Customer Reviews

Red Star over China: The Classic Account of the Birth of Chinese Communism

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Written before the Communist Revolution ['49] but after the Long March, this book offers a first-hand biography on Mao Zedong, and tells an engaging story of the Communist advance. Edgar Snow got in behind Communist lines to interview Mao Zedong himself, and so he is as much part of the history as he is a witness to it. His opinions of Mao Zedong are positive and his hopes for the Communist Party are optimistic. I found it a compulsive read until I got perhaps 3/4 the way through, at which point it became a kind of chore to complete. Snow is famous for often being completely wrong about China - travelling through China during the abortive 'Great Leap Forward', where between 30 and 60 million people starved to death, Snow never caught on to a thing - but still this book makes for utterly fascinating reading, if only for its personal insights into Mao Zedong. Still a good read, but not a useful historical source unless one has an understanding of how things eventually progressed. Put simply, it's a marvellous perspective of China at this time, but it's neither a retrospect nor a history.

With most Americans sadly ignorant of China and its past, this book provides an incredible inside look at the Chinese revolution and the beginning of communism. Snow's trip through rural provinces and villages during the country's civil war is an adventure in itself. The interviews he does with China's up and coming rulers are purely fasinating, allowing the western public its first chance to get to know such giants as Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai on a more personal level.

Snow truly did Sinology a tremendous favor when he ventured into the soviet area years ago. Red Star Over China stands as an archetypical example of "pre-TV" journalism at its finest. Snow's captivating writing style allows the reader to truly feel as if they are riding along with the "red bandits" as they move through the hills of China conducting guerilla warfare. What Snow has to tell us about Mao, is as fascinating as anything that has been brought up about him in the post-Mao era. I would recommend this book to anyone, it is not just a history book, it, in itself is a part of history, truly a classic.

Edgar Snow writes a compelling account of the birth of Chinese Communism in his book Red Star Over China. His book is largely unprecedented because of the fact that China was only just parting from isolationism and had not previously allowed citizens of Western countries to enter into China. Snow moved near Yenching University in Shanghai, China to become a correspondent journalist there. The proximity to the university allowed Snow to meet many Chinese intellectuals and writers whom he would befriend. One of his most important friendships was with the Western-educated Madame Sun, the wife of Sun Yat-sen.

In the first part of Red Star Over China Snow begins by addressing some of the previously unanswered questions regarding Communist China. He uses a brigade of commonly asked questions to show just how uninformed many people were on topics such as the Red Army and the Communist Movement. He explains that in June of 1936, he received the opportunity to possibly answer some of these questions and that this is how Red Star Over China came into existence.

Edgar Snow describes his travels through China in first person. His details of the landscape of China, especially those of Sianfu, are very descriptive. As he took in the scenery, he expressed its beauty at length. Opium poppy fields and The Great Wall are among his most familiar sightings (page 54). This section of the book was important to international readers at the time it was written because, as previously discussed, many people knew nothing of China seeing as how its isolation had kept its landscape a mystery to many travelers. This narrative continues on through Snow's journey to the Red Capital.

Snow's account of his first night in "Red territory," meaning the Northern part of China en route to An Tsai, was full of fear. The "White Bandits" were said to be close and this created much uneasiness. Snow explains that White Bandits were the Kuomingtang's answer to peasant uprisings. An Tsai would be protected by the Red Army, and Snow and his traveling party would be safe there. Upon reaching An Tsai, a member of the Red Army met Snow and they sat down to what was described as a pleasant dinner.

Through Snow's writing, readers can see that the Reds treated him very well. "I have a report that you are a reliable journalist," says Chou En-lai to Edgar Snow, "friendly to the Chinese people, and that you can be trusted to tell the truth" (page 70). Chou went on to explain that the Reds did not care that Snow wasn't a member of their party, instead they embraced his presence and agreed to give him help to "investigate soviet districts" in Red China. This was particularly interesting because Communist China was known for its anti-foreign, almost xenophobic, attitude. To an extent, this documentation of trust between Snow and the Red leaders almost seems to be fictional. Perhaps, in this day and age, it can be said that Mao and his comrades may have been creating this friendship out of a quest for personal gains.

Continuously through Red Star Over China this "trust" is used to establish relationships with elite Red leaders. It is not entirely impossible that Snow was being used to convey a positive image of China to the Western world. It was, after all, Mao's regime that was concentrated on exceeding the state of the West to become a powerful global entity. Snow, in his chapter on basic Communist policies, documented this will to become a great power. He quotes Mao as saying, "When China really wins her independence, then legitimate foreign trading interests will enjoy more opportunities than ever before" (page 104). Mao seems to use Snow as a catalyst to invite other nations to establish friendly nations status with China. He is also quoted as saying that any country that chose to side with Japan would not be a friendly nation to China.

