Communism spread like wildfire in the 1800's in Europe and Russia, and hit the 20th century like a wrecking ball. It was a movement shrouded in idealism that captured the ideals of the young and the hearts of the intellectuals who yearned for a way to "cure" society's ills. People fought hard and gave their lives for its existence. But if one looks back on the history of communism, it becomes painfully clear that these well-meaning individuals were duped. Far more deceptive than fascism—which sneers openly and menacingly at the rest of the world—communism plays on idealism and twists it to its despotic ends.
Few people who have not lived under communist rule can really understand its dark nature. Xin Haonian, an expert on the history of communism, believes that it is this very ignorance that has kept the United States at a disadvantage when dealing with the former Soviet Union and now China.
Mr. Xin is the Director of the Chinese Contemporary History Research Institute and Editor-in-Chief of Huanghuagang Journal, a quarterly publication on Chinese history and culture.
The following is an interview with Mr. Xin:
Mr. Xin: Many of us [Chinese] have lived in the United States for several years. To many Chinese immigrants, American people seem more sincere and straightforward than Chinese people. This is true. It's been over 200 years since the United States established its democratic system. To a large extent, the people have enjoyed freedom and democracy. In a free and democratic society, people of course are more straightforward. In China, the people live under a dictatorship, so of course they are more complicated.
So first of all, American people are indeed more straightforward and sincere. This is also a characteristic of their nation. Second, the United States has fought with the communist camp for decades, including the Cold War with the former Soviet Union and conflicts with Joseph Stalin. The United States has not really gained much. For example, during WWII, the United States spent over ten billion dollars to support Stalin's "Great Patriotic War" against Nazi Germany. What was the result of this alliance of necessity? Right after the victory over the Nazis, Stalin raised the banner of war against the United States.
Unbeknownst to Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek and the Republic of China, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) entered into a secret agreement with Winston Churchill and Stalin at the Yalta Conference in 1945, giving consent to the Soviet Army's entry into northeastern China after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. Roosevelt's original plan was to reduce conflict and bloodshed, end the war sooner, and help China's transition into a united country with democracy. What happened in the end?
The Soviet army stayed in China for much longer than expected, robbed northeastern China of its economic gains, and took over all factories, machines, and facilities the Japanese occupation had built. What was the Soviet Union's agenda? It wanted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to move to northeastern China, control the land there, and topple the Republic of China. Was this what the Americans wanted? Roosevelt didn't expect it, and neither did Churchill. Both of them were tricked.
How could the Americans have been so easily duped? It was because democratic systems play by the rules. During a game, if both teams play by the rules, their skills and willpower will determine the outcome. However, if one team follows the rules, but the other does not, the one who plays by the rules is at an obvious disadvantage. It is something like two people playing a game of chess, and then one person suddenly pulls out a knife, stabs his opponent to death, and declares himself the winner.
This is why, when a civilization runs into barbarism, it is at a huge disadvantage simply because it assumes that the other side is also civilized. Now, it is true that the West—and the United States specifically—has been guilty of its share of trickery and lies. But all of that is nothing when compared to the actions of the communist bloc.
The relationship between the United States and the Chinese communist regime has followed this form. From the 1940s until today, there have been too many examples [of treachery] to list. In each of their interactions, who was the winning side and who the loser?
From Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin until today's Chinese leader Hu Jintao, China has always taken advantage of the United States. Even Jiang Zemin, who was always keen to improve relationships with the West, was no exception. The CCP sought support from the United States, using money from the West to help China during one economic crisis after another.
In the early 20th century, communist thinking was popular the world over, and also influenced the United States. Many in U.S. political circles and the public were friendly with China, including FDR's vice president Henry Wallace.
Reporter: What influence did [communist thinking] have, then, on the U.S. government and its decision-making?
Mr. Xin: The influence was of course very significant. Many decision makers in the U.S. State Department were pro-communist. The Office of China Affairs, which is today's China Division, had many pro-communist decision makers and supervisors. In 1943, when the Germans defeated Stalin, Stalin dismissed the Communist International and assured the United States that he would not initiate an international communist movement. Stalin's pro-U.S. gesture was immediately accepted by the socialists in the U.S. Communist Party and American society, as well as by pro-communist members in the U.S. government.
When the Soviets supplied the Chinese communist army with weapons that they had confiscated from the Japanese in Manchuria, and also armed them with the remaining donated weapons that had come from their former cooperation with the United States—when the Soviets were getting ready to march into China by way of Manchuria—the United States cut all aid to the Kuomintang. This made it much easier for the Chinese Communist Party to defeat the Kuomintang government and seize control of China.
If you read the biography of Patrick Jay Hurley, you will find that he indignantly resigned from his post as U.S. Ambassador to China in 1946. This had to do with his frustration over the influence that Chinese communist propaganda was having on the U.S. government and its foreign diplomats.
Influenced by socialist ideas, the United States, both in and outside the government, had people who were romantically idealistic about the communist revolution in China and the Chinese Communist Party. They thought that the Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai Shek was autocratic, feudalistic, backward and reactionary, while Mao Zedong and the Communist Party in Yan'an were perceived as progressive, consistent with the socialist force in the United States, sympathetic to workers and peasants and representing their opinions, and in favor of a society of equality and mutual benefit. These U.S. diplomats were fooled by the front of idealism portrayed by the CCP; they did not suspect its actual dark designs.
