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- [02:12]
Podcast Host
How did a tiny band of guerrillas come to rule a quarter of humanity? And was the outcome of the Chinese Civil War really the heroic popular uprising that the People's Republic portrays? In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Danny Byrd speaks to Frank Dakota about the surprising reality behind the rise of the Communist Party of China. From its margin beginnings in the 1920s and the myth of the long march to the decisive role of Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945. Together they explore how violence, propaganda and military conquest, rather than mass popular support, culminated in the raising of the red flag over the forbidden city in 1949.
- [02:55]
Danny Byrd
A lot of people may have grown up with the impression that the Chinese Communist Party's rise was almost heroic and the expression of widespread popular will. When you first started this project, what made you suspect that this story didn't quite add up?
- [03:08]
Frank Dikötter
Well, I always suspected that the story didn't add up, and it started very much as an undergraduate student. We're talking 1980s. When I read a book called Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow. He was a naive journalist from Missouri, United States. He was invited by Mao Zedong and the Communist to join them and interview them. And of course, the book was enormously popular, translated into many languages, and really put Mao and the Communists on the map. Now, you got to remember one thing. In 1936, when Edgar Snow is invited by the Communists, they represent roughly 40,000 people in a country of half a billion. In other words, the Chinese Communist Party is virtually non existent. Doesn't amount to very much at all, with very little appeal. But that book really transforms the image of the Communists into a sort of story of David and Goliath, with the sympathy going to the boy with the sling. The images are really a bunch of Communists who are really devoted to the peasants and willing to fight for freedom, justice, equity up in the hills in a country which is marred by imperialism, peasant immiseration, fascist government, you name it. And Japanese, of course, attacks. So they are portrayed as the hope, and they liberate these social forces which will somehow bring them all the way to 1949 and liberation. When the quarter of humanity joins the socialist camp, the red flag goes up over the Forbidden City in Beijing. That's the story.
- [05:03]
Danny Byrd
And I want to zone in on that a little bit more because in your book you very much focus on how small and precarious Chinese Communism was in the 1920s, as you've just illustrated. Yes, but how marginal was the party early on? And why has that vulnerability been so downplayed in subsequent histories?
- [05:20]
Frank Dikötter
Well, it's been downplayed for clear reasons. Once the red flag goes up in 1949, of course history gets rewritten and it gets rewritten in favor of the victors, the Communists. Look, there is something else. We have been told this story, and it's been told so many times that one is convinced somehow that there must be a reason why there was a social revolution in China before 1949. On the other hand, if we talk about Poland, or, let's say, East Germany, and you were to ask, why is it that East Germany became communist after 1945, why is it that Poland became communist? What are the reasons for the social revolution in East Germany? Of course, you would laugh and say, well, there weren't any conditions. There was no communism. Communism in Poland and the Communist Party were minute in the 1920s and 30s. And the reason they became Communist is because the Red army under Stalin invaded the country on their way to Berlin in 1945 and imposed communist parties. So the issue is that when it comes to China, we think in a very different manner. We think there must have been all sorts of reasons for the growth of the Communist Party. But in effect, it is the same reason in 1945, a million soldiers under Stalin invade Manchuria, which is about the size of France and Great Britain combined. It's bigger than Japan. Then invade Manchuria, turn over that part to the north of Beijing over to the Communists, and help the Communists become a formidable fighting machine. They were just a ragtag army of guerrilla fighters before that. So the key event is really 1945. So if you look at the 1920s and 30s, there's this huge literature about how the Communists were established in 1921, how they got help from the common town, you name it. But in effect, the Communists were no more important than in any European country, including Poland and East Germany, and including even Salazar in Portugal, who's a fascist. In 1935, to be very precise, there are about one communist in Portugal for every 240, 280 people in China by the end of the 1930s. In 1940, it is one person for every 1,400 people, which is the exact same rough number, roughly the same number as there are Communist Party members in the United States of America, which is not exactly seen to be at the forefront of the revolution. The reality is that the Communists have very little appeal to, are not important in terms of overall power, and would never have succeeded had it not been for Stalin and Manchuria in 1945.
