Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People's Republic of China

Brown examines the social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions of the Communist takeover of China. He seeks to understand how the 1949-1953 period was experienced by various groups, including industrialists, filmmakers, ethnic minorities, educators, rural midwives, philanthropists, standup comics, and scientists.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgments 1 The Early Years of the People's Republic of China: An Introduction Jeremy Brown and Paul G. Pickowicz I Urban Takeover 2 "Clean-Up": The New Order in Shanghai Frederic Wakeman, Jr. 3 Masters of the Country? Shanghai Workers in the Early People's Republic Elizabeth Perry 4 New Democracy and the Demise of Private Charity in Shanghai Nara Dillon II Occupying the Periphery 5 From Resisting Communists to Resisting America: Civil War and Korean War in Southwest China, 1950-51 Jeremy Brown 6 The Chinese Communist "Liberation" of Tibet, 1949-51 Chen Jian 7 Big Brother Is Watching: Local Sino-Soviet Relations and the Building of New Dalian, 1945-55 Christian Hess 8 The Call of the Oases: The "Peaceful Liberation" of Xinjiang, 1949-53 James Z. Gao III The Culture of Accommodation 9 The Crocodile Bird: Xiangsheng in the Early 1950s Perry Link 10 "The Very First Lesson": Teaching about Human Evolution in Early 1950s China Sigrid Schmalzer 11 Acting Like Revolutionaries: Shi Hui, the Wenhua Studio, and Private-Sector Filmmaking, 1949-52 Paul G. Pickowicz 12 Creating "New China's First New-Style Regular University," 1949-50 Douglas A. Stiffler IV Family Strategies 13 The Ye Family in New China Joseph W. Esherick 14 Birthing Stories: Rural Midwives in 1950s China Gail Hershatter 15 Capitalists Choosing Communist China: The Liu Family of Shanghai, 1948-56 Sherman Cochran Notes Index

About the Author :
Jeremy Brown is Assistant Professor of History, Simon Fraser University. Paul G. Pickowicz is Distinguished Professor of History and Chinese Studies at the University of California, San Diego and inaugural holder of the UC San Diego Modern Chinese History Endowed Chair. Elizabeth J. Perry is Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Perry Link is retired from a career teaching at Princeton University and now is Chancellorial Chair for Teaching Across Disciplines at the University of California, Riverside. He publishes on Chinese language, literature, and cultural history, and also writes and speaks on human rights in China. Sherman Cochran is Hu Shih Professor of Chinese History at Cornell University.

Review :
The authors of the essays contained in this volume bring with them an extraordinarily wide range of different disciplinary and personal interests ranging from Chen Jian's political history of the takeover of Tibet, through Perry Link's literary analysis of comic skits, to Gail Hershatter's accounts of the changing lives of rural midwives...[It's] a fascinating read sparking a whole variety of new ways of looking at the 1949 revolution and the early People's Republic. -- Henrietta Harrison Chinese Historical Review 20090331 Taking advantage of access to new sources in Chinese and even U.S. archives, personal papers, and oral interviews with surviving individuals, these essays compel a reconsideration of the early communist period...Indispensable reading for understanding Chinese society and the nascent communist state in 1949-1953. -- L. Teh Choice