Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the evolution of the Chinese communist leadership

An analysis of the power struggles which took place within the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party between 1931, when the CCP left Shanghai for the Jiangxi Soviet, and 1945, by which time Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai had emerged as senior CCP leaders (and thereafter ruled the party until their deaths).

Based on recently released Chinese sources, the book challenges long-established views that Mao Zedong became the CCP leader during the Long March (1934-35) and that by 1935 the CCP was independent of the Comintern in Moscow.

The result is a critique, not only of official Chinese historiography, but also of Western, and especially US, scholarship.