Xiaoping Cong examines the social and cultural significance of Chinese revolutionary legal practice in the construction of marriage and gender relations. Her book is an empirically rich investigation of the ways in which a 1943 legal dispute over an arranged marriage in a Chinese village became a legal, political and cultural exemplar on the national stage. This conceptually groundbreaking study revisits the Chinese Revolution and its impact on women and society by presenting a Chinese experience that cannot and should not be theorized in the framework of Western discourse. Taking a cultural-historical perspective, Cong shows how the Chinese Revolution and its legal practices produced new discourses, neologisms and cultural symbols that contained China's experience in twentieth-century social movements, and how revolutionary practice was sublimated into the concept of 'self-determination', an idea that bridged local experiences with the tendency of the twentieth-century world, and that is a revolutionary legacy for China today.

'Empirically rich and conceptually innovative, Cong’s book presents a detailed investigation of the development of the Communist judicial system in the BR as well as a close examination of the social and cultural implications of Chinese revolutionary legal practice for women and gender relations … Deftly moving between legal history and cultural history, and deploying interdisciplinary approaches to tacking historical puzzles, Xiaoping Cong has made a significant contribution to the history of the Chinese Communist Revolution.'

Source: The American Historical Review

'Xiaoping Cong’s study explores Chinese Communist Party (CCP) marriage legislation and its implications for the relationship between women and the state between 1940 and 1960. … In focusing on the impact of the Communist revolution on women and the issue of agency, Cong returns to a question that has, in various guises prompted intermittent debate among historians: Was the revolution good or bad for women?'

Pamela Hunt Source: Twentieth-Century China

'It is an excellent example of how investigation into a seemingly small historical instance can deepen our understanding of major developments and core theoretical problems in the history of China.'

Nicola Spakowski Source: NAN NÜ

'This book is a very interesting work that gives an original contribution to the historical knowledge of a period and a theme, that of Chinese marriages, previously known only through stereotypes and dated works.’'

Marco Lazzarotti Source: Marriage, Families & Spirituality

‘This book is a very interesting work that gives an original contribution to the historical knowledge of a period and a theme, that of Chinese marriages, previously known only through stereotypes and dated works.’

Marco Lazzarotti - INTAMS