Red Dawn Over China

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 TransformedFrank Dikötter’s books have changed the way historians view China. Red Dawn Over China is a commanding new history of China’s path to Communism, brought to the people at the barrel of a gun – Maggie Fergusson * Tablet *An account of the surprising realities behind the Communist party’s rise in China, from years of plundered villages and minimal popular support to survival under Japanese occupation. Dikötter, an acclaimed historian of China, traces how, with Soviet backing and relentless determination, a marginal movement became a world force * Financial Times, What to Read in 2026 *Anyone interested in the future of the People’s Republic of China should first study its past. Reading Red Dawn Over China is the best way to start – H. R. McMASTER, author of Dereliction of Duty

Frank Dikötter lives in Palo Alto, California, where he 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.