Research dossier: Dikötter’s Red Dawn Over China and the CCP’s violent rise

Frank Dikötter’s Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity (Bloomsbury, February 24, 2026, 384 pages) is the most significant revisionist account of the CCP’s founding and rise to appear in years. Drawing on over 300 volumes of original CCP party documents smuggled into Hong Kong Literary Review and the long-overlooked 1927 Beijing Russian Embassy raid files, Goodreads Dikötter demolishes the Party’s founding mythology — that communism triumphed in China through popular peasant revolution and Mao’s ideological genius. Instead, the book argues that the CCP survived only through massive Soviet financial and military support, Japan’s brutal occupation, US policy failures, and the Party’s own unrelenting violence. Goodreads Published just days before this report, the book has already received overwhelmingly positive reviews from the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Literary Review, and Air Mail, with Peter Frankopan calling it “the most important reappraisal of modern China to appear in years.” Barnes & Noble +2 This dossier assembles every fact, quote, review passage, and historical detail needed to write 10 journalism articles on the book and its themes.

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1. The book’s core thesis and what it covers

Red Dawn Over China covers the period 1911/1921 to 1949 — from the fall of the Qing dynasty through the CCP’s founding in 1921 to its victory in the Chinese Civil War. Literary Review The title deliberately echoes and rebukes Edgar Snow’s romantic 1937 classic Red Star Over China, replacing “Star” with “Dawn” to signal an ominous, coerced transformation rather than a heroic ascent.

The central argument is fivefold. First, the CCP was established in 1921 “under the direct guidance of Moscow” Amazon +2 and never would have survived without continuous Soviet funding, arms, and advisors. Second, “for the best part of a decade the Communist Party left a trail of destruction, besieging towns and plundering the countryside,” Awesome BooksApple Books and when Communists held territory they “reduced the villagers to a state of servitude.” Amazon +3 Third, by 1936 the CCP “had the same popular appeal as an obscure religious sect” Hoover Institution +2 — they were nearly finished. Fourth, “a brutal war of occupation by Japan allowed them to survive far behind enemy lines” Hoover Institution +3 while Nationalist armies bore the brunt of fighting. Fifth, after Soviet troops invaded Manchuria in 1945 and provided fresh money and munitions, the Communists prevailed through “a pitiless war of attrition.” Apple Books +3

The book opens with a dramatic scene: in April 1927, soldiers and detectives descended on the Russian Embassy in Beijing, revolvers drawn. They emerged with a trove of singed and soggy papers proving Moscow, despite pledging not to “propagate communistic doctrines,” had sent what amounts to millions in today’s dollars, along with shiploads of arms and advisors. Goodreads Dikötter notes these findings are “hardly ever mentioned by historians — until now.” Goodreads

The WSJ review captures the “Maoist fable” that Dikötter dismantles: “the country is racked by an unholy alliance of ‘imperialist powers’ and ‘reactionary forces,’ the Communists mobilize the ‘peasants’ by taking the land from the rich and distributing it to the poor, then they gradually unite the people in their fight against the Japanese invader and the fascist Nationalist Party.” In the end, “nobody remains standing except Mao, armed with ideological conviction.” American Enterprise Instituteaei Dikötter’s counter-narrative: “the party was not so much a popular force as a cruel and poorly led one that never would have survived without Russia’s help or its own inhumane tactics” Amazon +2 (Air Mail summary).

Archival sources include over 300 volumes of internal CCP party documents that “found their way across the border into Hong Kong,” Literary Review the 1927 embassy raid documents, central and provincial CCP archives (access described as “haphazard at best”), and Chinese and foreign newspapers plus Western missionary reports submitted to US, British, and French consulates. Literary Reviewliteraryreview As the Literary Review noted, “It is hard to dispute the reliability of that source when it manifestly consists not of attacks by political enemies but of reports and analyses emanating from the party itself.” Literary Reviewliteraryreview

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2. Every review: what critics said and quoted

