Lawfare Daily: Frank Dikötter on the Early Years of Chinese Communism

In this episode of Lawfare Daily, Michael Feinberg interviews Professor Frank Dikötter, Milius Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, about his new book, *Red Dawn Over China*, which reexamines the early years of the Chinese Communist movement. Dikötter challenges the romanticized narrative of Mao Zedong and the CCP established by Edgar Snow’s *Red Star Over China*, arguing that the CCP’s rise was not a popular liberation struggle but a violent, ideologically driven project rooted in terror and purges from its inception. Drawing on newly accessible archival materials from China’s internal publications, Soviet records, and Kuomintang (KMT) intelligence, Dikötter reveals a pattern of calculated violence, including mass purges in Yan'an from 1942 to 1944, and underscores how the CCP’s success was less due to grassroots appeal than to external support—particularly from the Soviet Union under Stalin. He critiques the Western tendency to view Chinese communism as uniquely 'Confucian' or reformist, arguing instead that it is fundamentally a totalitarian ideology with a DNA of violence and monopoly over power. The conversation also explores why Mao remains culturally romanticized in the West despite his role in tens of millions of deaths, and questions whether the CCP’s trajectory was inevitable or if there were missed opportunities for reform. Dikötter concludes that while rare individuals within the party have challenged its authoritarianism, the system’s structure makes genuine internal reform extremely difficult. Key takeaways include: 1) The CCP’s early success was not due to mass appeal but to Soviet backing and strategic violence; 2) The myth of Mao as a benevolent revolutionary is a product of Western misreading and historical whitewashing; 3) Stalin’s role in shaping the CCP’s strategy—especially the United Front against Japan—was decisive; 4) The cult of personality and suppression of dissent are structural features of the regime, not anomalies; 5) Ordinary Chinese citizens, despite fear and terror, repeatedly resisted through quiet acts of defiance; 6) The idea that future leaders will be more humane is a dangerous illusion; 7) The CCP’s ideology was never truly about communism in the Marxist sense, but about power consolidation; 8) The West’s policy of engagement with China, from WWII to WTO accession, was based on a profound misreading of the regime’s nature.