‘Red Dawn Over China’ by Frank Dikötter: Setting the record straight on China’s ruling party
Xi Jinping, in his speech on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2021, asserted that “in 1921, as the Chinese people and the Chinese nation were undergoing a great awakening and Marxism-Leninism was becoming closely integrated with the Chinese workers’ movement, the Communist Party of China was born.” The claim that the CPC had wider support among people from its inception is not new in its ideological narratives but underpins the broader political claim that its rise was inevitable.
Frank Dikötter’s writings have long questioned the official history by relying on suppressed accounts of the CPC’s policies in his work over last three decades. His latest book, Red Dawn Over China, provides a detailed account questioning above, and many other, claims. Contrary to these claims by the CPC, he shows that the balance of power—among domestic forces within China and in international affairs from 1920 to 1949—that determined the course of, first, guerrilla warfare and later the civil war (1945-1949) with the Nationalist Party (KMT), in its favour.
The book offers the following takeaways.
One, communist ideology was imposed on Chinese people than the CCP being the political articulator of ideological beliefs of majority Chinese people. The author convincingly shows through the Party’s own official reports of the era that it did not have significant membership and lacked an effective organization on the ground except in Soviet areas which different leaders such as Mao Zedong in the eastern province of Jiangxi, controlled. As a result, the CPC leadership, guided and supported by the Soviet-led Comintern, struggled to find foothold until the late 1930s. Further, the balance of power among major European powers, Japan, and the Soviet Union determined the dynamics between the KMT and the communists which ultimately shaped the course of the rise of the CPC from near oblivion in the mid-1930s. Thus, there was nothing inevitable in the CPC’s victory in 1949.
Two, the word communism featured in the CPC’s lexicon only in 1926. Until then, Bolshevism—a radical faction that ultimately won the Russian Revolution and founded the Soviet Union—was often used to define its ideology. In the absence of ideological convictions among its rank and file and the public, the CPC adopted brutal violence as a key means to get its way, whether to compel people under its control to submit to its will or in its negotiations and power struggle with the KMT. Communism thus rose gradually into an official ideology in China, its contents determined either through power struggles among its elites or through practical necessities. Thus, Soviet agents determined the ideological lines and power balance among key leaders until the late 1930s with the Soviet brand of communism dominating the official policy. However, that changed with Mao's rise from 1937 onwards, and a new ideology, Mao Zedong Thought, emerged through a brutal political struggle between Mao and Soviet-trained Wang Ming. Still, even a large section of its own members followed leaders, without having any deep ideological convictions. As a result, Chinese Communism has always been susceptible to elite power struggles and amenable to taking into account practical necessities, such as co-opting ethnic groups in the 1940s or shifting towards reforms and opening up despite both occurring without acknowledgement of Communist doctrine. It continuous to be defined by who is ruling and their methods of rule.
Three, the CPC has always been conscious of its image and has invested heavily in shaping it among the international audience. Dikötter provides meticulous detail about its efforts to present itself as a viable option, in contrast to the KMT's rule of China. That major powers such as the US considered the CPC more democratic during the civil war was the result of its leadership's strenuous efforts. To the US representatives in the 1940s, Zhou Enlai went so far as to claim that the CPC wanted a constitutional government like the US had. That the external-facing posture of an open, more benign political force contradicted indiscriminate violence it adopted during that time is not an aberration. Rather, except perhaps during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) when it was largely isolated internationally, the duality of internal authoritarianism and external benign attitude has been an integral part of the CPC leadership’s strategy to navigate domestic and international challenges to this day.
Despite laborious work, the books at times uncritically use sources such as the perspectives of the representatives of major powers and other non-Chinese individuals. As a result, it tends to present the interests of major powers such as the US and European powers as benign players, which certainly was not the case.
However, the book is useful for a wide range of audiences, both lay and expert. It provides a detailed account of a period in modern Chinese history, about which much has been written, and offers fresh perspectives based on a new corpus of primary documents, contemporary accounts by individuals who were part of the events or observers, and official assessments by other major powers. Given that the CPC remains a top-down Leninist institution, the book's history also provides a guide to contemporary developments, such as elite power struggles and the exercise of power within the vast and complex organization.
This article was originally published in The Tribune as part of an arrangement with the Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies