Frank Dikotter — How Communism Won China
Historian Frank Dikotter returns to analyze the political, social, and military factors behind the Communist Party's rise to power in twentieth-century China.
Why we picked this
Dikotter's decades of archival work in Chinese Communist Party records give him a vantage point almost no other Western historian has — this is primary-source history at its most revealing.
Historian Frank Dikotter brings his deeply researched account of how the Chinese Communist Party consolidated power to the Asia Society. Drawing on years of work in previously restricted Chinese archives, Dikotter traces the political maneuvering, military campaigns, and social upheaval that brought the Party from revolutionary movement to ruling force.
Dikotter is a professor at the University of Hong Kong and the author of a trilogy on the history of the People’s Republic that has reshaped scholarly understanding of Mao-era China. His work is distinguished by its reliance on primary sources that few Western historians have accessed.
This event at the Asia Society offers a chance to hear Dikotter present his latest research in a setting dedicated to fostering understanding of Asian history and contemporary affairs.