“This lucid translation of Gao Hua’s seminal study of the Yan’an rectification movement and the rise of Mao Zedong to paramount leadership of the Chinese Communist Party is a major contribution to international scholarship. The Chinese edition of How the Red Sun Rose set the standard for truly scholarly studies of Party history among PRC scholars ever since the first edition came out in 2000, and it still has not been surpassed. International scholars of modern China and of comparative politics will benefit from this authoritative translation and its many explanatory notes. General readers will enjoy Professor Gao’s engaging writing.”

—Timothy Cheek, University of British Columbia

 

“This forceful account of Mao Zedong’s rise to pre-eminence displays extraordinary insight into the nature of power in the Chinese Communist Party. It provides a detailed narrative of the personal conflicts, purges, ideological struggle, and structural reorganization that enabled Mao to defeat his Sovietbacked rival, Wang Ming. The climax of the book comes in an eye-opening account of the Rectification Movement in Yan’an in 1942–44, which is a tour de force of prodigious research, meticulous analysis, and deep reflection.”

—S. A. Smith, University of Oxford

 

“Finally available in a superb English translation, How the Red Sun Rose is the master work of the esteemed, independent, and controversial historian Gao Hua who was based at Nanjing University before his tragic death in 2012. Banned in China, this book is must reading for all who want to understand the trademark strategies deployed by Mao Zedong to achieve, maintain, and expand his political control both within the Communist Party and throughout Chinese society.”

—Paul G. Pickowicz, University of California, San Diego

 

“A monumental and path-breaking study of Mao’s rise in the party, a product of prodigious research in a vast range of documents, memoirs, and published archival sources, this book is the best account we have of the deep historical roots of the rectification campaign in the 1940s.”

—Joseph W. Esherick, University of California, San Diego