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Useful Idiots, True Believers, Diplos & Traitors – Foreigners under Mao: Western Lives in China, 1949–1976

Posted: August 1st, 2016 | 4 Comments »

My apologies for my own subtitle to Beverley Hooper’s entertaining study of foreigners who lived in Mao’s China between 1949 and 1976, but most fell into one (or more) of those categories – useful idiots, true believers, diplos & traitors. Nobody much defects to China anymore, their spies are deep undercover, diplos used to be characters but rarely are these days in our more blanded world though of course the useful idiots still abound (see the recent nonsense video from Xinhua with foreigners lining up to support the Communist Party on their belligerent South China Seas stance post the Hague ruling. Then as now it’s a curious phenomenon – idiots, the easily duped, paid, tricked, coerced or just not that bright? Hard to tell). Still, before 1976 was the heyday of the traitors and useful idiots and they’re all here pretty much…

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Foreigners under Mao: Western Lives in China, 1949–1976 is a pioneering study of the Western community during the turbulent Mao era. Based largely on personal interviews, memoirs, private letters, and archives, this book ‘gives a voice’ to the Westerners who lived under Mao. It shows that China was not as closed to Western residents as has often been portrayed.

The book examines the lives of six different groups of Westerners: ‘foreign comrades’ who made their home in Mao’s China, twenty-two former Korean War POWs who controversially chose China ahead of repatriation, diplomats of Western countries that recognized the People’s Republic, the few foreign correspondents permitted to work in China, ‘foreign experts’, and language students. Each of these groups led distinct lives under Mao, while sharing the experience of a highly politicized society and of official measures to isolate them from everyday China.

Beverley Hooper is emeritus professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sheffield in the UK. She is the author of Inside Peking: A Personal Report, Youth in China and China Stands Up: Ending the Western Presence 1948–1950.

‘This book is enjoyable and engaging. The author introduces a small but dynamic collection of enthusiastic international participants in post-1949 China showing unquestioned loyalty to Mao’s ideals. Equally intriguing are the alternate stories of diplomats and reporters existing far outside the mainstream of Chinese life and trusted by neither the Chinese nor the international supporters.’
—Edgar A. Porter, Professor Emeritus, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University; author of The People’s Doctor: George Hatem and China’s Revolution

‘A well-written survey about the variety of Westerners who lived and worked in the People’s Republic of China between 1949 and 1976. This is a welcome addition to the “sojourner” literature about foreigners who lived in twentieth-century socialist countries. The scholarship, which includes the review of memoirs, archival materials, and secondary works, is impressive and comprehensive.’
—Stephen R. MacKinnon, Arizona State University; co-author of China Reporting: An Oral History of American Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s


4 Comments on “Useful Idiots, True Believers, Diplos & Traitors – Foreigners under Mao: Western Lives in China, 1949–1976”

  1. 1 blackpaws said at 11:47 pm on August 1st, 2016:

    the useful idiots still abound-good one!

  2. 2 blackpaws said at 11:49 pm on August 1st, 2016:

    where can you get a copy as it will be released only in november 2016?

  3. 3 paul French said at 5:44 pm on August 2nd, 2016:

    It appears to be available here at the publishers website – http://www.hkupress.org/Common/Reader/Products/ShowProduct.jsp?Pid=1&Version=0&Cid=10&Charset=iso-8859-1&page=-1&idx=3

  4. 4 Beverley Hooper said at 7:59 pm on August 4th, 2016:

    Thanks for the new subtitle! Yes, it’s just been published in Hong Kong, but won’t be available through Amazon etc (or Columbia University Press in north America) until November.


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