Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Lie That Built Modern China - Frank Dikötter

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

I've spent a lot of time studying China — the culture, the power, the politics — and I thought I knew the story, but my guest today, historian Frank Dikötter, absolutely blew my mind, because the founding myth of the world's most powerful authoritarian state is built on a lie. Stick around, because this conversation is going to change the way you see China forever. 📚Books mentioned in the episode: Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow https://amzn.to/4raPPIy The China Mission by Daniel Kurtz-Phelan https://amzn.to/4u9GD9S Red Dawn Over China by Frank Dikötter https://amzn.to/4slHr9Y Frank Dikötter lives in Palo Alto, California, where he is the Milias Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. His books have changed the way historians view China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China to his award-winning People's Trilogy documenting the lives of ordinary people under Mao. Get his brilliant new book, which was a Barnes & Noble Reads Best Book of February 2026, Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity here: https://amzn.to/4slHr9Y Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. Pre-order my next book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, out on the 17th of September in the UK and the 22nd of September in the US: ⁠https://linktr.ee/anthonyscaramucci⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Conditions apply. The People's Republic of China is a state of enforcement. amnesia. In other words, history gets rewritten, not just once in a while, but constantly, this constant purging, rewriting of the past. It's quite Owellian, really. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Frank D. Carter. He is the author of Red Dawn Over China. He's author of many other books. How Communism conquered a quarter of humanity. Frank, what an instance. disciple book. I am a China file, if you will. I imagine you are as well. And so I'm an enthusiast

about all things related to China. It's 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 is essentially a propaganda a vehicle for the CCP over the decades. How much of what we think we know about China's revolution traces to that one book? 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 most, the most of 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, 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. It's an extremely small number of people. And needless to say, 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. got very little resonance. In fact, after what is referred to as the Long March, they've reached a dead end. So Edgar Snow comes in and is used as a mouthpiece by the party. And his book,

Red Star of China, is published in 37, translated in many languages, really puts Melza Tong and the Chinese Communist on the math, really projects an image of not so much communist, but real, true social reformers in tune with the spirit of the modern age. 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, 19449. 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. My big takeaway from your book, among many takeaways, we'll get to the violence on a second, but my big takeaway from the book was the improbability of this whole thing. You know, it just struck me reading the book that, I mean, it's 1936. They have roughly the same appeal as an obscure religious sect, but put it into perspective for our listeners about Mao and his, 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.

Yes. It's fascinating because, of course, the image that has been reproduced time and again is one of a Communist Party fighting. against a nationalist party under Chankajshak 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 communist failed to really appeal to any particular social category, whether these are workers in cities, or most of all, of course, villages and the countryside. They're referred to by the communists 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 communist army. But there's not such thing in China where the communist managed to gain a very feeble foothold. Villagers already struggle to feed themselves, never mind, you know, Communist Party leaders and their followers. So in effect, what the communist 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 foreigners have been able to gain, for instance, extraterritoriality. and certain parts of cities like Shanghai and Chenching had 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 of zero.

So when the question becomes, how did they manage with so little appeal? How did they manage? 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 that I just want to address. The Soviet Union, the involvement in this revolution and the involvement in the cogealing 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 are erased? Tell us about that. Yes, it's very interesting. 1921, 12 people in the room representing about 50, members of the Communist Party in this country of 400,000, 400 million people by 1921, very clearly, very rapidly, agents sent by the Communist International, Comintern, realize that this has very little popular appeal. So what happens is that an other party keen on uniting this country, which has fragmented after the fall of the Empire 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.

In other words, it's like a Trojan horse. The Nationals believe they can control it. So money from Moscow floors to the Nationalist Party. You have at one point something like hundreds of military advisors, one man in particular, Mikhail Borough, But what is so remarkable is, of course, that by 1926, when the nationalist army starts moving up north and unite that country by force, in effect, the Russians are in control of an army, which is quite extraordinary. Not only that, but the communists go on the rampage as this army moves up north.

They incite people to attack any foreigner, seen as agents of imperialism, attack so-called landowners, shopkeepers, you name it. It's absolutely mayhem to the point that the nationalist stopped that United Front expel Communist Party members. So they're pretty much lost by 1927. So time and against Stalin intervenes to help them nonetheless. So what you do have is, of course, a number of people, including the central governments, which realizes that the Soviets are out there to build up an army and overthrow them. The communist international established by London in the 1990 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 country. the Great Wall of China, so to speak. 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 with, 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 against Stalin intervenes. In fact, we were talking about 1936. Again, Stalin comes up with a new message. He tells this rag-tag army of of guerrilla fighters who amount no more than 40,000. He tells Mounts a Tong, you should be fighting the Japanese. The Japanese are the one who start really taking over large parts of territory, including Manchuria from 1931 onwards.

Yeah, listen, I mean, the book is fascinating. I want to go to the Long March, because we've all learned about the Long March and 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 along March. Yeah.

So in a fact, from 1931 to 34, the communists managed to hang on to a bit of territory in Changxi province, which is the size of France. After a number of encirclement campaigns by the central government, their economy collapses. Villagers flee, the starvation, white-spread the communists have no other alternative but to flee. 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 6, 7, 8,000 arrive by 35, joined by others, 1936.

