Dutch-British historian at the University of Hong Kong — author of the People's Trilogy (Mao's Great Famine, The Tragedy of Liberation, The Cultural Revolution) — the most rigorous Western historian of the Maoist period in China.
Quantifies the human cost of Maoism using Chinese provincial archives — Dikötter's use of provincial party archives (opened briefly in the 1990s before being re-restricted) to document 45 million deaths in the Great Leap Forward gave historians their most reliable estimate of Maoist mortality.
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