Loyalty, Secrecy and Revolutionary Work investigates the women who engaged in secret warfare for the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and maps their history from the early 1920s to the late 1950s, arguing that perceptions and the use of normative gender norms, roles and attributes were central to their mobilisation, success and, for some, their eventual downfall. While social and women’s history of 20th century China continues to categorise civilian women’s wartime contribution as a primarily supportive one from the rear, Loyalty, Secrecy and Revolutionary Work shows that many women frequently ventured into the frontlines and beyond, spying, engaging in sabotage or other forms of clandestine activities during the Chinese civil wars (1927 – 1937, 1945 – 1949) and the Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 1945). From the 1920s most civilian women were not recruited to engage in physical combat because both male and female party officials thought them too physically weak. Women were instead considered excellent clandestine operative material because they could favourably utilise stereotypical perceptions that women were ignorant and apolitical. Civilian women were also expected to, and many did indeed capitalise on normative femininity to appear innocent while undercover, and approach enemy men in order to obtain intelligence and to persuade them to do things in favour of the CCP that they otherwise would not have done. During the 1930s and early 1940s civilian women who were prostitutes or had a promiscuous reputation were considered excellent recruits because they were more risk-tolerant than their peers. From the late 1940s to the 1950s, however, the demand for civilian female operatives dramatically decreased, and those who processed qualities that previously made them exceptional were side-lined and even ‘reeducated’ in the new regime. This research is based on newly declassified documents from multiple archives, privately-collected sources in Chinese and Japanese, and rare-published materials from the early 20th century. It contributes to scholarship in a variety of areas and goes beyond China. For Chinese studies and intelligence history, it contributes to the study of female espionage by examining those who were attached to the peripheries of CCP intelligence and public security operations. It also broadens our understanding of women’s contributions to World War II in China and brings that into a comparative framework. Lastly, this research contributes to women’s history by complicating further our understanding of the nuanced relationship between women and the CCP.