So it is in a fact a massive sort of defeat. But you got to give Mal some credit. He's the first one to portray this defeat 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 really is, he really knows how to turn a defeat into, you know, a fictive 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 an iron, an iron bridge of across that river, the mythology that had been endless movies about it after 1949 in China,

novels, pictures, 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 communist, even set fire to this bridge, and it's an absolute miracle that the communist managed to prevail. This is applauded as one great feat of heroism in the communist propaganda. Now, at these two people interviewed some of the survivors in that village called looting, and these people in their 80s said there never really was much of a battle at all. So, of course, they were taken to task 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 and 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 New York, he describes how the communist 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, they crossed this bridge, and they sack an orphanage, burn down the local market, 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. Quite extraordinary. You know, 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-Falen wrote a book about Truman sending George Marshall to China to see if he could try to help the situation there. But I feel like reading your story, I think like the U.S. hurt the situation. And sort of, you know, by pushing Genkaishek to fight. form this coalition government, I think it weakened him and it allowed Mao to seep in there, if you will.

Am I wrong about that? Is that an improper analysis? No, I think that's absolutely right. So you 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 nationalist, 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 and sconsed deep inside.

de hinterland and the internationally recognized government of the Republic of China. What is so extraordinary is that Henry Wallace, who was sent to China, actually visit Siberia and even travels through some of the regions where you have, of course, a gulag. And when he arrives in China, starts telling Chayek 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 the American ambassador, Averill Harriman, 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 to emerge. So the Americans from their onwards start insisting on a coalition between these two forces. Even though 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, 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. They impose an arms embargo, even as Moscow, is arming the communist to the teeth with one wagon load after the other arriving with weapons. Listen, I mean, it 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. 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 Chinese, 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, you know, she's a great champion of sovereignty and national pride, but he's aware of this historical irony. Does she, in your opinion, know this history? And if he did, would it bother him? 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 Communist 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. Like Putin, he thinks in terms of empire. And what he is interested in is, of course, treating. which are denounced as unequal signed with Russia under the last empire, the Qing Empire. So in fact, I would not be very surprised if Xi Jinping is eyeing large bits of territory across the border from Manchuria in Siberia. And of course the Chinese do this periodically. They claim lots of territory anywhere around the border.

their own country. Their country, by the way, is based on the borders of the Qing Empire. It includes Tibet and includes Xinjiang, as you will know. In effect, 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 Russia as Chinese. And of course, also, also So, border clashes, 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 you're so enfeebled. I would not be surprised that soldiers cross from Manchuria into Russia

and claim back some of the territory. Listen, I mean, there's been a disbri—I mean, the 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 when I ask you a contemporary question, if you don't mind, I think I know the answer, is that obfuscation is still happening? And I also, I want you to address it from the following way that the Chinese learned something from the fall of the Soviet Union. union in terms of the way they deal with information.

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 past treaties that might have been signed in the 8th of 19th century. They have one belief, namely that might is right. And they will not care. It is actually quite common for a communist past. 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... Just learning from the collapse of the Soviet Union in terms of how to deal with the information. Yeah, so 91, 92. Until then the slogan was, of course, only socialism can save China. That was the official slogan. but then they turn it around, say only China can save socialism. So they see themselves literally as the socialist camps.

They've become the cold socialist camp. They've not given up on their mission or communism, which is to spread their ideology to the rest of the world. They haven't given up. They now become the caretaker of Congress. 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 power, is Gorbachev. And Mao already was worried. Good old chairman, Mao was already worried by another man who changed the balance of power, named Huchoff. So Stalin dies, 1953. And then three years later, Nikita Hushov

starts de-Stalinization, Stalin's body quite literally gets dragged out of the mausoleum. Yeah. So it's not too bad. 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. Yeah, pretty fast. Although, of course, today what we do have is not collective leadership, but a man in absolute power called CTP.

Although he's unlikely to become a reformer tomorrow morning. 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. It's a mistake to think that Hong Kong is just another Chinese city. But the clampdown has been pretty chuff, the sort of, if you wish the... the tearing out of the heart of Hong Kong, the crushing, the grinding into the dust of basic civil liberties, in particular, the 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 constantly, this constant purging, rewriting of the past. It's quite Orwellian, really. Yeah, listen, it's fascinating. I mean, your book is an interesting revisionist story because you're, you know, you're letting a, 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. All right. So let's go to Mao. No Mao. No, who, Me, no Pol Pot, no Kim Il-sung. Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping, Mao wannabe.

Bigger than Mao, though, right? He wants to reconnect the island of Formosa to China, right? So he... They all want that. Yeah. 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 Mountsatong had. What was that gift, sir? To read other people is an absolutely 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 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 an institution, but obviously the army, then you probably need to review your approach. Fascinating. Okay, let's keep going. Taiwan. Taiwan. Democracy. will it be a democracy 10 years of now? Yes, yes.

I mean, watch Putin fight over a field with three trees in it. Four years after he started war, good luck crossing the Taiwan straight. That'll be a very different story. Yeah, interesting. China. China, people's republic. or as they say in the Constitution, a people's democratic dictatorship. That's the term in the Constitution, also quite Orwellian.

Yeah. Sir, I mean, it's a phenomenal book. What's next for you, if you don't mind me as? I'm thinking of writing a general history of modern China. But it comes back to what you said in the beginning. You're a sign of far. we like things Chinese, many of us do. But I think that the mistake we make so often is that we think in terms of China, it's just culture, culture.

Whereas we should be thinking in terms of the politics of it. We think in terms of, you know, Confucianism, poetry, or something quite gentle. Well, in fact, it is quite a brutal place, as many other places. and not just in the 20th century. Yeah, I mean, listen, before we went on the air, we talked a little about the FT review, and I think that was the point the reviewer was making in that article, but he believed, now believed that the political power came

at the end of the barrel of a gun, right? I mean, that's basically what we won't know. But a phenomenal book, sir, I want to congratulate you on writing it. Thank you. The title of the book is Red Dawn Over China, how communism conquered a quarter of humanity. Frank D. Codra, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.