Financial Times — Sergey Radchenko

Reviewer: Sergey Radchenko (Cold War historian, Johns Hopkins SAIS). Headline: “Frank Dikötter dismantles CCP myths about Mao’s leadership to tell a story of Chinese repression that is still relevant today.” Barnes & Noble Key quotes from the review:

• “Ever since Frank Dikötter’s first book… this prolific star of China studies has challenged conventional truths and broached taboo subjects.” Barnes & NobleAmazon UK
• “Dikötter succeeds at bringing different strands together in a highly readable narrative that challenges the foundational myths of the CCP.” Barnes & Noble +2
• “The book is also a valuable reminder that today’s China — the prosperous, technologically advanced superpower — is a country built on a foundation of violence.” Barnes & Noble +2
• “A tireless chronicler of the numerous crimes and follies of Chinese Communism, Dikötter once again shows his readers who was pulling the trigger of that gun, and at what cost to the long-suffering Chinese people.” Barnes & Noble +2

The FT also included the book in its “What to Read in 2026” list: “An account of the surprising realities behind the Communist party’s rise in China, from years of plundered villages and minimal popular support to survival under Japanese occupation. Dikötter, an acclaimed historian of China, traces how, with Soviet backing and relentless determination, a marginal movement became a world force.” Barnes & Noble +2

Wall Street Journal — Tunku Varadarajan

Reviewer: Tunku Varadarajan (AEI Nonresident Fellow). Title: “‘Red Dawn Over China’ Review: A Maoist Mythology” (February 13, 2026). Called Dikötter “an iconoclast historian who immerses himself in the primary sources more thoroughly than any other Western scholar of 20th-century China.” American Enterprise Instituteaei Noted Dikötter’s earlier contrarian argument that Jiang Zemin, not Deng Xiaoping, was the true architect of modern China’s capitalist economy. American Enterprise Instituteaei Described the book as challenging the “fairy tale” of a Communist “David” under Mao versus a Nationalist “Goliath” led by Chiang Kai-shek. American Enterprise Instituteaei The WSJ called it “an invaluable book.” AmazonBarnes & Noble

Kirkus Reviews

Published: December 12, 2025. Verdict: “An intensely researched and disquieting history of communism’s growth.” Kirkus Reviews +2 Key observations: the civil war label “gives it too much dignity”; kirkusreviews readers “may be flummoxed” by dense first half with unfamiliar names who “regularly switch sides and support their armies with looting and banditry”; Kirkus Reviewskirkusreviews a surprising factoid that “the majority of Japan’s army remained in China from 1941–45 and suffered far more casualties than it did fighting the U.S.”; kirkusreviews “Mao and his communists welcomed influential foreigners, mostly journalists, showed them carefully staged scenarios of the worker’s paradise, and were rewarded with fawning reports.” Kirkus Reviewskirkusreviews

Literary Review — Philip Snow

Title: “A Party to the Horror” (February 2026, Issue 548). Called the archival work “outstanding” — over 300 volumes of original party documents, supplemented by Chinese and foreign newspapers plus missionary reports. Literary Review Key passage: “Drawing on this material, Dikötter presents a sickening indictment of the CCP’s record. The bands of activists who arrived in the villages in the late 1920s punished local counter-revolutionaries with an orgy of atrocities.” Literary Reviewliteraryreview Closing verdict: “Perhaps in the distant future, the people of China will have the opportunity to compare versions of their 20th-century history and arrive at something like a balanced assessment. When that day comes, due credit will have to be given to Frank Dikötter for his achievement in ensuring, almost single-handedly, that accounts of this period are no longer the work of the victors alone.” Amazon UK

Air Mail — Jim Kelly (Editor’s Pick, February 12, 2026)

Full text: “The writing of history belongs to the victors, so it is no surprise that for decades after the Communist Party of China came to power, in 1949, Mao Zedong was seen as the revered ideologue, and the man he overthrew, Chiang Kai-shek, as a corrupt Fascist forced to flee to Taiwan. What Frank Dikötter has done, elegantly and persuasively, is to blow up that myth and demonstrate, thanks to troves of official records, that beginning with its birth in 1921, the party was not so much a popular force as a cruel and poorly led one that never would have survived without Russia’s help or its own inhumane tactics. Barnes & Noble The C.P.C. has always had a fat streak of paranoia, and though this exceptional history ends in 1949, one cannot help wonder if, as he purges his top-ranked generals, Xi Jinping is not succumbing to that streak.” AmazonAir Mail

