Starcast Join the waitlist
GoodFellows: Conversations on Economics, History & Geopolitics

GoodFellows: Conversations on Economics, History & Geopolitics

The Origins of Modern China; Is Trump “Lost”? America, Home of the . . . Squatters? | GoodFellows | Hoover Institution

Feb 14, 2026 · 51m

Coming soon to iPhone. Already have it? “Listen in Starcast” takes you straight there.

On this episode

About this episode

Unlike the romanticized tale the Chinese Communist Party tells of itself—long marches and a long game of outlasting and outwitting its foes—the early years of the CCP were ones of unrepentant violence and a rise to power made possible only with external help. Frank Dikötter, the Hoover Institution’s Milias Senior Fellow and author of the forthcoming book, Red Dawn over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity, joins GoodFellows regulars Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane and H.R. McMaster to discuss what shaped the CCP from the years 1921–1949, plus parallels between Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong in terms of amassing power, purging rivals, and practicing economics and geopolitics. After…