Examines the political and economic origins of the October revolution in China in 1949. The text is based on direct interviews with the village people whose individual and collective protest activities helped shape the nature and course of the Chinese revolution in rural areas. Focusing on the Party's relationship with locally esteemed non-Communist leaders, the author shows that the Party's role is best understood in terms of its intimate connections with local collective activism and with existing modes of local protest, both of which were the product of rural people acting on their own grievances, interest and goals.