Putting the Chinese Communist Party's reinvention of the party-state at the centre of the epochal transformation of China into a global superpower, this study homes in on the education and training of cadres (administrators and politicians), a crucial but almost completely overlooked aspect of the Chinese party-state. Cadre training is an entry into the often opaque and mysterious world of the people in China who staff the party-state and rule the country, a way of understanding the Communist Party's enduring and growing power inside and outside China without having to risk an investigation in the often secret and highly sensitive specifics of the exercise of that power itself. Cadre training also highlights the fact that China's contemporary administration is Mao Zedong's worst nightmare become real. Gone forever are first-hand revolutionary experience and direct involvement in the life and work of China's toiling masses. Instead, cadres have become a ruling elite who worship book learning and formal educational qualifications. As the embodiment and chief instrument of the party's leading role in society, cadres are to be leaders, managers, moral exemplars and faithful servants of the party at the same time. The learning, discipline and privilege that cadre training provides is a key transformational experience in the construction of cadres' unique personhood, a sense of self that straddles the boundaries between strong individuality, total submission to the party's will, elitist exclusivity and faceless anonymity.