This article explores the building of urban socialism in the port city of Dalian from 1945 through the mid-1950s. Hailed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949 as New China's model metropolis, this former Japanese colonial city was occupied by the Soviet military until 1950. Postwar geopolitics situated Dalian and its residents at the forefront of implementing Soviet-inspired reforms that led to an image of Dalian not only as a vanguard city of the People's Republic, but one intimately connected with the larger socialist world. The article argues that Dalian's postwar geopolitical position as a Sino-Soviet space led to a cross-pollination of attitudes, actions, and policies that differed from much of the urban scene throughout the People's Republic of China. It sheds new light on how the complex decolonization process of the early Cold War brought a Chinese city more closely into the Second World.