RED DAWN OVER CHINA

When communism swept a nation—“at the barrel of a gun.”

Dikötter, an author and Hoover Institution Fellow, opens with the 1911 revolution that ended China’s ancient imperial system but failed to provide competent government or expel predatory Western nations (plus Japan) that had taken control of large areas. Still an iconic hero, revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, a nationalist, could not control local strongmen. Western nations were no help, but Soviet premiers Lenin and Stalin took an interest, sending a steady stream of advisers, money, and arms that sustained a communist movement in a “civil war,” a term that gives it too much dignity. Readers may be flummoxed by the book’s first half, in which Dikötter describes the interwar years as a period of destruction, mass murder, and famine that resumed after 1945. Generals and cadres with unfamiliar names regularly switch sides and support their armies with looting and banditry. When Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek seemed to have the upper hand in the early 1930s, the Japanese invasion inflicted another catastrophe. Fearing Japan’s threat, Stalin urged the parties to work together, but this never happened. Communist leader Mao Tse-tung husbanded his forces in the western mountains. Nationalist armies were no match for the Japanese, but readers may be surprised to learn that the majority of Japan’s army remained in China from 1941-45 and suffered far more casualties than it did fighting the U.S. Both parties accepted American aid, but only Nationalists accepted American advisers, who were outraged at the inefficiency and corruption that Chiang tolerated. This outrage persisted after V-J Day, contributing America’s reluctance to supply his retreating forces; Stalin’s generosity persisted. Mao and his communists welcomed influential foreigners, mostly journalists, showed them carefully staged scenarios of the worker’s paradise, and were rewarded with fawning reports.

An intensely researched and disquieting history of communism’s growth.