The Tablet — Maggie Fergusson

“Frank Dikötter’s books have changed the way historians view China. Red Dawn Over China is a commanding new history of China’s path to Communism, brought to the people at the barrel of a gun.” Amazon UK

Endorsement blurbs

• H.R. McMaster: “With extraordinary analytical skill, Frank Dikötter has opened up the real story of the Chinese Communist Party’s origin. Anyone interested in the future of the People’s Republic of China should first study its past, and reading Red Dawn Over China is the best way to start.” Amazon
• Peter Frankopan: “Frank Dikötter has rewritten the early history of the Chinese Communist Party from the ground up. Drawing on archival materials long thought inaccessible, he strips away decades of myth to reveal a story of improvisation, violence and opportunism. Written with precision and verve, Red Dawn Over China is the most important reappraisal of modern China to appear in years.” AmazonBarnes & Noble
• Anne Applebaum (on Dikötter’s broader corpus): “A mesmerizing account of the communist revolution in China, and the subsequent transformation of hundreds of millions of lives through violence, coercion and broken promises… essential.” eBayAmazon

Minor criticisms

Goodreads advance readers called it “a shotgun blast of knowledge which can be overwhelming at times” Goodreads and noted it is “not in-depth especially with the characters.” Goodreads Kirkus noted readers may be “flummoxed” kirkusreviews by dense detail. Kirkus Reviews These echo longstanding academic criticisms of Dikötter’s work — that it can read as a “catalogue of atrocities” without sufficient analytical nuance.

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3. Frank Dikötter: the historian who rewrote China’s story

Born November 30, 1961, in Geleen, the Netherlands. Hoover Institution BA and MA from the University of Geneva (history and Russian), PhD from SOAS, University of London (1990). Hoover Institution He spent two years studying and researching inside the People’s Republic of China. Alpha History He is currently Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong Google Books +2 (since 2006) and Milias Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University Google Books +2 (full-time since 2025). Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution calls him “the most widely read living historian of modern China.” Hoover Institution The Spectator has called him simply “the historian of China.” Apple BooksAwesome Books His books are translated into more than 20 languages. Hoover Institution

The People’s Trilogy

Mao’s Great Famine Goodreads (2010) argued the Great Leap Forward killed at least 45 million people Hoover InstitutionAmazon — substantially higher than previous estimates. Won the 2011 Samuel Johnson Prize GoodreadsAmazon (now Baillie Gifford Prize), Britain’s most prestigious nonfiction award. Frankdikotter Based on four years of research in newly opened Chinese provincial archives, Dikötter was reportedly the first foreigner to systematically use these CCP archives. Hoover Institution Key argument: Mao was fully aware of the famine; at least 2.5 million victims were tortured or summarily executed; grain was exported to allies while people starved. Wikipedia

The Tragedy of Liberation (2013) covered 1945–1957, Frankdikotter arguing the first decade of the PRC was an era of “calculated terror and systematic violence,” Wikipedia not liberation. Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize (2014). FrankdikotterAmazon Julia Lovell (FT) called it “a remarkable work of archival research”; Wikipedia Rana Mitter (Guardian) called it “an excellent book… horrific but essential reading.” Wikipedia

The Cultural Revolution (2016) Literary Review provided a comprehensive bottom-up account. Shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize (2017). FrankdikotterAmazon

Other key works

• China Before Mao: The Age of Openness (2007) — rehabilitated Republican-era history
• How to Be a Dictator (2019) — profiles of eight dictators including Mao; Book of the Year in the New Statesman, Economist, and Financial Times Chartwell Speakers Bureau
• China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower (2022) — controversial argument that Jiang Zemin (not Deng Xiaoping) was the true architect of China’s economic rise American Enterprise Institute

Red Dawn Over China effectively serves as a prequel to the People’s Trilogy, extending Dikötter’s revisionist project backward to cover the CCP’s founding and rise (1921–1949). Together, his works now constitute a comprehensive counter-narrative spanning the entire history of Chinese Communism from 1921 to the present.

