This absorbing account by Frank Dikötter is the latest in a long line of attempts to explain how a party founded by 13 men in 1921 overcame seemingly impossible odds to take power in 1949. As in his previous work, he makes exceptional use of unexplored archives and contemporary materials to confirm some of the existing analyses of the success of the Chinese communists, while providing some new insights, and sketching graphic images of the violence of the revolution. For anyone interested in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it comprises essential reading.
Of particular importance is Dikötter’s exploration of two major sources that have not previously received sufficient attention. First, in the 1990s a treasure trove of Comintern documents was made public. These materials confirm the indispensability of Soviet financial, logistical and organizational support for the CCP’s success. The Party would not have been established so early and would not have survived without this support. Last, but not least, during the civil war, the Soviets facilitated the entry of the Red Army into Northeast China, a factor that was crucial to its subsequent success.
Second, in addition to contemporary newspaper reports and diplomatic missives, he uses archival materials that were only made available in restricted circulation. These documents had been collected during the 1980s under the auspices of the Central Party Archives, covering the period from 1923 to 1949. Fortunately, they found their way to Hong Kong, for which we should be grateful. Dikötter utilizes these documents to describe the revolution in the Party’s own words. Combined with other sources, they reveal a struggle of great brutality and violence. It was a turbulent era, and the CCP was willing to engage in violence to survive and meet its ends. The materials used reveal multiple accounts of the looting and destruction that CCP forces wrought on areas that they occupied. In 1934, as government troops moved into the deserted Jiangxi Soviet, they discovered burned villages and ruined temples, and mass graves (p. 132). There is the graphic description of the siege of Changchun that lasted for 150 days, during which at least 160,000 civilians died from hunger and disease (p. 262).
Further, the reports highlight just how few CCP members there were before 1945, which Dikötter uses to assert that communism was never popular in China. The Party had difficulty in establishing an effective connection with both the working class and the peasantry. Any connection with the working class was broken after 1927, while its analyses of classes in the countryside and consequent policies focusing on eradicating landlords and rich peasants, did not rally the poor peasantry to rise up in support. As Bianco has written, the CCP was “trying to initiate a peasant movement without peasants.” Chen Kaige’s movie Yellow Earth shows that the greatest threat to peasants in the Northwest was not rapacious landlords, who were absent, but the harshness of nature.
General Secretary Xi Jinping has denounced “historical nihilism,” accounts that deviate from or contradict the official narrative. One specific case that Xi highlighted was accounts that claimed that the dramatic battle at Luding Bridge never occurred. The “battle” has been the focus of numerous stories and heroic movies. Dikötter punctures this myth having found a primary source in a report by Father Valentin who wrote that not a shot was fired and no one died in a crossfire (p. 147)!
Given this research, what then does Dikötter conclude as the reason for CCP victory? His main thesis is the willingness of the CCP to use violence and through this to instill fear into local populations. However, violence was not limited to the CCP alone; warlords, roving bandits and even the Nationalists used extreme violence to exert control. Further, he stresses the important support provided by Stalin and the Comintern. This went far beyond financial support. Both periods of cooperation between the Nationalists and the Communists were at the behest of the Comintern. Dikötter even suggests that the “Sinification of Marxism” by Mao Zedong was a product of the dissolution of the Comintern that promoted the acceptance of national identity and variation.
In terms of explanation, it would have been interesting if Dikötter had engaged with the work of others, especially those who have put forward similar views. For example, Shambaugh has written that the victory of the CCP was a military one first and foremost. Bianco has noted the problems that the Party had in mobilizing a peasant movement. My own work has similarly described the problems the Party had in mobilizing a social revolution. For the CCP leadership, it was a political process that required hard work, in addition to the brutality, dedication and doses of luck along the way. For example, the Party would have almost certainly been destroyed by Chiang Kai-shek’s military if it had not been for the Japanese invasion.
Apart from threats and violence, why would anyone join and remain with the Party? Here, for the true believers, the role of ideology and organization is important. These provided the CCP with a certain discipline and ability to act in unity, something that its opponents did not have and provided a purpose beyond mere survival.
