Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity

From renowned historian Frank Dikötter, a commanding history recasting how communists seized power in China.

In April 1927, soldiers and detectives descended upon the Russian Embassy in Beijing, revolvers drawn. An hour later, they emerged with a trove of documents, some of them partly damaged by Russians who had tried quickly to destroy them. In these singed and soggy papers was proof that Moscow, despite agreeing three years earlier not to “propagate communistic doctrines,” had, in fact, sent what amounts to millions in today's dollars, along with shiploads of arms and advisors to support nothing less than a revolution in China.

These findings are hardly ever mentioned by historians-until now. The history of modern China has long been framed as an organic enterprise, wherein Communists mobilized the “peasants,” took land from the rich and redistributed it to the poor. Drawing on the Beijing raid as well as several other overlooked archives, Red Star Over China reveals how unlikely a communist victory actually was, had it not been for massive financial and military support from the Soviet Union; a brutal war of occupation by Japan; severe miscalculations by the United States; and-most of all-the Party's unflinching will to conquer at all costs. Frank Dikötter reveals how what began in 1921 with thirteen delegates in a dusty room led to a red flag being raised over the Forbidden City in 1949, forever altering the course of history for a quarter of humanity and shaping the global balance of power as we know it today.