The Truth About China’s Rise

It is hardly a great secret that contemporary Western scholarship on China leaves much to be desired. Recent interest in the Middle Kingdom has seldom generated historical inquiries that draw heavily from primary sources or inform readers about what is not already well known about the founding of the People’s Republic. Most accounts disclose a tendency to recycle well-worn narratives, producing a literature that, however expansive, feels stale and incomplete.

One of the rare exceptions comes courtesy of Frank Dikötter, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong. In his new Red Dawn over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity, Dikötter brings new material to light and furnishes a corrective to several reigning myths about China’s rise. It is a work of startling originality that demands a wide readership.

About the Author

Brian Stewart

Brian Stewart is a political writer in New York City.

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It is hardly a great secret that contemporary Western scholarship on China leaves much to be desired. Recent interest in the Middle Kingdom has seldom generated historical inquiries that draw heavily from primary sources or inform readers about what is not already well known about the founding of the People’s Republic. Most accounts disclose a tendency to recycle well-worn narratives, producing a literature that, however expansive, feels stale and incomplete.

One of the rare exceptions comes courtesy of Frank Dikötter, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong. In his new Red Dawn over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity, Dikötter brings new material to light and furnishes a corrective to several reigning myths about China’s rise. It is a work of startling originality that demands a wide readership.