G. B. Shaw was first introduced to China by a number of progressive intellectuals and social reformers in 1918. In the pre-1949 years, that is, before the establishment of the socialist People's Republic of China (PRC), Shaw had been respected primarily as an audacious iconoclast and witty satirist firing away at conventional thinking. In the post1949 years, when literature and art were strictly subordinate to political interests, Shaw was chiefly valued as a socialist writer attacking the evils of the capitalist system. Hence he was believed to have much to offer to the New China. In 1956, the young regime staged a grand commemoration honoring Shaw's 100th birthday. The cultural bureaucracy orchestrated a variety of activities conferences, performances, special exhibitions, and publication of his translated work. Looking closely at the 1956 Shaw celebrations, one notices that it was not so much Shaw the Western dramatist but Shaw the Socialist who was