to culturally identify with the new regime and invest it with political legitimacy. It is this "cultural dimension of regime change" which is the subject Gao (U. of Maryland at College Park) takes up in his examination of the Communist political cadres activities in the municipality of Hangzhou in the years immediately following the 1949 revolution. The chronological treatment explores the training programs of the Party, the creation of political symbolism and ritual, and power redistribution as a gendered phenomenon, and related topics. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)