- [08:24]
Danny Byrd
I want to come a little bit more onto that Soviet influence a little bit later on. But I wonder if, for the benefit of listeners, if you could tell me a little bit more about the origins of the Chinese Communist Party and how that came about.
- [08:35]
Frank Dikötter
Yes, of course. So the story generally goes as follows. 1917, Bolshevik Revolution by Lenin. Soviet Union is established. It sends a message of great equity and freedom and liberation for all those who have been oppressed by a feudal system. This apparently has a great echo in China. And rapidly the Communist Party is established. But it's not quite like that. In fact, until 1919, very few people in China have any interest in Commun. It is specifically a number of agents from the Common Town. The Common Town is short for Communist International, established by Lenin in 1919 to help promote revolution and overthrow capitalist governments around the world. These Bolshevik agents, Comintern agents, approach a small number of scholars in Beijing and manage to convert two. They sent a Dutch man called Maring. Hank Snavelyt is his real name and he's also a Comintern agent. And he puts together that Communist Party of China, which amounts to about 12 people in a room in Shanghai in 1921. By 1923, the Communists in this country of 400 million people represent no more than about a couple of hundred. There's really nothing. So both Lenin and Hank Snavly realize these Communists are not going anywhere. So on the other hand, there is another revolutionary party called the Nationalists under Sun Yat Sen. And they are determined to reconquer that country that has become divided after the collapse of the empire in 1911. Through the barrel of a gun. They want to build up an army and conquer from the south. They are in Guangzhou Canton, just across the border from Hong Kong Kong. Today they want to have an army and conquer all of the north in what they call a Northern Expedition. They need weapons, they need military advisors, they need finances. So Moscow says we can give all of this to you if you accept Communist Party members in your ranks. That's exactly what happened. That's exactly. It's a Trojan horse. That Northern Expedition in 1926 begins moving up north to unify the country under the Nationalists and Sun Yat Sen. Yat Sen is dead by now, but it's his party. Chiang Kai Shek is the man in charge. All along the way, the Communist Party members inside the ranks of the Nationalist army create havoc uprisings. They identify every single foreigner as an agent of imperialism. They attack wealthy shop owners, landowners. They create such havoc that there is a whole stream of refugees coming along the Yangtze from the inside the hinterland in China towards Shanghai at one point in Nanjing, when it is seized by the Northern army in March 1927, a dozen foreigners are killed, including the head of a university. The Japanese consul is shot at twice. It creates a huge massive international incident. Chiang Kai Shek, who is in charge of the Nationalist, decides that he no longer wants to have these Communists inside the party ranks. There's a Split, that's the end of the united front. Now we can move on like this for a bit of time. But to keep it short, from 1927 to roughly 1931, very little happens with the communists. They become basically a bunch of outsiders, outcasts who really survive by attacking and plundering small towns deep inside the hinterland. They are not able to hang on to any kind of territory until they establish, under the orders of Stalin, with more help, a so called Soviet, a territory in very poor countryside, Jiangxi Province, the side of France. They stay there for about three years. It collapses in 1934 for several reasons. First, they are surrounded by central government troops. But most of all, this is the magic word that so many historians have used, land reform. The idea is that the communists, by implementing land reform, take land from the rich and give it to the poor and generate a surplus on which they can thrive. But there are no landlords, there are no rich peasants where they are. All these villagers are working very hard just to get by. And then the Communists arrive and have to extract even more resources from these poor villages. So in the end they ruin whatever economy they have to run. They pretty much reduce everyone to a state of starvation, as they say themselves. They squeeze it like a lemon and then they must move on. In 1934, when they move on, they are about 80,000. It's the beginning of what is referred to as the Long March. And a year later, towards October 35th when they arrive, there are about six or eight thousand of them left. So a year later is when Edgar Snow visits these communists and writes his book Red Star Over China.
