Gao Hua (May 12, 1954 - December 26, 2011) was a historian from Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. In 1978, Gao Hua was admitted to the Department of History of Nanjing University. After graduation, Gao was assigned to work for the Nanjing Cultural Heritage Administration, and was readmitted to the Department of History of Nanjing University for postgraduate studies soon after. After graduating from Nanjing University with a doctorate degree, Gao Hua stayed on as a teacher, and was later promoted as professor and doctoral supervisor. From 2005, Gao Hua was also a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Department of History of the East China Normal University. In 2011, Gao died of liver cancer in Nanjing.
Gao Hua's main research areas are the Republican Era, the Communist revolution, and contemporary Chinese history. He has published several historical books, with How the Red Sun Rose - The Origins and Development of the Yan'an Rectification Movement widely considered to be a classic work on the history of the CCP. Gao Hua spent ten years collecting materials, and through open archives as well as other public documents, he exposed the secrets of the rise of the CCP and how Mao Zedong affirmed his personal authority through political campaigns. In the afterword of the book, Gao shares why he chose such a difficult topic to write on. He had actually been sympathetic to the CCP revolution. However, his father's experience of being labeled a Rightist during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the subsequent tragedies of the Cultural Revolution made him skeptical. He therefore developed a "desire to investigate the history of the Chinese Communist Revolution".
The book has been reprinted dozens of times since its publication in Hong Kong in 2000, but it is banned in mainland China. On February 14, 2020, the English version of this book received Honorable Mention for the 2020 Joseph Levenson Book Prize, one of the most prestigious academic book prizes in the field of China Studies.