Academic criticism pattern

Dikötter has faced consistent criticism from some academic China historians. Felix Wemheuer challenged the 45-million death toll in Mao’s Great Famine. WikipediaWikipedia Cormac Ó Gráda called it “more like a catalogue of anecdotes about atrocities than a sustained analytic argument.” Wikipedia Fabio Lanza said The Cultural Revolution “does not add anything to our understanding” and “goes against a long-standing effort in the field of PRC history to produce nuanced, well-sourced, complex analyses.” Wikipedia These criticisms will likely extend to the new book, though no detailed academic critiques have appeared yet.

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4. Soviet support: the hidden hand behind the CCP

The CCP was established in July 1921 under the direct guidance of Moscow’s Apple Books Comintern Barnes & Noble (Communist International). Wikipedia Grigori Voitinsky, a Comintern representative, played a key role. The First National Congress gathered 13 delegates in a room Hoover InstitutionDaunt Books in Shanghai. Apple BooksTattered Cover By August 1922, the Comintern ordered the CCP to enter the KMT as individuals, forming the First United Front — contested by CCP leaders but enforced by Moscow. Wikipedia

Soviet adviser Mikhail Borodin helped start the Whampoa Military Academy (May 1924) Wikipedia and reorganized the KMT’s army. Moscow Sun Yat-sen University (1925–1930) trained Chinese revolutionaries from both parties. Wikipedia The 1927 Beijing embassy raid proved Moscow was funding revolution despite pledges not to. Goodreads

After the Shanghai Massacre of April 1927 (Chiang Kai-shek’s purge of Communists), Stalin supported formation of a Chinese Red Army and peasant soviets. Alpha History Stalin maintained a complex relationship with Mao — they did not meet until late 1949. Alpha History

The decisive Manchurian weapons transfer (1945–1946)

On August 9, 1945, the Red Army invaded Manchuria. Wikipedia The Soviets handed to the CCP 861 airplanes, 600 tanks, artillery, mortars, 1,200 machine guns, plus rifles and ammunition captured from the Japanese Kwantung Army. Russia Beyond Before their withdrawal in March 1946, the Soviets secretly turned much of Manchuria over to the CCP in violation of the Sino-Soviet Treaty. Wikipedia They simultaneously removed Japanese industrial machinery worth up to $2 billion and shipped it to the Soviet Union — denying these resources to the Nationalists. They also refused permission for Nationalist troops to traverse Soviet territory to reach Manchuria, Wikipedia while facilitating CCP infiltration. Russia Beyond

As Dikötter writes: “It was Moscow’s funding, more than Mao’s leadership, that made a decisive difference in the revolution.” Asia Society

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5. US policy failures that helped doom China

The Marshall Mission (December 1945 – January 1947): President Truman sent General George C. Marshall to negotiate unity between Nationalists and Communists. Wikipedia Marshall brokered a January 10, 1946 armistice and army-reduction proposal, Encyclopedia Britannica but none of these agreements held. The Truman Administration made a firm decision not to commit US combat troops to support Chiang. EWTN

The arms embargo: To pressure a ceasefire, US weapons sales to the Nationalists were suspended from July 29, 1946, to May 1947 Wikipedia — approximately 10 months. Marshall reportedly boasted: “As Chief of Staff I armed 39 anti-Communist divisions, now with a stroke of the pen I disarm them.” Heritage History While the US halted arms to the Nationalists, Soviet support to the CCP continued unabated. Heritage History Generals Wedemeyer, Chennault, and Admiral Badger all regarded the embargo as a significant factor in the Nationalist defeat. EWTN