- [14:07]
Danny Byrd
Violence runs through your account from the very beginning. How central would you say coercion was rather than popular support to the Chinese Communists survival and expansion during this period?
- [14:16]
Frank Dikötter
Well, there's extremely little popular support for the very reason that violence is the foundation of the revolution. Chairman Mao says it quite nicely. Revolution is not a dinner party. But you got to remember, this entire country, of course, comes from a very violent background. Not just the collapse of the qing dynasty in 1911, but also subsequent military governors who fought fight each other for supremacy, alliances made, alliances destroyed. But the key point is that violence is seen by the communists as a means to achieve the revolution. It is not a byproduct. It's not like they want to sell the message and are then forced to resort to violence. I mean, red terror is the term they themselves use. So once they are on their own after 1927, when they split from the Nationalist, which becomes the central government A year later, they are left to rove the countryside. And Chairman Mao's very good. He's a very poetic person, comes up with great short sentences. Here's the one he gives. On 5 January 1930, a single spark will set the prairie alight. A single spark will set the prairie alight. There's a communist ideology. All these people are oppressed. So what you need to do is create a spark that will then somehow consume that country and lead to a revolution. So how do you create that spark? You must overthrow all the enemies of revolution in a violent act. So time and again they try to ignite the spark by seizing a town, seizing a city, and then quite literally eliminating all those who stand for the central government. Local officials, wealthy landowners, shopkeepers. They're either physically eliminated or ransomed. Buildings that belong to the local government are burned down and local men who are unemployed are recruited by the army. Sometimes it's forced conscription, sometimes it's voluntary. That's the way they operate. They believe that the resistance from these feudal, imperialist, capitalist forces is such that only brutal Red Cat can achieve that goal. You got to remember the communists not alone. Stalin means steel Molotov, Stalin's greatest aid. Molotov means literary hammer. You must hammer the enemy ceaselessly. So violence is at the heart of the revolution. A quick other point, the idea that you can somehow take land from the rich and give it to the poor is something that does work in Russia because you have a rich landed aristocracy with Serbs who have only just been, I believe, in the 1860s. But there's no such thing in China. First, as an extraordinarily complicated country. It's huge. It's the size of Europe. Conditions vary from place to place, but overall, the majority of villagers own a very small plot of land. There's no big contrast between so called landlords and serfs living in sheer misery. These conditions simply don't exist.
- [17:46]
Danny Byrd
You've mentioned him there, but I feel like we should address him. And that figure is Mao himself. Could you tell me a little bit about where he was at this period in China's history and how he came to communism itself?
- [17:58]
Frank Dikötter
Mao ultimately is like so many other members of the Communist Party or members of the Nationalist Party. They are at heart nationalists. What they want is wealth and power for the country. Now, how to achieve it, the differences in opinion there. But clearly Mao and the Communists are taken by a model proposed by Lenin in 1917. So Marx, of course, is the foundation. So Marx put it like this. The proletariat the workers are being exploited, and one day they will rise and overthrow the capitalist class. That's the Marxist revolution. But Lenin, he makes a contribution to that. He says, we're not going to just wait for the proletariat to rise. We could wait for a very long time. So Lenin thinks we should have a party, a revolutionary party that actually creates the revolution, that seizes power through violent means and then very much guides the revolution from above. So it's great faith in a very tightly organized party that seizes power. That's the model that Mao follows.
- [19:17]
Danny Byrd
Moscow looms very large throughout this story. And in those formative years, how independent was the Chinese Communist Party in reality, and how decisive was Soviet money, training, and direction?
