The Lie That Built Modern China - Frank Dikötter

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0:30Frank Dikötter:The People's Republic of China is a state of enforced amnesia. In other words, history gets rewritten not just once in a while, but constantly. There's constant purging, rewriting of the past. It's quite Orwellian, really.

0:47Anthony Scaramucci:Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Frank D. Cotter. He is the author of Red Dawn over China. He's the author of many other books, How Communism Conquered a quarter of humanity. Frank, what an insightful book. I am a Chinafile, if you will. I imagine you are as well. And so I'm an enthusiast about all things related to China, its culture, but also the suppression, oppression of the Communist Party there. This title is obviously, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, a nod to Edgar Snow's book, Red Star Over China, which, you know, I really see today as essentially a propaganda vehicle for the CCP over the decades.

1:33Anthony Scaramucci:How much of what we think we know about China's revolution traces to that one book?

1:41Frank Dikötter:That would be very difficult to say, but it's not even the starting point. Of course, communist parties, like all parties, but communist parties in particular, do devote great resources to projecting their propaganda. So from the moment some 12 chaps get together in a room in Shanghai 1921, which marks the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party, there is, of course, a projection of an image. But Edgar Snow, journalist from Missouri, arrives very much at a low point in the history of the Chinese Communist Party in 1936, This is 15 years after the foundation. At that particular point in time, the Communist Party in China, which has a population of about half a billion people, has 40 ,000 followers.

2:37Frank Dikötter:it's an extremely small number of people and needless to say um they are not even competing with any other major parties they're about the same relevance as a provincial band of bandits so to speak they've got very little resonance in in fact after what is referred to as the long march um they've reached the dead end so edgar snow comes in and is used as a mouthpiece by the party and his book red star over china is published in 37 translated in many languages uh really puts melissa tong and the chinese communist on the map really uh projects an image of not so much communists, but real, true social reformers in tune with the spirit of the modern age.

3:34Frank Dikötter:People who will bring these hundreds of millions of people in China into the modern world, a world which in China is marred by imperialism, feudalism, you name it. From there onwards, that story is, of course, replicated time and again, 1949. nine red flag goes up over the forbidden city. A quarter of humanity becomes communist from there onwards. It becomes official propaganda to this very day.

4:01Anthony Scaramucci:My big takeaway from your book, among many takeaways, we'll get to the violence in a second, but my big takeaway from the book was the improbability of this whole thing. It just struck me reading the book that, I mean, it's 1936. They They have roughly the same appeal as an obscure religious sect. But put it into perspective for our listeners about Mao and his, you know, I would say his collective group, maybe 25 to 50 people that were able to project this level of power and also this preconceived destiny for them.

4:39Frank Dikötter:yes it's it's fascinating because of course the the the image that has been reproduced time and again uh is is one of a communist party fighting against a nationalist party on the chungka shack for supremacy throughout the 1930s it implies a sort of equivalence which is simply not there the reality is that from the very beginning 1921 the communists fail to really appeal to any particular social category whether these are workers in cities or most of all of course villages in the countryside they're referred to by the communists as as peasants now the idea is of course that the communists introduced land reform on the basis of the soviet union the idea being that like the soviet union you take land from rich landlords you distribute it to the poor and you produce a surplus which allows you to build up your your communist army but there's no such thing in china where the communists managed to gain a very feeble foothold villagers already struggle to feed themselves never mind um you know communist party leaders and and and their followers um so in effect what the communists do is squeeze every bit of territory like a lemon until they are forced to move on to greener pastures so by 1936 they don't have much of an appeal among farmers villages although nobody is denying that there are endless problems in the countryside as there are of course in africa india and parts of europe there's no doubt about that but they don't have much of an appeal either when it comes to so-called anti-imperialism that there are imperial privileges attached to the treaty port system throughout the 19th century.

6:40Frank Dikötter:Foreigners have been able to gain, for instance, extraterritoriality, and certain parts of cities like Shanghai and Tianjin have been leased to foreigners. But that treaty system is being revised very thoroughly from 1926 onwards. So by 36, that moment when Edgar Snow does go to visit these communists, that entire treaty system has already, for all intents and purposes, been abolished. It has been agreed that these concessions will be surrounded within a certain number of years. So the appeal is pretty much zero. So then the question becomes, how did they manage with so little appeal? How did they manage?

7:22Anthony Scaramucci:No, I mean, listen, I mean, there's so many things in this book that I learned. And, you know, you think you know things about a country or communism. But, you know, you've uncovered some other things I just want to address. the Soviet Union, the involvement in this revolution and the involvement in the kajeling of the party. But up against that, you also have a Sino-Russian war that goes on. So square that for us. How do the communists in Moscow help them? How do you end up with this war that they more or less have soldiers, aircraft, gunboats, entire towns erased. Tell us about that.