In his report to the U.S. government and the U.S. Department of State, Hurley indicated that before he knew about the secret decisions his own government had made in Washington, these decisions had already been passed to Yan'an [to the Communist Party] through diplomatic officials in the U.S. Embassy in Chongqing. He and Chiang Kai Shek were both kept in the dark. This was why he resigned from his post.
Later on, the U.S. government investigated and discovered that some diplomats at the U.S. embassy were indeed colluding with the communists. Six diplomats were, in the end, found guilty of treason. This should convince everyone of the power that the false ideals of communism can wield over the minds of western officials. This incident played a role in starting the anti-communist purges of the 1950s, conducted throughout the United States by then Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Reporter: It's true, is it not, that there were many western intellectuals who came to embrace Chinese communism around this time?
Mr. Xin: Certainly. You may have heard of the American socialist Anna Louise Strong, who was a Communist Party member. It was she who publicized Mao's saying "All reactionaries are paper tigers—U.S. imperialism is also a paper tiger," a statement Mao made once in a conversation they were having.
Edgar Snow was an openly socialist journalist in the United States at that time. He traveled to Yan'an, China and wrote the book "Red Star Over China" to promote Mao and the CCP. It had widespread impact. Many hot-blooded young people living in the Kuomintang ruled regions decided to go to Yan'an precisely because of this book. According to an inside survey conducted by the CCP, among all the young people who went to Yan'an to follow the CCP to "fight against the Japanese invaders," 70 to 80 percent of them were stirred up by this book.
You can see how greatly Americans misunderstood China's modern history and how greatly Americans misunderstood the CCP as well as the Kuomintang government, then located in Chongqing City and suffering great casualties fighting against the Japanese invaders. Such misunderstandings have been misleading several generations of Chinese youth. The fundamental reason behind this is that the United States is a nation that respects individual belief and allows one to become a member of any ideological group. The key here is not that communist ideology attracted some American socialists. This occurred because the CCP was very crafty in deceiving them.
Let me give you another example, the case of John King Fairbank. He was a U.S. citizen who made a name for himself through his study of modern Chinese history. Almost all the well-known experts, professors, department chairs, and institute directors of East Asia Studies in today's universities were once Fairbank's students. Fairbank had been an honored guest of Zhou Enlai, China's then premier. He was once a self-proclaimed socialist. Throughout his academic career he idealized the Chinese Communist Party and Mao's revolution while opposing Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang government.
The truth is that while the Kuomintang government, the Chinese government at the time, was shedding blood to protect the country from a Japanese invasion, the communists were colluding with the enemy and betraying their motherland. Throughout his life, his renown was based on his analysis of China's modern history. But it was exactly these academic "achievements" that mislead the academic community for generations.
History taught him his lesson. The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre woke him up. He realized that the "base areas behind the battlefront" established by the CCP during the Sino-Japan war were actually under a dictatorial regime. In order for the Communist Party to come to power in China, it had to oust the Chinese government at the time, the Kuomintang. During the period when both the Communist Party and the Kuomintang were vying for power, Japan attacked.
After the Tiananmen Square massacre, Fairbank saw, for the first time, that during Japan's invasion, it was the Kuomintang that fought against the invaders while the Communist Party colluded with the enemies. The communists used the opportunity of a weakened Kuomintang to consolidate and seize power.
Fairbank personally delivered his last book, China: A New History, to the Harvard University Publishing House two days before he passed away. In it, he admits that it was in fact the Kuomintang government that could have led China down the road of modernization. That one book negated all of Fairbank's previous work in his study of China's modern history. Through this book he disavowed all allegiance with the Communist Party.
He had finally woken up. But history could not be reversed. We have to swallow the bitterness from the mistakes we've made in history and can only try to avoid repeating the mistakes we've made before.
Reporter: What is the impact of their academic work on American society?
Mr. Xin: : The impact on American society has been tremendous. Fairbank had influence in Chinese modern history research throughout the United States. Most U.S. scholars trusted his research.
The U.S. government is a government that respects its scholars and consults them on international and political issues. The scholars who advised the government on China had a bias—a left wing, pro-communist, anti-Kuomintang bias.
In the critical stage of China's history from 1945 to 1949, the United States did not intervene in China's civil war. This was not only due to the influence of scholars like Fairbank and Snow, but also because of the political power of pro-communist officials within the U.S. government and certain American diplomats in the U.S. embassy in China. All these factors played a significant role in the final outcome: The CCP seized power and installed a totalitarian regime in mainland China.
Many Americans do not really understand communism or the East. What they understand of the East and Eastern culture is tainted with communism. Even today there are "socialist" scholars who sympathize with socialist China and romanticize the communism of the former Soviet Union. This trend goes back to before the Second World War. As "liberals" they attack the policies of the U.S. government, condemn capitalism, and attack the western world. Partly because of the influence of this group of scholars, the communist regime in China was able to gain the upper hand over the United States.
Socialist scholars are still found in academic circles today, largely in the United States and Great Britain. A few democratic activists who came from China have had the courage and determination to oppose the CCP. Because of their ideological education and the fear instilled in them by the Communist Party, however, many are not able to fully break away from the socialist ideology. When they come to the United States, some still argue in support of Marxism and Leninism. The evidence they use is that of American socialists and left-wing intellectuals. This is just another example of how big an impact American academics have had.
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