- [19:27]
Frank Dikötter
It's absolutely fundamental. So here we have a number of issues, and the biggest one is, of course, that people tend to bite the hand that feeds them. In other words, after 1949, when the People's Republic of China is proclaimed, of course, they like to portray their own revolution as something which is quite intrinsic to Chinese Communism and to the chairman himself. In other words, the entire past gets rewritten. The Soviet Union gets written out. To some extent, they all accept that it was the Comintern that established the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. They accept that it was a united front in 1923, and that Moscow provided weapons and munitions and money to have a nice alliteration to the Nationalist Party. But what we don't always see so clearly is that time and again, Stalin in particular, intervenes. So we looked briefly at the history of the Communist Party in China up till 1936. 36, for all intents and purposes, they have been defeated by the central government. They have very little population appeal. There are a bunch of about 40,000 ragtag guerrilla fighters somewhere up in the north on extremely inhospitable terrain. They're in a country of half a billion by now, 1936, a country that is modernizing, building roads, adhering to the highest standards of the League of Nations, very keen to join the modern world. One magistrate of a county out of two has a foreign degree. This is an extremely rapidly modernizing country. The Communists are just bandits, really. So Stalin intervenes, and Stalin says, you must have a united front again with the central government, the Nationalists. You must fight the Japanese. The Japanese took all of Manchuria in 1931 and are about to invade much larger parts of the country and finally the entire country after 1937. So Stalin insists. Mao's very reluctant. He wants to fight Chiang Kai Shek as all enemy he doesn't quite see that Japan is the one big threat. That's what ordinary people want too. They want to fight Japan. Finally, Mao's convinced, joins this united front which Chiang Kai Shek tolerates after an incident during which he's kidnapped. That's a long story. But the key point is, time and again, Stalin intervenes. So here is another point. The standard history tells you how Mao, from 1936 to roughly 42, had to really manipulate, maneuver behind the scenes in order to get rid of the Chinese envoys sent by Moscow so that he could really impose a sort of sinification of the Chinese Communist Party, so that he could really make sure that it was attacked, adapted to the conditions of China. But nothing could be further from the truth. It is Stalin himself who sends a letter by roundabout3940 to say, you know, these agents that we sent earlier, the very Chinese agents we sent, you should get rid of them. They're contaminated. I mean, there are purges going on under Stalin. And some of these victims, of course, are linked to the earlier envoy sent to China. So it is Stalin who says, you should trust Liu Shaoqi, you should trust Lin Biao, you should trust Jude. All the leadership that emerges at that point is very much hand picked by Stalin himself. And it goes much further. 1943, Stalin abolishes the common town. Why? He says all these local Communist parties in Eastern Europe, in Asia, must adapt to their local conditions. Why does he do it? Because Stalingrad, the Germans are being defeated. Stalin can see the end of the Second World War, and he realizes that if those parties, Communist parties established by the Comintern, ought to have any kind of credibility, they must look natural, they must look as if they came from the people themselves. So he says, no one Communist Party can be the same. All of them have their own, own cultural background, their own social conditions, their own historical circumstances. So what I'm trying to say is when so many historians talk about how Mao is the one who sinified Chinese Communism, how Mao was the one who discovered the peasants, how Mao is the one who adapted communism to the specific conditions of China, my answer is no, absolutely not. That, too, was Stalin. And what does Stalin do in 1945? We talked about it earlier. He sends a million soldiers across the border from Siberia into Manchuria and holds on to Manchuria for about six months, during which he hands over the countryside to Mao Zedong and his guerrilla fighters, and then massive military help. Military Academies established in 16 places in Manchuria, officers sent to Moscow for advanced training in strategy, weapons that arrived by the train load and all along the Americans insist that the wartime ally, the central government under Chiang Kai Shek, insist that Chiang Kai Shek stop fighting the Communists and enter a coalition. The Americans then impose an arms embargo in September 1946, even as the Soviet Union is arming the Communists to the teeth.
- [25:33]
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- [26:59]
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- [27:29]
Danny Byrd
I'd like to step back a little bit now to the 1930s if we may, because I think one of the most potent myths of this period is what you've already referenced, the Long March. For the benefit of listeners, could you go into a little bit more detail, please?