8:07Frank Dikötter:Yes, it's very interesting. 1921, 12 people in a room representing about 50 members of the Communist Party in this country of 400 million people by 1921. Very clearly, very rapidly, agents sent by the communist international commentaire realize that this has very little popular appeal. So what happens is that another party keen on uniting this country, which is fragmented after the fall of the empire in 1911, called the Nationalists. The Nationalists also seek weapons from pretty much anywhere. And Moscow offers it to them on the condition that they allow Communist Party members inside the ranks of the Nationalist Party.

8:58Frank Dikötter:In other words, it's like a Trojan horse. the nationalists believe they can control it so money from moscow flows to the nationalist party you have at one point something like hundreds of military advisors one man in particular mikhail borodin now what is so remarkable is of course that by 1926 when the the nationalist army starts moving up north and and unite that country by by force um in in effect the russians are in control of of an army of an army which is quite extraordinary um not only that but the communists go um on the rampage as this army moves up north they uh incite people to attack any foreigner seen as agents of imperialism, attack so-called land laws, shopkeepers, you name it.

9:51Frank Dikötter:It's absolute mayhem to the point that the Nationalists stopped that united front, expelled Communist Party members. So they're pretty much lost by 1927. So time and again, Stalin intervenes to help them nonetheless. So what you do have is, of course, a number of people, including the central government, which realizes that the soviets are out there to build up an army and overthrow them the communist international established by land in 1919 is there to promote revolution worldwide and overthrow the so-called capitalist class this is what they're doing in china so in the north in manchuria which is a region the size of pretty much france and the united kingdom put together It's a huge region to the north of the Great Wall of China, so to speak.

10:44Frank Dikötter:There, the regional governor expels a great number of agents sent by Moscow. And what happens is that Stalin decides to intervene militarily in 1929. So you have an actual Sino-Soviet war. Now, think Ukraine. We're talking hundreds of thousands of troops, aircraft, gunboats, towns flattened. It doesn't last long. But Stalin, again, has in mind creating not just conditions for revolution up in the north, but also, again, helping the communists who are ensconced somewhere in the south. So time and again, Stalin intervenes. In fact, we were talking about 1936. Again, Stalin comes up with a new message.

11:36Frank Dikötter:he tells this rag-tag army of guerrilla fighters who amount no more than 40 ,000 he tells Mao Zedong you should be fighting the Japanese the Japanese are the one who who start really taking over large parts of territory including Manchuria from 1931 onwards yeah listen I mean

11:59Anthony Scaramucci:the book your book is fascinating I want to go to the long march because we've all learned about the Long March in our history books, and it's probably the single most mythologized Chinese Communist Party piece of history, if you will. But you uncovered something in the French archives about the flooding bridge episode. Tell us what that was and give us a story from your perspective about this disastrous situation, the Long March. Yeah.

12:31Frank Dikötter:So in effect, from 1931 to 34, the communists managed to hang on to a bit of territory in Jiangxi province, which is the size of France. After a number of encirclement campaigns by the central government, their economy collapses. Villagers flee. The starvation, widespread starvation, the communists have no other alternative but to flee. um and they meander around that country for about a year and end up pretty much in the northeast near the soviet border that takes about a year and this is referred to as the long march about 80 000 people leave about six seven eight thousand arrive uh by 35 joined by others 1936 so it is in effect a a massive sort of defeat but you got to give mal some credit he's the first one to portray uh this defeat uh as a glorious long march in which the message of communism has been brought to hundreds of millions so you got to give him something he's he really is he really knows how to turn a defeat into into you know a a fictive uh victory now one of the key episodes during that march is when they cross a bridge in Sichuan province extraordinarily mountainous difficult inhospitable terrain there is a an iron an an iron bridge across that river the mythology there have been endless movies about it after 1949 in in china novels pictures you you name it the idea is that the communists have to somehow fight their way across this bridge and local government troops shoot at the communists even set fire to this bridge and it's an absolute miracle that the communists managed to prevail this is applauded as one great feat of heroism uh in in the communist propaganda now a at least two people interviewed uh some of the survivors in that village called looting and um these people in their 80s said there never really was much of a battle at all so of course they were taken to task uh the interviews for somehow you know demeaning the revolution and this heroic feat so at one point i am in france reading through archives because the french of course are catholics they have missionaries everywhere in the most remote places in such one there is a missionary and here's per valentin and he literally stands there he describes in this letter to the consul the french consul in chenouille describes how the communists arrived and not a single shot was fired at them so they cross without encountering any opposition, as these two elderly people who had been interviewed earlier on actually attested to.

15:43Frank Dikötter:They cross this bridge and they sack an orphanage, burn down the local markets, and take as much as they can before fleeing further up north. That's the contrast between the propaganda on the one hand and the reality on the other.