The “Who Lost China?” debate: When Mao proclaimed the PRC on October 1, 1949, Wikipedia the question dominated American politics. Senator Joseph McCarthy attacked Marshall. General MacArthur called the Marshall Mission “one of the greatest blunders in American diplomatic history.” Wikipedia Joseph Alsop offered the memorable formulation: “If you have kicked a drowning friend briskly in the face as he sank for the second and third times, you cannot later explain that he was doomed anyway because he was such a bad swimmer.” Teaching American History The debate led to the purge of the best Asia experts from the State Department — widely seen as paving the way for disastrous US involvement in Vietnam. History News Network

A critical comparison: in Greece, the Truman Doctrine provided weapons, financial support, and operational advisers at the battalion level, saving the country from communism without combat troops. EWTN The US deliberately withheld similar support from China.

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6. The Chinese Civil War: how the Nationalists lost despite overwhelming advantages

At war’s end (1945), the CCP had 1.2 million troops with a militia of 2 million. Wikipedia Chiang Kai-shek had approximately 3–4 million regular troops with American-trained and equipped divisions, an air force, and a navy. He launched a large-scale assault on July 20, 1946, with 113 brigades (1.6 million troops).

The turning point came in 1947–1948. CCP general Lin Biao deliberately allowed Nationalists to occupy Manchurian cities, knowing it would spread their army fatally thin. The Nationalists suffered catastrophic hyperinflation: in 1940, 100 yuan bought a pig; by 1947, it bought one-third of a box of matches. Alpha History Communist-held territory grew from one-tenth of China in early 1946 to one-third by late 1948. Encyclopedia Britannica

The Three Great Campaigns (September 1948 – January 1949) decided the war: the Liaoshen Campaign in Manchuria Wilson Center Digital Archive (140,000-man garrison surrendered at Mukden); Encyclopedia Britannica the Huaihai Campaign, the largest and most decisive battle, Wilson Center Digital Archive which destroyed over half a million Nationalist troops; Fiveable and the Pingjin Campaign, which captured Beijing and Tianjin. Wilson Center Digital Archive

The Siege of Changchun (1948) epitomized CCP ruthlessness: a 150-day siege designed to starve out Nationalist forces killed 160,000 civilians from hunger, with another 30,000 dying trapped between communist lines and city walls. Alpha History

Why the Nationalists lost: Soviet arms to the CCP in Manchuria; Wikipedia the US arms embargo at a critical moment; hyperinflation destroying the middle class; Encyclopedia Britannica corruption and cronyism; poor treatment of soldiers (officers embezzled supplies); Omeka mass desertions of well-trained KMT troops to the CCP; Wikipedia and Chiang’s strategic overextension.

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7. CCP violence, land reform terror, and mass killings (1920s–1953)

Dikötter documents that from the 1920s, CCP activists arriving in villages “punished local counter-revolutionaries with an orgy of atrocities.” Literary Review In November 1927, CCP activist Peng Pai presided Literary Reviewliteraryreview over mass violence in the countryside. During the December 1930 Futian Incident, Communists executed 2,000–3,000 members of the Futian battalion after a mutiny against Mao. In the Jiangxi-Fujian Soviet (1931–1934), widespread campaigns of mass execution, land confiscation, and forced labor prevailed. Wikipedia

Land reform campaigns (1946–1953)

Dikötter wrote: “Violence was an indispensable feature of land distribution, implicating a majority in the murder of a carefully designated minority.” Work teams were given quotas of people who had to be “denounced, humiliated, beaten, disposed and then killed by the villagers, who were assembled in their hundreds in an atmosphere charged with hatred.” Nspirement Over 40 million hectares of land was redistributed to 300 million peasants by 1953 Grokipedia — but from 1953 onward, this land was collectivized into state ownership anyway, nullifying the entire redistribution. Wikipedia

Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (Zhenfan, 1950–1953)