- [27:40]
Frank Dikötter
Yes. It's a fascinating episode. The name alone is extraordinary. Long March. And of course the moment it's over. Mao writes about how the Long March brought the revolution to hundreds of millions of people. But in fact, the Long March is a long defeat. They have to flee and there's no plan. So they come from a territory referred to as a Soviet. It runs along Communist lines, like the Soviet Union. They establish a bit of territory. It's extremely poor, it implodes. Local villagers flee massively. The economy is ruins. They're on the edge of starvation. They're surrounded by troops from the central government. So in October 1934, they oblige to break through and flee. That is the beginning of the Long March. It will last roughly a year. It's a huge sort of series of maneuvers and circles. And they go through first towards the south, west, and back up through Yunnan, Sichuan Province, and then all the way up to the border, very much towards the north of Inner Mongolia. They want to be close to the Soviet Union. It's a huge, huge sort of track. 80,000 leave, 6 to 8,000 arrive. The rate of attrition is huge. This is always portrayed as a very clever set of maneuvers in which the good old Chairman Mao manages to really evade from all the central government troops. But it's actually the exact opposite. It's the central government, Chiang Kai Shek, who realizes that there's very little point sending soldiers who are heavily equipped, running behind very lightly equipped Communist troops, you know, through rain, through mist, over hills, in the countryside. So what they do is they just block off access to resources, supplies. They send them into the wilderness. They pretty much force them to go through such rough terrain that the rate of attrition claims about 90%. That's exactly what happens. Exactly what happens. So at the end of this Long March, which is always, you know, seen as a great heroic feat, which it is to some extent, but the end of it, the Communists have pretty much been wiped off the map of this country, the size of Europe.
- [30:10]
Danny Byrd
And as you referenced slightly earlier, Frank, a looming threat during this time was Imperial Japan and of course, its attack on China, which brought the country into the Second World War. How did that attack, that invasion, alter the trajectory of the Chinese civil War?
- [30:27]
Frank Dikötter
Well, what is so extraordinary is that from the middle of the 19th century already, China, in particular, Manchuria is seen as a sort of buffer zone by both Russia and Japan, and they clash over Manchuria in 1904, 1905, in a very brutal war. The result is that Manchuria remains with the Qing Empire. The Qing empire collapsed in 1911. Again, in particular, once Russia becomes the Soviet Union, Japan and the Soviet Union see each other as enemies, with Manchuria right in between. So 1931, the Japanese invade Manchuria, take the whole thing. It's bigger than Japan, it's bigger than their own country, they take the whole thing, which of course, rattles the Soviet Union. But what is so extraordinary is that from 1931 onwards, the communist Party has very little to say about the Japanese. When it is evident to every person around planet Earth that if there's something happening in China, it is the struggle over Manchuria and the invasion of that northern part of China by the Japanese, that is what happening. That's the biggest threat. That's the oppression, that's the imperialism. I mean, it's not the Brits selling their stuff in Shanghai. That's not the imperialism. It's Japan. So 1937, Japan decides to go beyond Manchuria and pretty much launch a war which leads them to occupy the entire coastline from north to south, all the way down to Guangzhou. That is, for all intents and purposes, that's the beginning of the Second World War. From a European perspective, we think it's Poland, September 1939, but it really is the invasion of China. After 1937, summer 37, what is it that the Communists actually do? Very little. So from 37 onwards, what they do is they are still ensconced in the hinterland, far behind enemy lines. And what they then do, gradually, up till 1941, is they try to occupy distressed terrain which has been ravaged by Japanese troops and from which the central government has been evicted. So they try to occupy that. They frequently fight not with the Japanese, but with troops from the central government. And then they compete with the Japanese and who can be harsher and who can keep a hold of the local population? Frequently, it's the Communists who prevail. So Japan is absolutely fundamental. But in a nutshell, Japan does what the Communists would never have been able to accomplish, namely displace the central government and defeat their armies. That's what the Japanese do. So, of course, 1945, the Japanese are gone. There's a rush.