16:02Anthony Scaramucci:Quite extraordinary. Yeah, listen, it's an extraordinary story, I guess. The other thing, you know, a few years ago, this could have been in 2000, maybe 18, I read The China Mission. I don't know if you read that book. No. Yeah. Daniel Kurz Fallon wrote a book about Truman sending George Marshall to China to see if he could try to help the situation there. um but i feel like reading your story uh i think like the u.s hurt the situation and sort of you know by by pushing ceng kai-shek to form this coalition government i think it weakened him and it allowed mal uh to seep in there if you will am i wrong about that is that an improper analysis

16:50Frank Dikötter:Now, I think that's absolutely right. So you've got to remember first, Lenin tries to force an alliance between a united front, as they call it, between the communists and the nationalists, who later on become the central government by 1928. then Stalin intervenes in 1936 says you must fight the Japanese alongside the central government the nationalists that's the second united front and then the Americans arrive in 1943 and they too insist on the coalition as if again as if there was some sort of equivalence between these communists ensconced deep inside the hinterland and the internationally recognized government of the Republic of China.

17:44Frank Dikötter:What is so extraordinary is that Henry Wallace, who was sent to China, actually visits Siberia and even travels through some of the regions where you have, of course, a gulag. and and and when he arrives in china starts telling khan kashak that they really should do the same thing they should copy the economy of the soviet union so in the meantime stalin in moscow tells um tells the american ambassador um avril harryman i think is his name if i remember correctly but the communists in china are not real communists the sort of margarine communists so in fact the myth appears that somehow these are not real communists these are sort of agrarian reformers basically democrats waiting waiting to emerge so the americans from there onwards start insisting on a coalition between these two forces even though by even by 1945 the communists are a distinct minority so the big change the one thing that really changes the balance of power quite fundamentally is that in 1945 as you have millions of soldiers from the soviet union march towards berlin and take over half of europe equally you have a million soldiers cross into manchuria and these soviet soldiers stay and hand over the countryside to the communists So here is the issue that so convinced are the Americans that there must be a coalition that they effectively enforce an arms embargo on the central government, the nationalists, the ones who fought side by side with the Americans all the way to Burma.

19:36Frank Dikötter:They impose an arms embargo, even as Moscow is arming the communists to the teeth with one wagon load after the other arriving with weapons. with weapons.

19:47Anthony Scaramucci:Listen, I mean, this is just a fascinating part of the story. You know, it's again, you know, we get things wrong. We're on the cusp of potentially attacking Iran. I guess we're going to try to force a regime change there. Americans, you know, I mean, I'm not saying we're not good natured or not trying our best. Maybe this regime could be a little bit different, but I'm just saying that we make a lot of mistakes. And this is another example of it. I want to go to the parallels to Putin's Russia, if you don't mind. After I read the book, I took some notes and I was saying, I've got to ask you this question.

20:21Anthony Scaramucci:The book reads, and I'm exaggerating a little, but if it's too much of an exaggeration, push back. But it reads like the early Chinese Communist Party was really a franchise of the Moscow-based Russian Communist Party. And so I find this to be somewhat ironic now because we're fast forwarding to Putin and Xi and you're now in a situation where she's a great champion of sovereignty and national pride. But is he aware of this historical irony? Does Xi, in your opinion, know this history? And if he did, would it bother him?

21:04Frank Dikötter:Of course. Now, communists are not very grateful people. The Soviet Union did so much to help the Communist Party in China prevail. But of course, the Chinese communists helped the Vietnamese communists. And they all fall out. The Chinese turned against the Soviet Union in the 1950s with a split in 1960. And of course, the Vietnamese communists turned against the Chinese communists. They all detest each other. And they all, most of all, wish to rewrite their history as if they appeared out of nowhere with nobody's help. That's the key point. Now, when it comes to the relationship between Xi Jinping and Putin today, not only is Xi Jinping aware of the background, but he goes much further.

21:54Frank Dikötter:like putin he thinks in terms of empire and what he is uh interested in is of course treaties which are denounced as unequal signed with russia under the last empire the ching empire so in fact i would not be very surprised if um xi jinping is is eyeing large bits of territory across the border from manchuria in in siberia and and of course the chinese do this periodically they claim lots of territory anywhere around their own country that their country by the way is based on the borders of the Qing empire it includes Tibet includes Xinjiang as you well know yeah in in fact it is an empire that has not decolonized yet but what is so interesting at time and again you see maps which portray parts of India parts of Nepal parts of of Russia as as as Chinese and And of course, also border clashes.

