Red Dawn Over China: The Unlikely Rise of the Chinese Communist Party

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 TransformedFrom 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 reduce