Red Dawn Over China
How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 30 days of Standard free
£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Red Dawn Over China
Narrated by:
Daniel York Loh
Buy Now for £15.52
-
Narrated by:
-
Daniel York Loh
-
By:
-
Frank Dikötter
A FINANCIAL TIMES HIGHLIGHT FOR 2026
'The most important reappraisal of modern China to appear in years' PETER FRANKOPAN, author of The Silk Roads and The Earth Transformed
From renowned, prize-winning historian Frank Dikötter – ‘the historian of China’ (Spectator) – a commanding new history of China’s path to Communism, brought to the people at the barrel of a gun.
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.
Praise for Frank Dikötter and the People's Trilogy:
'Harrowing and brilliant' Ben Macintyre
'Gripping and masterful' Simon Sebag Montefiore
'One of the few books that anyone who wants to understand the twentieth century simply must read' New Statesman©2026 Frank Dikötter (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c
Critic reviews
Ever since Frank Dikötter’s first book . . . this prolific star of China studies has challenged conventional truths and broached taboo subjects . . . Dikötter succeeds at bringing different strands together in a highly readable narrative that challenges the foundational myths of the CCP . . . A valuable reminder that today’s China – the prosperous, technologically advanced superpower – is a country built on a foundation of violence . . . A tireless chronicler of the numerous crimes and follies of Chinese Communism, Dikötter once again shows his readers who was pulling the trigger of that gun (Sergey Radchenko)
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 and The Earth Transformed)
Animating . . . Mao’s victory, he argues, owed little to popular enthusiasm and even less to the intrinsic appeal of communist ideas … His pages teem with arrests, purges, sieges, starvation and fear (Pratinav Anil)
Dikötter makes his case clearly and unequivocally . . . Dikötter backs his case up with a deep body of primary sources including archival materials available only in restricted circulation, showcasing the assiduous research typical of this Dutch writer’s work, which encompasses 13 books on the history of China . . . Does a service to historians and general readers in showing the receipts . . . Explains why rose-tinted or romantic views of the communist revolution urgently need revision . . . The violence at the centre of the party’s project cannot be denied by historians, even if it is rarely mentioned in the party’s narrative of its own rise . . . The moral anger at Red Dawn Over China’s heart brooks no argument (Rana Mitter)
The assertion [that the ascent of the Chinese Communist Party constituted a revolution] is the CCP’s founding claim to legitimacy for the Party, but Dikötter describes a slow seizure of power characterized by ruthless violence, deception and narrative manipulation, facilitated by the Soviet Union and aided by fortuitous external events, important among them Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in 1937. The Communists, he argues, never managed to stimulate a popular revolutionary movement, despite years of effort . . . Red Dawn over China tells a powerful story that draws heavily on the CCP’s archives . . . Dikötter’s evidence is hard to deny (Isabel Hilton)
No reviews yet