23:05Frank Dikötter:We've seen it with India. I would not be surprised if when the day comes, when Putin will be weakened by this endless, fruitless war against the Ukraine, there will be a day where he is so enfeebled. I would not be surprised that soldiers cross from Manchuria into Russia and claim back some of the territory. Yeah.

23:30Anthony Scaramucci:And listen, I mean, there's been a, I mean, both sides will say there's hundreds of years of dispute there. I think the fascinating thing for me, among many fascinating things about your great book, Red Dawn Over China, is the obfuscation of history. And I guess I want to ask you a contemporary question, if you don't mind. I think I know the answer. Is that obfuscation still happening? And I also want you to address it from the following way, that the Chinese learned something from the fall of the Soviet Union in terms of the way they deal with information.

24:08Frank Dikötter:Yes. Yes, that's a lot of questions in one thing. but the other thing that both putin and xi jinping have in mind is not that they are you know careful students of of past treaties that might have been signed in the 18th and 19th century they have one belief namely that might is right and they will not care it is actually quite common for a communist party to make an alliance with your worst enemy in the hope that you will be able to defeat him tomorrow. So that's why if I were Putin, I would be worried. Now, the other point is the…

24:49Anthony Scaramucci:Just learning from the collapse of the Soviet Union in terms of how to deal with the information.

24:54Frank Dikötter:Yeah. So 91, 92, until then, the slogan was, of course, only socialism can save china that was the official slogan but but then they turned it around say only china can save socialism so so they they see themselves literally as uh the socialist camp they are the they've become the core of the socialist camp and they've not given up on the their mission you know all communism which is to spread uh their ideology to the rest of the world they haven't given up they now become the the caretaker of karl marx's message but not only that they're quick to learn and they realize that it's very dangerous to have a man who on his own can somehow change the balance of powers gorbachev and mao already was worried good old chairman mao was already worried by another man who changed the balance of power named khrushchev so stalin dies 1953 and then three years later nikita khrushchev starts de-stalinization stalin's body quite literally gets dragged out of the mausoleum there's still of lenin so it's not too bad so so they're already males very suspicious so when gorbachev is perceived to be the man who was too weak and allowed that soviet union to implode of course they set up all sorts of safeguards to make sure that that couldn't happen again.

26:25Frank Dikötter:Yeah, pretty fast. Although, of course, today what we do have is not collective leadership, but a man in absolute power called C.T. Ping, although he's unlikely to become a reformer tomorrow morning.

26:35Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, no, it's fascinating. Before I let you go, you feel like there's been a little bit of a lockdown in the Library of Hong Kong, no? I mean, they're starting to whitewash even some of the liberties that were in the archives in Hong Kong.

26:52Frank Dikötter:It's a mistake to think that Hong Kong is just another Chinese city, but the clampdown has been pretty chuffed. The sort of, if you wish, the tearing out of the heart of Hong Kong, the crushing, the grinding into the dust of basic civil liberties, in particular freedom of expression and assembly. It's very sad to see. but it's still far removed from the mainland which you've got to remember this goes back to what you asked me earlier on how much of that propaganda still prevails the people's republic of china is a state of enforced amnesia in other words history gets rewritten not just once in a while but but constantly this constant purging rewriting of the past um it's it's quite Orwellian, really.

27:51Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, listen, it's fascinating. I mean, your book is an interesting revisionist story because you're letting us on to things that we probably didn't see before, that we now see. And likely, these things are going to continue, at least for the foreseeable future. So I've got five words at the end of my podcast. My producer and I come up with these five words. I'm going to say the word. You give me a sentence or two. Okay, you ready? Sure. Stalin No Stalin, no Mao Interesting

28:24Frank Dikötter:Alright, so let's go to Mao No Mao No Ho Chi Minh, no Pol Pot No Kim Il-sung Xi Jinping Xi Jinping Mao wannabe

28:38Anthony Scaramucci:Bigger than Mao though, right? He wants to reconnect the island of Formosa to China, right? They all want that

28:45Frank Dikötter:They all want that But he isn't quite as astute as the chairman. Despite the mass murder of tens of millions of people, Xi Jinping simply doesn't have that sort of gift that Mao Zedong had. What was that gift, sir? To read other people. He's an absolute great manipulator of other people. He knows how to read a room. xi jinping doesn't here's an example there is a central military commission that should have seven people on it and he's been purging one general after the other to the extent that on the on that committee there are now two people left including himself so if you've been in power since 2012 and you still cannot control the people on that central military commission the most powerful if you were institution but obviously the army then you probably need to review your approach fascinating okay let's keep going taiwan taiwan um democracy uh will it be a will it be a democracy 10 years from now yes yes i mean watch watch putin fight over a field with three trees in it four years after he started war good luck crossing the taiwan strait that'll

30:15Anthony Scaramucci:be a very different story yeah interesting uh china china china people's republic or as they