Mao spoke freely to Snow about his own life. In part four of Red Star Over China Snow discusses Mao's narrative at length. It is practically an autobiographical section of the book. If this is, in fact, the complete truth from Mao's perspective, then this section is most enlightening because it is written using Mao's taped narratives. As previously discussed, Mao had not spoken to any Western writers before Snow. Therefore, this section of the book provides readers with a new perspective of the Communist leader.

In addition to private conversations with Mao Tse-tung, Snow spoke with the Commander of the First Front Red Army, P'eng The-huai and also Lin Piao. Lin was Mao's closest cohort. He helped get Mao elected in 1935. Lin spoke to Snow and in section four, Lin's early life was revealed to readers. Lin proved to be a key player in China's Cultural Revolution. The background provided by Snow's personal discussions allow the reader to understand more about the personal aspects of the leaders of Communist China.

In Red Star Over China, Edgar Snow traces Mao's rise to power. He writes of the situation of China from a first-hand point of view. Snow's book, regardless of whether or not it was being used-unbeknownst to Snow-as a means of impressing the West, contributes a wealth of information about the changing times in China. Because Snow was a pioneer of sorts, the book is a great documentation to be used when researching the historical background of the current Communist China. Although it creates doubt as to whether Mao was completely truthful, Red Star Over China remains a great work regarding the history of the Chinese Communist Party.

Some history books are important because there are simply no other firsthand accounts to compare them with. Regardless of how well the author did their job, these books remain in print primarily because they contain first-person information unavailable elsewhere. By being first, they end up as the landmark determining the boundaries of all subsequent historical debate.

Red Star over China is such a book.

Long before Mao became a household name, Edgar Snow, a young American journalist, traveled by train to northwest China to meet and interview the leaders who were the head and spine of Chinese communism. Red Star over China chronicles this journey, while also describing much of the turbulent history of China during a period of revolution and turmoil. By telling this story before everyone else, and after lengthy interviews with Mao, Chou En Lai, and the like, Snow put himself in the front rank of modern Chinese historians.

Much of the book is great; Snow shows how conditions in China's countryside (high rents absentee landlords, etc.) contributed to China's turmoil, and he effectively describes how Red China's armies won friends among the populace by, for instance, teaching the illiterate to read using books that were the communist propaganda equivalent of "See Spot Run." Snow also describes scenes well when it suits him; for instance, in an early vignette about a political conversation he had on the train, Snow deftly shows the divisions and factionalism that had permeated Chinese Society.

What's missing, then? For one, Snow often seems to be merely regurgitating his interviewees' propaganda. To hear him describe it, the soldiers of the Red Army are, to a man, reliable soldiers and good people, brave lads who slogged through miles of countryside during the Long March without needing so much as a smoke or drink to cheer them up. And there's a reason for such glowing descriptions--in the book's notes one can see that Snow committed the cardinal sin of journalism and let his sources review the stories he'd written about them. It's no wonder Mao, Chao En-Lai and the like appear so noble in this book--they got to give it the once-over before Snow submitted it for publication. And considering Mao's later track record, that's shocking--it's as if you're reading a hagiography of Hitler.

Aside from the narrative, there are other things that dampen the reader's enthusiasm for this book. For one, Snow's introductions of characters require the reader to frequently flip back to the biographical notes at the end of the book. Also (and more annoyingly,) this book has no maps. Snow throws a lot of location names at the reader, but unless the reader's traveled very extensively, or unless they have some extra maps of 1930s-China lying around the house, Snow's details will be useless.

All in all, it's worth reading--but this reviewer, for one, will be looking to supplant it by reading Philip Short's "Mao: A Life," or by reading any other history of China written with the benefit of distance, hindsight and perspective.

I have been dabbling in Chinese history over the past few years and was intrigued by many of the topics in this book.

Understand before you read this book that the author is an unabashed fan of Communist movement in China--all good things come from the Red Army and all bad things come from the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek. I was reading this book to get a closer look at the men who would lead China in years to come, so Snow's cheerleading was only a minor distraction. The book was published in the late 1930s, long before the war was won. I found it very interesting to read about Peng Dehuai's background and his stature in the Red Army knowing the fate that would meet him years later during the Great Leap Forward.

He sets the stage nicely with the conditions that made successful revolution and civil war possible. He does a pretty good job in describing the main players, although I would have liked much more on Zhou Enlai.

In some passages, the book moves along nicely, especially around the Long March. In other sections, he can get a little bogged down in details that don't seem to add up to much.

Also note that the book uses the Yale system of transliteration, not Pinyin. "Zhu De" will appear as "Chu Teh", for instance.

