“This is an absolutely splendid piece of work, a landmark study of the Chinese Revolution. It is the first study of its kind to be based substantially on internal party documents acquired as a result of research access to the People’s Republic of China in the last decade. Mobilizing the Masses is a superb piece of empirical research, placed in a convincing and original analytical framework, that ushers in a new generation of scholarship on the Chinese Revolution.”—Joseph W. Esherick, University of California, San Diego “Wou’s treatment of the Chinese communist movement in Henan province sets a high standard for scholarship in the field. This book has many merits: meticulous use of a variety of understudied archives, effective and knowledgeable deployment of theoretical ideas . . . and an admirable ability to weave together an account of this 25-year period that makes sense of the story.”—American Historical Review