- [33:35]
Danny Byrd
Yes. And I wondered now if we could go into that second phase of the Chinese civil war and how significant that was to the events that ultimately culminated in 1949 with the establishment of the People's Republic of China.
- [33:47]
Frank Dikötter
So, to me, the 45 to 49 period is absolutely crucial. A million soldiers take over Manchuria, Russians, Soviets, hand over the countryside to the Communists, they arm the Communists. But that's not enough. It is not enough for the Communist Party to be armed and trained by the Soviet Union and have this pretty much huge territory under its control, from which it can, of course, recruit manpower, cannon fodder, and also extract grain to feed its troops. So these Troops that they ballooned very quickly after 1945, 46, 47. The key point is also what I refer to as unrestricted warfare. So what is unrestricted warfare? It means that you must have the weapons, but it's the tactics you use. And you use tactics which are devoid of any moral principles. There's no concern there over losses. You must send a great many to invade a small number. These techniques include, for instance, using villages as shields. In other words, you put villages ahead of the troops so that they absorb the bullets of the enemy. You use barrier troops. These are no Chinese inventions. This is good old fashioned Soviet warfare. Trotsky used barrier troops to reconquer all of Siberia. So barrier troops, basically you place a soldier behind the other soldiers. So if a soldier moves forward, he might survive. If he turns around, he gets shot. But most of all, the decision to surround and starve entire cities into surrender. I think that is absolutely crucial to understanding how that civil war unfolded. So the key point here, for me, the key city is Changchunk. Changchun is a city bang in the middle of Manchuria on the railway, strategically highly important. Lin Biao, very much the military leader at that point in Manchuria, decides to encircle. Changchun digs trenches 4 meters deep a century every 40 meters. Nobody can go in, nobody can come out. After eight months, that city has been starved into surrender. 160,000 ordinary people have starved to death. It's the same number as the victims of Hiroshima. Zhang Zhenglong, a lieutenant who later on worked with the People's Liberation army, says Hiroshima took a few seconds. Changchun took eight months. So you got to think, if Changchun is starved, what do you do? If you are the commander of another city, do you wish to undergo the same fate? If you are in charge of Beijing, as is the case of Fuzhuyi, he's the man in charge of Beijing. Are you going to allow that city, millenarian city, cultural center of China, to undergo the same fate as Changchun? That you surrender, you surrender. So one after the other, these cities begin to collapse and surrender. They simply don't have the will and determination to do what the communists do, which is win at all cost. It's very interesting because a couple of years later, the end of the story is the central government. The Nationalists on the Chiang Kai Shek flee to towards Taiwan. Taiwan then becomes the Republic of China. The People's Republic of China is all of the mainland. Was so interesting that Mao, of course, promised peace, but sends hundreds of Thousands of soldiers into Korea from 1950 onwards. There's an American general who speaks in 1951, I think, to Chiang Kai Shek, and he says, you know, we find it very difficult. Troops that belong to the United nations find it very difficult to fight the Chinese soldiers in Korea because they just send human waves that are so ruthless. So Chiang Kai Shek looks at him and says, if you can't prevail now, what do you think I should have done in 1948?
- [38:03]
Danny Byrd
By the end of your book, Frank, you are want to contest this idea that 1949 should be seen as this moment of simple popular liberation. Far from it. So what do you think really won the Communists the war in the end? The civil war. And should this make us rethink how revolutions succeed?
