'Friends and Enemies' delivers a lucid and provocative history of one of the world's largest and most successful political organizations, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Grounding his account in the origins of the CCP, Brown charts its early struggles and the emergence of the leadership of Mao Zedong in the 1930s, before unravelling the role of the Party during the Second World War and the vicious internecine struggle that culminated in the CCP's ascent to power in 1949.

The narrative tackles the successes and failures of the CCP in the post-war era, analysing this chequered...