State accounts of the triumph of the Chinese Communist Party have whitewashed the atrocities that were central to Mao’s rise to power

See ‘Red Dawn Over China’ Review: A Maoist Mythology by Tunku Varadarajan. He reviewed the book "Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity" by Frank Dikötter. Excerpts:

"Mr. Dikötter sums up the Maoist fable that traces the triumph in 1949 of the Chinese Communist Party, established in 1921 under the direct tutelage of the Bolsheviks in Moscow: “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.” The purity of the party’s mission triumphs, and with the liberation of China comes at last the end of an ugly chapter of Chinese history and of a long series of humiliations.

This storyline follows Mao’s “historical vision,” Mr. Dikötter tells us, and is almost entirely bogus. Mao after 1949 has been thoroughly reassessed by historians and is now regarded as a monster by most right-minded people; but views of early Mao—from 1921 until 1949—remain stubbornly rose-tinted. Mr. Dikötter wants us to think again."

"Mr. Dikötter finds evidence of “how marginal the Communist Party was in the history of China” from its inception until the end of World War II."

"In Wuxi, an industrial city west of Shanghai with 100,000 workers, the party had only 25 members in 1929. In April 1927, the province of Zhejiang (population 20 million) had 2,600 members. In the desperately poor province of Gansu (population 6.7 million) in 1939, the party had a mere 264 adherents." 

"many party branches existed only on paper, and that membership statistics were inflated to claim resources from central authorities (bankrolled by Moscow)"

"Before 1940, only one in 1,700 Chinese (itself likely a faked statistic) was a Communist, roughly equivalent to Communist membership in the U.S."

"the Communists took power . . . but through the violent subjugation of China’s countryside and cities. Mr. Dikötter attributes the bulk of their success to Joseph Stalin, who armed and funded them and, in 1945, sent a million-strong army into Manchuria to help the beleaguered Communists. These Soviet troops stayed until May 1946"

"The methods  . . . were simple: scorch the earth and conquer a cowering, starving population."

"they laid siege to towns, burning government buildings, killing so-called ‘class enemies,’ seizing their property and distributing it to the troops.”"

"It was a takeover by havoc and terror."

"“nowhere during the civil war did anyone ever witness people fleeing a region controlled by the [Nationalist] government towards the Communists.” In fact, all flight was in the opposite direction."

"In every village the Communists took, the first task was to divide villagers into landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants and laborers. The next task: “to turn hardship into hatred,” with the poor dispossessing, beating and killing the notionally rich, whose advantage often amounted to a few more sacks of rice, or rudimentary windows on their house."