- [38:20]
Frank Dikötter
Communist revolutions succeed through military conquest. This is true for Lenin, of course. It's a coup. He seizes power. I mean, the term Bolshevik means majority, but they're not actually majority even within the Communist Party. I'm not saying that there are no social revolutions that can take place. They do exist. But in the case of communism, if you look at North Korea, why does North Korea become Communist? Because the Soviet Union goes up to the 38th parallel to meet the Americans in 45, and then they impose a Communist Party to the north with Kim Il Sung, an entity nobody in North Korea has ever, ever heard of. The point you have to remember, is that there is no lack of issues and problems in China in the 1920s and 30s. There's no lack of poverty or exploitation or people who really, you know, struggle just to get by. But that's not to say that they will automatically just jump up and join the ranks of a pretty tough bunch of guerrilla fighters who only manage to survive on really squeezing local populations like Lemmons. And it's not to say either that communism can solve all of these problems overnight. So that's the key argument. The key argument is that throughout the 1920s and 30s, a great number of these issues are being addressed.
- [39:51]
Danny Byrd
Was this notion of 1949 as a moment of liberation for the people of China, challenged within the initial years of Communist Party consolidation?
- [40:00]
Frank Dikötter
Well, yes, that's very interesting. Of course, by 1949, these people have been undergoing, what, 12 years of warfare. So the Second World War starts in 1937. 45, you have a moment of liberation now. People come out, they welcome troops from the central government, but then you get this civil war which will start unfolding from the north all the way to the South. Also quite horrendous at One point, the Battle of Huaihai. There's about a million troops that confront each other. You can imagine what the devastation is. So, of course, by 1949, people are resigned. Some of them may be quite pleased at the arrival of the Communists. Others will be resigned. There are those who will just say, no, anything, anything, Just give me a week's peace. Give me anything. And that's the promise that the Communists make. But extremely harsh requisitions start right away. So that by 1950 and 51, this regime is confronted to a whole series of rebellions, in particular in the south, to the extent that it has yet again to resort to violence in what it calls a red terror. So from 1950-51, there's a campaign to exterminate, eliminate, counter revolutionaries, quote, unquote, in which Mao gives a killing quota of one per thousand. He says you must eliminate physically one per thousand of the population. In other words, you go out, you find spies, bandits, counter revolutionaries, landlords, nasty capitalists. You give them a label, you identify them as an enemy, and then you literally bring one out of ten, a thousand, and the local population to a stadium where you shoot them. And if you're an ordinary worker, if you're a villager, you must attend these meetings, these rallies. You must watch as these enemies of the people are being physically exterminated. So that's the first year of the regime. That's 1950-51. That's just the start.
- [42:21]
Danny Byrd
Finally, Frank, we're now fast approaching the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Do you think people like Mao and the pioneers of Chinese communism, were they to materialize today, would they recognize the China that exists in the 21st century, do you think?
- [42:40]
Frank Dikötter
Oh, that's. That's a great question. Because I imagine that one might think or speculate that good old Chairman Mao comes back to life. There is a movie, by the way, where Hitler comes back to life, but that's a different story. And makes his way all the way back to power. So Mao comes back to what? To life. And I imagine that many of your listeners would imagine that the man would be horrified. Skyscrapers, bullet trains, capitalism, everywhere. Enterprise. I think not, because Mao is at heart. Like all dictators, Mao is a student of power. Now, there's two ways you can organize your world. You can organize it the way you and I do it, with separation of powers, or you can have a monopoly over power, which is the sort of Leninist way you insist that only absolute control over power. No opposition parties, no free press, no checks and balances. You are the check and you are the balance. Only that can result in growth. So he would immediately identify the fact that ultimately the Communist Party of China is in control of power today. And he would also recognize that the vast majority of means of production, this is a sort of Marxist vocabulary, actually belong to the state. He would see that the workers do not have free unions. He would recognize that there is no free speech. He would recognize that most of the assets are controlled by the state. He would see that 99.5% of all money in banks belong to state banks. 99.5%. I saw that. Right. He would recognize all of that. So he'd recognize basically a good old fashioned but thriving Marxist Leninist regime. So I think he would sit back and say, that's not bad, not bad. Question is, what next? What next?
- [44:48]
Podcast Host
That was Frank Dakota speaking to Danny Bird. Frank is Chair professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and his most recent book, Red Dawn Over How Communist Conquered A Quarter of Humanity is out now.