Mao issued execution quotas: 0.5–1.5 per thousand of the population nationally. In Guangxi Province, the rate reached 2.35 per thousand. Commonprogram Mao told security minister Luo Ruiqing: “We must not miss this opportunity.” Wikipedia Deputy Public Security Minister Xu Zirong’s 1954 report documented during zhenfan alone: 712,000 executed, 1,290,000 imprisoned, 1,200,000 placed under control — total of 2,620,000 arrested. Wikipedia Zhou Enlai told Edgar Snow that 830,000 “enemies of the people” had been “destroyed” before 1954. Wikipedia

Total death toll estimates (1949–1953): Academic estimates range from 1 million to 5 million killed through land reform and zhenfan combined. John King Fairbank’s upper “sober” estimate is 5 million. Wikipedia Dikötter’s own estimate in The Tragedy of Liberation: at least 5 million civilians sent to an early grave in the first decade of Maoist rule. ResearchGate Additional campaigns followed: the Three-Anti (1951), Five-Anti (1952), and Sufan Movement (1955, over 770,000 arrested). Nspirement

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8. Western journalists deceived by CCP propaganda

Edgar Snow and the foundational myth

Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China (1937) was the first Western account of the CCP Wikipedia and became enormously influential Wikipedia — 100,000 copies sold within a month in the UK; Wikipedia inspired thousands of young Chinese to join the CCP; Wikipedia remains required reading in Chinese middle schools. Snow portrayed CCP leaders as pragmatic nationalist reformers. Grokipedia Scholar Anne-Marie Brady found that Snow submitted his interview transcripts to CCP officials for editing and approval. GrokipediaWikipedia Sam Crane (Williams College) wrote in China Books Review (2024): “His communist handlers in 1936 got precisely what they intended: a persuasive distortion of their inhumane political movement.” chinabooksreview

Snow’s trip was entirely orchestrated by the CCP. Soong Qingling (Sun Yat-sen’s widow) was tasked with finding a sympathetic foreigner. China Books Review Snow was selected over Agnes Smedley because Mao recognized that Smedley was “an out-and-out CCP partisan with limited access to the Western press,” while Snow had appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. The CCP continued using Snow for decades: in 1970, Mao placed Snow on the Tiananmen balcony to signal Beijing’s desire to normalize relations with the US, helping pave the way for Nixon’s 1972 visit. Taipei Times

“The Three S’s” — Snow, Smedley, Strong

These three Americans were collectively celebrated in China. In 1984, the Smedley-Strong-Snow Society of China was established. Daily Wire All three were featured on Chinese postage stamps in 1985. Minghui

Agnes Smedley (1892–1950): Wikipedia Ruth Price’s biography revealed she spied for the Comintern and Soviet military intelligence while in China. Democratic Socialists of America She applied for CCP membership but was rejected for lack of discipline. Minghui Communist defector Elizabeth Bentley testified in 1951 that Smedley “had been a member of the Russian secret police for many years in China.”

Anna Louise Strong (1885–1970): Published books praising the CCP. Became an “honorary member of the Red Guards” during the Cultural Revolution. Was buried at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing — reserved for senior CCP officials.

Owen Lattimore (1900–1989): Editor of Pacific Affairs, appointed by FDR as special representative to Chiang’s government. Famously described Stalin’s show trials as sounding “like democracy.” Published a 1944 National Geographic article describing Soviet Gulag gold mines at Kolyma as having “extensive greenhouses growing tomatoes, cucumbers, and even melons” — when they were in reality death camps where prisoners were worked to death. The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee called him “a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy.” Time

Israel Epstein (1915–2005): Polish-born journalist who took Chinese nationality in 1957 (endorsed by Zhou Enlai), became a CCP member in 1964, and served on the Standing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Editor-in-chief of China Reconstructs, a state propaganda magazine. Was imprisoned for five years during the Cultural Revolution but forgave the party and remained loyal. Buried at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.

