Introduction
Starting with a brief history of feminism in China and women in the Communist Revolution to contextualize the emergence of socialist state feminists, the chapter introduces key findings of the book, highlights a politics of concealment and a politics of erasure, explains how “anti-feudalism” served as a coded phrase for socialist feminist agendas developed by the gender-based mass organization–ACWF from its paradoxical position of both being a part of the state power and a subordinated group in the power structure of the male-dominated CCP. The chapter emphasizes the cultural front as an important arena of feminist engagement with a patriarchal culture, and explains the two-part-structure of the book that examines the relationship between the ACWF and the CCP, and the relationship between a socialist feminist revolution of culture and the Cultural Revolution.