Word: mao
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...when Edgar Snow evaded Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomingtang blockade of the Communist controlled Shensi province and first met Mao Tse Tung and his band of revolutionaries, most people in the outside world doubted that these Chinese "soviets" even existed. Snow's prediction of a Kuomingtang-Comunist alliance was widely discounted; his warning of a post-war victory for the revolution was almost completely ignored. In fact, Russia as well as the West scoffed at this so-called Communist movement, which possessed a peasant rather than prolctarian base. Up through the 1949 debacle, the Soviet Union continued to support Chiang...
Snow's interview with Mao made history. He was the first journalist whom Mao had permitted to visit Communist territory, and in his classic book Red Star Over China he gave the world its first close-up of this guerrilla movement that was steadily gaining strength in the North of China. At the same time, he obviously enjoyed travelling through the mountains with a group of young men who seemed to be among the few people in China actually doing something about mass poverty, illiteracy, and Japanese imperialism...
During his five months in China in 1960, Snow talked at length with Mao Tse Tung and Chou En Lai: an opportunity no American diplomat has enjoyed. Yet When Snow returned to the United States, Dean Rusk (who was then about to assume his position of Secretary of State) only managed to find about ten minutes to talk with Snow. His questions reportedly did not reveal a complete grasp of conditions inside China. "Does China have much iron?" Rusk is said to have asked. Why yes, the largest vein in the world," Snow gratefully replied...
Snow's reaction to the China he visited in 1960 was inevitably tempered by his memories of the courageous and dedicated guerrillas he once knew and the abysmal conditions in which most Chinese then lived. Needless to say, the Mao The Tung he interviewed in 1960 heads a nation of 700,000,000, a nation that claims to be even more Communist than the Soviet Union. The Chou En Lai whom he accompanied on several trips now directs a foreign policy based on the premise that Snow's native land perpetuates and itself epitomizes all evil. But he is also...
...Snow in his book seems to take a kind of whimsical, slightly naughty pride in dropping names of people most Americans associate with evil incarnate (something along the "I was the only person ever to interview Mao Tse Tung in his pajamas" line), this only defines his perspective. It does not destroy his objectivity. The great value of Snow's massive collection of personal observation, statistics, anecdotes, and philosophical commentary lies in his intimate acquaintance with the Chinese scene, before and after so to speak. Here is a man who lived in China for about fifteen years before the Revolution...