This careful study rightly emphasizes the international aspects of the birth of the Chinese communist movement. Before the October revolution, Chinese intellectuals “did not even know of Marx and Engels” (p. 7). In the wake of May Fourth, they discovered the latters’ works, along with Kautsky's, in Japanese translations, as well as in the writings of Japanese Socialists. About as essential as the role of Japan in the reception of Marxism was that of Russia and the Comintern in the organization of the first Marxist Study (or other) groups –more later on designations – that eventually coalesced into the CCP. After Japanese authorities clamped down on leftist activities, Chinese radicals turned to American and British sources. Japanese documents had taught them the rudiments of Marxism, English language texts provided an introduction to Leninism and the organization of a communist movement. All this happened in quick succession in the matter of two years (1919–21). The book adds a few glimpses of events in 1922, and concentrates on what a few dozen radical intellectuals translated, read, thought and did during those epochal years.

The book checks and often invalidates the reliability of long-used sources, such as memoirs by Chinese actors, by comparing them with Japanese (or English) publications and data from Russian archives. This enables the author to clarify quite a few received ideas, such as the role of Li Dazhao as “the father of Marxism in China.” While Li was indeed the first Chinese intellectual to proclaim himself a Marxist (in his famous essay “My Marxist views,” published in Xinqingnian in the fall of 1919), he based all he knew of Marxism not even on Japanese publications, but on Chinese translations from Japanese. From 1 April 1919, his friend Chen Puxian (1891–1957), who had studied with him at Waseda University in 1915–16, provided serialized translations of Japanese Marxist manuals and translations in Chenbao fukan, the cultural supplement of the Beijing daily Chenbao.

The Introduction and chapter one, which document the reception of Marxism through Japan, form in my eyes the most interesting part of the book. Three chapters follow, mainly devoted to a more familiar story, namely the Comintern role in helping radical intellectuals to finance and organize proto-communist groups, then the CCP. They basically confirm the immense influence of both the Voitinsky mission and the activities of Chen Duxiu and Shanghai radicals close to him. As in chapter one, the book rectifies long-held assumptions or supplements our knowledge. It shows that Soviet activities toward China were not yet unified. Grigori Voitinsky was sent to China by the Vladivostok Branch of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Russian Communist Party, other operational units functioned (and sent directives or envoys) from Chita, Irkutsk and elsewhere, while Maring was later designated by the Moscow Centre of the Comintern Executive. Various offices pursued divergent, at times rival, policies. As a result, competing “communist” organizations could develop within a single country. Such was the case of China, where another “Communist Party,” different from the one founded around Chen Duxiu, existed and occasionally sent delegates to Moscow. That “bogus” Chinese Communist Party, or Great Unity Party, was open to anarchist as well as Marxist affiliates. Of more lasting influence was the Communist Party manifesto, published in the first issue of Gongchandang (7 November 1920). It officially launched the organization known as the “Chinese Communist Party.” The book therefore assigns the date of the CCP's formation to November 1920, rather than to July 1921, when the first Congress convened in Shanghai (p. 206).

The fourth and last chapter deals with the preparations for convening that Congress, then for the Congress itself. No less than twelve pages (pp. 238–50) are devoted to making clear that there were 13 participants, not 12, as officially asserted in the PRC. This is not one of the most significant issues surrounding the congress, the importance of which the author has taken pain to diminish. Lengthy discussions likewise deal with secondary issues of time and persons. No doubt needed, but needlessly long or repeated, recurrent discussions aim at clarifying the designations of the xiaozu, as well as of other proto-communist groups. From “Socialist Study Society” to “Marxist Study Group,” and from “Socialist-Communist Party” to “Revolutionary Bureau” and the like, various names were used to designate a single institution throughout China, and more importantly in Comintern documents and Chinese memoirs.

As the organization of the book allows for further repetitions, the resulting work is far from concise. Its value lies in the precise collation of sources, in the profusion of details it clarifies or adds (e.g. Chen Jiongming's propaganda and letter to Lenin [pp. 90–91, 373]), as well as in interesting revelations relating to such figures as Dai Jitao and Shi Cuntong (complementing what Wen-hsin Yeh has revealed on Shi in Provincial Passages: Culture, Space, and the Origins of Chinese Communism, University of California Press, 1996). The general picture of the CCP formation is not altogether transformed, as the wise conclusions (roles of Japan, of the Comintern, of Chen Duxiu and other radical Chinese intellectuals) had long been known or understood, if not documented with such exacting scholarship. They should be balanced by the nationalist motivation of these early communists, as expressed by Li Hanjun in April 1921: “The political revolution [of 1911] has been powerless to reform China. […] The only path toward which we strive is social revolution” (p. 4).

Sections of the book could be proposed for reading by graduate students in modern Chinese history or in the history of the international communist movement.