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A good piece by Frank Dikötter on 70th anniversary fo the People's Republic of China: foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/01/the…. I agree with Frank that "liberation" is a misnomer: who or what was China liberated from in 1949?
I disagree, however, with his description of pre-1949 China as some kind of a vibrant democracy. It was a kleptocracy. Chiang Kai-shek was in all fairness a fascist, if an incompetent one at that.
Chiang presided over a deeply divided country, battered by war, mismanagement, and corruption. That's why he lost the civil war. I'd recommend this primer: amazon.com/Chiang-Kai-She….
I disagree with Frank that Stalin "helped Mao Zedong turn his ragtag army of guerrilla fighters into a formidable war machine" while the US abandoned Chiang.
For a start, the Americans provided Chiang with massive aid. It came relatively late in the game but it's just not true that Chiang was "abandoned." It's another matter whether George Marshall's 1946 mediation may have hindered Chiang from clinching a victory when he still could.
As for Stalin, he actually pressed Mao to agree to a coalition government. Mao then flew to Chongqing to negotiate with Chiang but the Chinese leader stupidly turned down a deal that could have effectively divided China, leaving him in control of the by far the biggest part.
I wrote an article about this (badly understudied) episode of Chinese history: mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.116….
Overall, I agree with Dikotter's description of the atrocities perpetrated by the CCP in the 1950s and the 1960s. I'd especially recommend the first and the third book of his People's Trilogy. (The second, and the most well-known book, Mao's Famine, has serious flaws).
Where I would disagree is with Frank's propensity to give credit to the "people" for all the good things that happened, and blame the rulers for all the bad things. We see this in the article, when he says that "it is the people who lifted themselves out of poverty."
In a sense, he is right of course. Obviously, it's the "people" who lifted themselves out of poverty. But by the same token, it was also the "people" who perpetrated unspeakable atrocities in the name of Mao's crazy visions.
In the end, we have to give credit where credit is due. China's remarkable economic transformation owes a great deal to correct economic policies. It's another matter that one could pursue correct economic policies without building an authoritarian monstrosity of a party-state.
