During the 1990s illegally imported compact discs, known as dakou CDs, flooded into China, opening up the music world to Chinese youth and inspiring them to experiment with new sounds and new lifestyles. Quickly, dakou became the label for a new generation of Chinese, a vibrant generation no longer tied to the Maoist past. Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, China with a Cut surveys the music that emerged in 1990s China and makes a case for its involvement in the rise of China as a cultural and economic global power.