Social and Political Change in Revolutionary China

This history provides the first book-length study and the first county-level analysis of social and political change in the Taihang Base Area during the key years of the War of Resistance to Japan, which was instrumental in the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. David Goodman explores revolution as process, arguing that the Chinese Communist Party was successful because of its management of revolutionary incrementalism. In particular, he examines the roles and interactions of a variety of groups, highlighting the activities of urban intellectuals, teachers, and peasant small-holders as agents of change. Based on new sources of information—including materials from the Taihang Base Area recently republished by the CCP, documentation and reports from the Taiyuan Archive that have not been made publicly available, and interviews with veterans of the Taihang Base Area—this meticulously researched work deepens our understanding of the social and political origins of the Chinese revolution by considering how both the rural population and the CCP adapted and changed within that process.