I learned quite a few things, and got a new perspective on one of the most important events in the 20th Century -- the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

Edgar Snow was a young, brash journalist who traveled alone deep into Red Chinese territory (he was the first Westerner to do so)and met with a collection of leaders and soldiers, including a young Mao Zedong. I know of no other book that was a firsthand account by and for Westerners of China's civil war, nor of any other book of any kind that captures so many of the personalities involved with such candor. However, despite his bravery and commitment as a journalist, Snow was himself obviously a partisan on the side of the Chinese Soviets, and it shows on each and every age of this book. In the account he gives a picture of a Chinese citizenry that loved and admired the brave Red resistance and despised the Nanjing government. I don't think this is entirely far off but it certainly seems a bit one-sided. Snow's own contempt for any and all traditional Chinese culture always comes through loud and clear, and his love for the simple and un-decadent Red forms of entertainment, theater, etc set him apart from the sinologists of his own time. He focuses a lot on the long march, which was a still-recent event at the time, and the accounts of both leaders and rank and file are very readable. The interviews with many later key players of modern Chinese history are fairly incredible in hindsight. Mao often shows that he did not understand much of the global situation of his time and interpreted any and all events through a Soviet filter. The writing is clear and vivid and Snow's experiences are in themselves quite fascinating. The book is a worthwhile and interesting look at the roots of modern China, but is also an ill-concealed bit of propaganda. I'd recommend it for those who already know a bit about Chinese history and culture, but not as a beginning look for anyone. Oh, and it's a small gripe, but couldn't we edit the modern editions to use pinyin instead of Wade-Giles? We could include a note to that effect and it would be a small enough change, but would enable those of us who speak some Chinese to get through more easily and not inconvenience anyone else.

As the first Western book to report on Chinese Communism and its leaders, this is no doubt a valuable masterpiece. But the reader must bear in mind that the Chinese people (even today) are experts in putting up a good face to impress people from the West. There was definitely some bias on the part of the author to paint Mao and his comrades as great and infallible. So a sensible reader should read this book with these in mind , observe what has happened in China since 1949 and reach his/her conclusions.

For the last few decades, we Americans have had an extremely negative view of the Chinese Communist Party, and especially such now-mythical forefathers as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, whose drastic excesses and failures have led to their demonisation in Western society as mere liars, thugs, and brutish dictators. But yet, in the '30s and '40s, such men managed to overcome both the tanks and rifles of powerful Japanese war machine and the propaganda and armies of the Western-financed Nanjing government with primarily the support of the Chinease peasantry; certainly such mass support would not be easily handed to one of the dime-a-dozen bandit-kings that infested pre-1949 China. What would have driven the rural laobaixing to throw in their lot against all the power of the Kuomintang?

Snow's excellent Red Star Over China is not, as many critics seem to think, glowing puff praise of Communists. Rather, it is an in-depth, powerful explanation of the reasons for their support among both the starving poor and ethnic minorities, and an examination of how less than 200 men managed to turn this support into a mass movement powerful enough to wash both the overextended Japanese and unpopular Nationalists out of the mainland.

When Snow waxes about the moral rigor of the Red soldier and the zealous dedication of the "Little Red Devil" youth, he is not merely praising moral men, but is showing how the fanaticism of Red soldiers gave them advantages in morale and tactics the hesitant-but-well-financed KMT army could not attain. When he shows the propaganda-writing classes, it is not because Snow believes "the Red army is the fist of the poor" but because of the great importance of the Red literacy programs: the gratitude formerly-illiterate peasants felt to their teachers translated into a great respect and willingness to assist men they had once believed were "Red bandits."

Yes, under Mao great tragedies were unleashed, as his Communist zeal began to outweigh his common sense. But this book is not the story of the famines of the Great Leap Forward twenty years after Red Star Over China was writeen, nor could Snow have predicted the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution thirty years after he finished his book. This is a book about revolutionaries, not a book about the government they would later establish. And its importance as a book about revolutionaries is incredible. This is an explanation of how the world's most populous nation would fall to revolution--written by a neutral observer among the revolutionaries.

If you are of the belief that Communists are intrinsically evil and that any book finding good in them--even if to explain why they enjoyed overwhelming local popularity--you will find Red Star Over China difficult to digest. If you would prefer to think of Mao as a raving psychopathic lunatic who blundered his way into power, there are certainly other books for you to read. But if you want to see the Chinese Communist Party as it was seen by those who carried into power, you can't do any better than this, the book written by the man who watched it happen.

In this book, Red Star over China, Edgar Snow told everything the way it was, good and bad. Here is someone who has seen and been up close with Mao; witnessed Mao's personal life; travelled with the Red Army and discovered those "Red Bandits" really were good guys.

All the myths, lies, propaganda on Mao, Red Army, and Chinese communists invented by the west and Chiang Kai-shek were shattered and exposed by Edgar Snow's truthful reporting.

This is the very book that brought Nixon together with Mao, and started the China/USA diplomatic relationship. Edgar Snow was the American who peacefully helped the world's two superpowers in a peaceful solution.

Edgar Snow should have been given the Nobel Peace Prize.