Underground The Shanghai Communist Party and the Politics of Survival, 1927D1937

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 Director of the Asian Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and Professor of History