Chapter 33: America’s Anti-Communist Lessons (Part 3)

II. The United States Was Deceived by Communism

The greatest challenge to global peace is recognizing the CCP as the primary threat. Identifying its nature is difficult, and the U.S. was deceived for decades—seeing only appearances, not essence; focusing on the stage, not backstage.

Americans’ deception by communism began in the Soviet era. As early as the 1920s, the American female writer Anna Louise Strong went to Moscow to promote communism on behalf of the Soviet Union, publishing many misleading and false reports internationally. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell initially also sympathized with Soviet values. In 1920, he traveled to the Soviet Union with a delegation from the British Labour Party and held long discussions with Lenin and others. Russell concluded that Russian-style theory contained two major fallacies: one rooted in human nature and the other theoretical. The human fallacy lay in imagining that by promoting hatred and struggle one could bring about good outcomes, without considering that people who develop habits of hatred, once successful, will immediately seek new targets of hatred. The theoretical fallacy lay in their firm belief that economic power is the only form of power that matters, and that if the state became the sole capitalist, exploitation and oppression would instantly disappear. They failed to realize that this approach merely produced even more terrifying results. After returning home, Russell wrote The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, exposing the Soviet political system.

In that era, journalists sympathetic to communism often had their understanding shaped by CCP propaganda. The most influential was the American left-wing journalist Edgar Snow in the 1930s. He went to Yan’an to interview Mao Zedong, who fabricated personal mythological stories to deceive him. What had actually been Mao’s capture, defection, betrayal of comrades, and meritorious confession leading to a granted release was altered into a story of bribing guards during transfer and escaping custody. Any Chinese person with basic common sense would see this as a childish tale meant to fool children. Snow, without analysis or verification, believed it completely. He reproduced Mao’s fabricated escape story word for word and published it in book form under the title Red Star Over China.

As for Mao Zedong’s slaughter of more than 100,000 people from the so-called “AB League” during his years in Jiangxi, Snow knew nothing and made no investigation. Mao concealed his crimes of trampling and enslaving peasants in the Jiangxi Soviet areas. After several years of communist rule, the population there had decreased by 50,000. Regarding the nature and class foundation of the CCP, Gong Chu offered a penetrating description. He said that the CCP’s revolution during the Soviet movement was not a genuine proletarian revolution; the Chinese proletariat was merely an object of deception and manipulation. The Chinese proletariat—workers—and their allies, the peasants, shaped by thousands of years of cultural tradition, were peace-loving, morally minded, diligent, community-oriented, and resigned to fate, and therefore had little interest in the CCP’s policy of intense struggle. As a result, most people adopted a wait-and-see or evasive attitude. Only local idlers, hooligans, and thugs took a liking to the CCP’s policy of “beating up local tyrants and redistributing land.” The CCP also favored them, regarding them as members of the poor peasant and worker class.

In reality, these people had long since withdrawn from productive labor and seized the opportunity presented by “beating up local tyrants and redistributing land” to satisfy their delusions of sudden wealth. They obeyed the CCP unquestioningly and acted with even greater ferocity to demonstrate their loyalty. Consequently, these hooligans and thugs were deemed by the CCP to be active revolutionary elements, absorbed into the Party in large numbers, continuously promoted, and boldly elevated to positions of the ruling class. Thus, this group of petty thieves, lazy parasites, and scoundrels suddenly leapt into becoming a new ruling elite. Most of them became key figures in local Soviet governments or chairs of peasant and labor unions. Once they held power or led mass organizations, they naturally acted without restraint, committing all manner of abuses.

Looking back at CCP history from the results of today’s so-called “revolution,” Gong Chu’s words appear even more incisive. Chen Xiaonong said: “What exactly did the earth-shaking revolution after 1949 bring to China? The conclusion is actually very simple. It merely overthrew the original ruling class and absorbed some hooligans and ruffians who had long hovered at the bottom of society and wanted to rebel—nicely called rebels or revolutionaries, bluntly speaking a group of bandits, thugs, and petty intellectuals who constantly talked about revolution—into the so-called revolutionary ranks as core members. In the end, these people seized power and became the new ruling class. Today, their descendants rule China and have become billionaires. So revolution is nothing more than replacing one group of people with another who get rich—and this new group is even worse! The former gentry class still had some education, etiquette, and basic ethical awareness, whereas today’s Chinese ruling class—the so-called elites of China—have cultural standards even lower than those of bureaucrats in past dynasties. Never in Chinese history have officials indulged in eating, drinking, prostitution, and gambling to today’s extent. If we describe it as ‘corruption,’ the degree of corruption among today’s Chinese officials is unprecedented in history, reaching an extreme peak.”

Of course, this outcome was something Snow could never have imagined at the time. Young and naïve, Snow poured all his energy into lengthy reports praising the CCP. His laudatory reports on Mao Zedong were translated into twenty languages around the world. After returning to the United States, Snow was received by President Roosevelt, who was also deceived. Snow wielded enormous international influence and effectively served as Mao Zedong’s and the CCP’s overseas “minister of propaganda.” Snow’s English reports were later translated into Chinese and given a sentimental title, Random Notes on a Journey to the West. This book was highly deceptive to young people in areas under Nationalist control. Many naïve youths were attracted by it and flocked to Yan’an, entering the CCP’s iron barrel—once inside, they could not get out. One progressive youth at the time, Sima Lu, was assigned a special mission and sent elsewhere, which enabled him to escape. In 1942, Mao Zedong launched the so-called “Rectification Movement,” persecuting and killing many of the youths who had gone to Yan’an. These innocent young people, deceived by Snow, became sacrificial victims of communist lies.

The CCP pretended to resist Japan while in reality currying favor with it—talking anti-Japanese while actually aligning with Japan, with the goal of destroying the Nationalist government. The CCP colluded with Japanese forces by exchanging intelligence, attacked Chiang Kai-shek’s troops, expanded the Red Army during the Anti-Japanese War, and strengthened its own power, all while wearing the cloak of resistance to Japan to deceive public opinion. On December 18, 1970, Mao Zedong told Snow: “…Those Japanese were really good. Without Japanese help, the Chinese revolution could not have succeeded. I once said this to a Japanese man, a capitalist named Nango Saburō. He always said, ‘Sorry for invading you.’ I said: No, you helped us a great deal—the Japanese militarists and the Japanese emperor. You occupied most of China, and all the Chinese people rose up to fight you. We built an army of one million and occupied areas with a population of one hundred million. Wasn’t all of this your help?” On September 27, 1972, when meeting Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, Mao said: “…We must thank Japan. Without Japan’s invasion of China, we could not have achieved cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, nor could we have developed and eventually seized power. …It was with your help that we can meet you in Beijing today.”

Americans were also deceived and came to sympathize with the CCP. After victory in the Anti-Japanese War and during the ensuing civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, Americans astonishingly hoped that the Communists could serve as a counterbalance to the Nationalist Party and advocated cooperation between the two sides to form a unified government. The United States successively dispatched presidential envoys Patrick Hurley and George Marshall to mediate negotiations, attempting to pull the two parties together. Mao Zedong took advantage of the negotiation period to prepare his forces and ultimately overthrow the Republic of China.