The key words to the success of the Chinese communist revolution are luck and violence — at least, that’s according to Prof. Frank Dikötter.

Continuing from our last episode on Prof. Frank Dikötter’s new book, Red Dawn Over China, we trace the origin story of the Chinese Communist Party, and revisit how the CCP went from an obscure, unpopular, intellectual-led political force to take over the whole of mainland China.

Prof. Dikötter is the Milias Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong. He is the most widely read living historian of modern China, with books translated into more than twenty languages. He is the author of The People’s Trilogy, which includes Mao’s Great Famine (2010), The Tragedy of Liberation (2013), and The Cultural Revolution (2016).

We left off our story in 1929 last time, when the Soviet Union launched an oft-forgotten invasion into Manchuria and set the tone of Sino-Soviet relations. In this episode — which has been edited for clarity and brevity — we continue the story from 1929 to 1949, and trace the rise of the CCP through the Long March, the Yan’an period through the Sino-Japanese War, and how CCP emerged victorious in the civil war.

The key words we explore are luck and violence. In other words, not your official nationalist communist history from the third “Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century” (emphasis added), but a history of how an incredible willingness to use force against fellow party cadres and civilians combined with extraordinary international luck. Japan, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. propelled the CCP to its self-proclaimed glorious founding of the People’s Republic.

Enjoy.

Leo

For quick navigation to the specific sections:

* The Japanese threat kept the Communists alive

* Stalin, the great architect of Mao’s Chinese communist revolution

* How Edgar Snow put Mao on the map

* The gift of Manchuria

* No Stalin, no Mao

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Recommended reads

* Frank Dikötter, 2026, Red Dawn Over China, Bloomsbury Publishing

* Frank Dikötter, 2010, Mao’s Great Famine, Bloomsbury Publishing

* Frank Dikötter, 2013, The Tragedy of Liberation, Bloomsbury Publishing

* Frank Dikötter, 2016, The Cultural Revolution, Bloomsbury Publishing

* Paul Hollander, 1981, Political Pilgrims, Oxford University Press

* Edgar Snow, 1937, Red Star Over China, Random House

About us

The Peking Hotel podcast and newsletter are digital publications in which Liu He interviews China specialists about their first-hand experiences and observations from decades past. The project grew out of Liu’s research at Hoover Institution collecting oral history of China experts living in the U.S. Their stories are a reminder of what China used to be and what it is capable of becoming.

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How The Soviets, Japanese and Americans Together Lifted Chinese Communists Out of Obscurity — with Frank Dikötter

Peking Hotel with Liu He

How The Soviets, Japanese and Americans Together Lifted Chinese Communists Out of Obscurity — with Frank Dikötter