The Dixie Mission (1944–1947)

The US military observer mission to Yan’an, Wikispeedia led by Colonel David D. Barrett and Foreign Service Officer John S. Service, BANNEDTHOUGHT reported the Communists were “a useful wartime and postwar ally.” Wikipedia Members were criticized for viewing the CCP as “socialist agrarian reformers” — a belief disseminated by Snow and Smedley. After China “fell,” Service was fired from the State Department and Barrett was denied promotion. Wikipedia

The broader pattern

The parallel with Walter Duranty is instructive: the New York Times Moscow bureau chief won a Pulitzer Prize while writing in 1933 that “any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda” — as millions of Ukrainians starved. Doris Lessing later admitted: “I was taken around and shown things as a ‘useful idiot’… I can’t understand why I was so gullible.” The CCP’s management of foreigners followed a deliberate united-front strategy modeled on Soviet practices. H-Net

Modern continuation

In March 2021, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated: “China hopes to welcome more Snows of the new era.” On June 20, 2021, China Daily launched the “Edgar Snow Newsroom” to “better tell the China story.” Taipei Times As commentator Perry Link noted, the CCP is looking not for a new Edgar Snow but for “useful idiots.” Taipei Times

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9. Chiang Kai-shek vs. Mao: reassessing the record

CCP narrative: Chiang was a corrupt fascist; Mao was the liberator. Amazon Dikötter explicitly challenges this “fairy tale.”

Revisionist scholarship (Jay Taylor’s The Generalissimo, Rana Mitter’s Forgotten Ally, Hans van de Ven’s China at War) has significantly rehabilitated Chiang’s record. He personally lived a Spartan lifestyle and constantly criticized corrupt subordinates, though corruption was rampant among associates. LinkedIn He made significant strides modernizing China during the Nanjing Decade (1927–1937) LinkedIn and led China’s resistance against Japan for eight years, tying down millions of Japanese troops.

Taiwan as counter-evidence: Chiang presided over land reform and economic growth in Taiwan. By the 1970s, Taiwan’s economic and social model vastly outperformed Mao’s mainland. Under Mao (1949–1976): land reform killings (1–5 million), the Great Leap Forward famine (30–45 million dead), Amazon the Cultural Revolution (500,000–2 million killed). Under Chiang’s successors in Taiwan: democratization by the 1990s, preservation of traditional Chinese culture, and one of Asia’s highest living standards.

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10. The appledaily.uk website

The specific domain appledaily.uk could not be accessed or found in any search engine index. It does not appear in Google search results, and direct access attempts returned no content. The site either does not currently exist publicly, is not yet indexed, is behind access restrictions, or is very newly launched. What follows is essential context about the Apple Daily brand and the Hong Kong diaspora media landscape.

The original Apple Daily (蘋果日報) was Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy Chinese-language newspaper, founded in 1995 by Jimmy Lai. CrunchbaseWikipedia It was the fourth most-used offline and second most-used online news source in Hong Kong, with 9.6 million monthly unique visitors. Authorities forced it to close on June 24, 2021, under the National Security Law, raiding its newsroom and freezing its assets. Wikipedia The final edition printed 1 million copies — ten times the usual run. RSF

Jimmy Lai was sentenced to 20 years in prison on February 9, 2026 RSF — just 9 days before this report — for conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiring to publish seditious material. RSF Six former Apple Daily senior staff received sentences of 6–10 years. WAN-IFRA His case is the global symbol of press freedom’s collapse in Hong Kong. The UK, US, EU, Reporters Without Borders, CPJ, and Amnesty International have condemned his conviction. Support Jimmy Lai

The .com domain was hijacked: Serbian entrepreneur Nebojša Vujinović acquired the expired appledaily.com domain voanews in 2023 and now publishes AI-generated clickbait about celebrities and birthday greetings — no connection to the original newspaper’s mission. voanews

Hong Kong diaspora media: Several exile outlets serve the estimated 150,000+ Hong Kongers who relocated to the UK under the BN(O) visa scheme since 2021. These include The Chaser News (UK-based, founded 2022), Global Voices Advox Photon Media (Taiwan-based, founded by former Apple Daily reporter Shirley Leung), RSF The Points (Australia-based), Flow HK (Taiwan-based), and Commons Hong Kong (UK/Taiwan-based). RSF and exiled Apple Daily journalists published a special revival edition in June 2025 marking the fourth anniversary of Apple Daily’s closure. RSF