"Based on first-hand archival material, this volume brings together insightful new essays on the theme of China's revolutionary transformation in the 1950s, calling into question existing narratives on the foundational decade of the People's Republic of China"-- Provided by publisher.

International relations and China's position in the socialist camp /Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik -- Sino-Soviet anxiety : science and Chinese conditions in the PRC coal industry (1949-1965) / Anna Belogurova -- Producing socialist bodies : transnational sports networks and athletes in 1950s China / Amanda Shuman -- Asia's fourth Rome : cultural industries and cultural diplomacy in the international legitimization of the People's Republic of China, 1949-1953 / Matthew D. Johnson -- Modalities of state building : bureaucracy, campaign, and performance in Sunan, 1950-1953 / Julia C. Strauss -- The wilds of revolution : anti-localism and Hainanese women in the early People's Republic of China / Jeremy A. Murray and Alexander J. Serrano -- Reconstruction and solidification : the restructuring of "peasant" status in the 1950s dispersal of Shanghai's urban population / Ruan Qinghua -- Anxiety in the revolutionary turn : Shanghai film personnel in the 1950s / Zhang Jishun -- Letters from the people : the masses and the mass line in 1950s China / Aminda M. Smith -- Cadres, grain, and rural conflicts : a study of criminal cases in a village during the Great Leap Forward / Jing Wenyu -- How the CCP has failed to obtain control over China's collective memory on the 1950s / Anja Blanke -- Postscript : rethinking China under Mao / Klaus Muhlhahn.