Red Dawn Over China - by Frank Dikötter (Hardcover)

About the Book

From renowned, prize-winning historian Frank Dikötter, a commanding new history of China's path to Communism.

Book Synopsis

From renowned, prize-winning historian Frank Dikötter, a commanding new history of China's path to Communism.

The history of modern China has long been portrayed as a tale of Communists fighting in the hills for freedom, gradually gaining popular support by taking land from the rich and giving it to the poor. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Red Dawn Over China reveals how unlikely the Party's victory actually was, had it not been for financial and military support from the Soviet Union.

Established in 1921 under the direct guidance of Moscow, for the best part of a decade the Communist Party left a trail of destruction, besieging towns and plundering the countryside. When the Communists managed to hold territory, they reduced the villagers to a state of servitude, undermining belief in their cause as well as the local economy. By 1936 they had the same popular appeal as an obscure religious sect. A brutal war of occupation by Japan allowed them to survive far behind enemy lines. After Soviet troops invaded Manchuria in 1945 and provided more money and munitions, the Communists at long last prevailed through a pitiless war of attrition, driven by an unflinching will to conquer at all costs.

In this riveting tale told with great narrative verve, Frank Dikötter reveals how thirteen delegates gathered in a dusty room in 1921 ended up raising the red flag over the Forbidden City in 1949, forever altering the course of history for a quarter of humanity and shaping the world as we know it today.

Review Quotes

"With extraordinary analytical skill, Frank Dikötter has opened up the real story of the Chinese Communist Party's origin. Anyone interested in the future of the Peoples Republic of China should first study its past, and reading Red Dawn Over China is the best way to start." --H.R. McMaster, author of DERELICTION OF DUTY, BATTLEGROUNDS, and AT WAR WITH OURSELVES

"Frank Dikötter has rewritten the early history of the Chinese Communist Party from the ground up. Drawing on archival materials long thought inaccessible, he strips away decades of myth to reveal a story of improvisation, violence and opportunism. Written with precision and verve, Red Dawn Over China is the most important reappraisal of modern China to appear in years." --Peter Frankopan, author of THE SILK ROADS

"An intensely researched and disquieting history of communism's growth." --Kirkus Reviews

"A blow-by-blow account . . . An important corrective to the conventional view of China's rise." --Financial Times on CHINA AFTER MAO

"Iconoclastic." --Wall Street Journal on CHINA AFTER MAO

"[An] anatomy of authoritarianism . . . Dikötter's originality is that he counts crimes against civilization alongside crimes against humanity." --The New Yorker on HOW TO BE A DICTATOR

"Pathbreaking . . . a first-class piece of research." --New York Review of Books on MAO'S GREAT FAMINE

"A mesmerizing account of the communist revolution in China, and the subsequent transformation of hundreds of millions of lives through violence, coercion and broken promises . . . essential." --Anne Applebaum on THE TRAGEDY OF LIBERATION

About the Author

Frank Dikötter is the Milias Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. His books have changed the way historians view China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China to his award-winning People's Trilogy documenting the lives of ordinary people under Mao. He lives in Palo Alto, California.