Edgar Snow
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
known for his books and articles on Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and the Chinese Communist revolution. He is believed to be the first Western journalist to interview Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
, and is best known for Red Star Over China
Red Star Over China
Red Star Over China, a book by Edgar Snow, is an account of the Communist Party of China written when they were a guerrilla army still obscure to Westerners. Along with Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, it was the most influential book on Western understanding and sympathy for China in the 1930s...
(1937) an account of the Chinese Communist movement from its foundation until the late 1930s.
Biography
Snow studied journalism at the University of MissouriUniversity of Missouri
The University of Missouri System is a state university system providing centralized administration for four universities, a health care system, an extension program, five research and technology parks, and a publishing press. More than 64,000 students are currently enrolled at its four campuses...
, where he joined the Zeta Phi
Zeta Phi
The Zeta Phi Society was a fraternal organization founded at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri in 1870. The society became a chapter of Beta Theta Pi in 1890...
chapter of Beta Theta Pi
Beta Theta Pi
Beta Theta Pi , often just called Beta, is a social collegiate fraternity that was founded in 1839 at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA, where it is part of the Miami Triad which includes Phi Delta Theta and Sigma Chi. It has over 138 active chapters and colonies in the United States and Canada...
, but moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
before graduating. He made some money in the stock market
Stock market
A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...
and sold out before the Wall Street Crash of 1929
Wall Street Crash of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 , also known as the Great Crash, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929, was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout...
. Wanting to use the money he embarked on an around the world tour in 1928, but never made it past Shanghai. He stayed in China until 1941.
He quickly found work with the China Weekly Review, edited by J.B. Powell, a fellow graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism. In his early years he was an enthusiast for Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek was a political and military leader of 20th century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng in Mandarin....
, noting that he had more Harvard graduates in his cabinet than there were in Franklin Roosevelt's. In 1932 he married Helen Foster Snow
Helen Foster Snow
Helen Foster Snow was an American journalist who reported from China in the 1930s under the name "Nym Wales" on the developing revolution in China and the Korean independence movement...
, who was working in the American Consulate until she could begin her own career in journalism. In 1933, after a honeymoon in Japan, the couple moved to Beiping, as Beijing was called at that point. He prepared his book Far Eastern Front, filed occasional articles for American outlets, and taught journalism part-time at Yenching University
Yenching University
Yenching University was a university in Beijing, China. It integrated three Christian colleges in the city in 1919. Yenching is an alternative name of Beijing - derived from its status as capital of Yan state, one of the seven Warring States from 5th century BC to 3rd century BC.The university...
. They borrowed works on current affairs from the Yenching library and read classics of Marxism. The couple became acquainted with student leaders of the anti-Japanese December 9th Movement
December 9th Movement
The December 9th Movement refers to a mass protest led by students in Beiping on December 9, 1935 that demands the Kuomintang government to actively resist potential Japanese aggression.-Background:...
. Through their contacts with the underground communist network, Snow was invited to visit Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
's headquarters.
Writing 'Red Star Over China'
In June 1936, Snow and his friend George Hatem, whose presence was kept secret, went to Xi'an and from there were taken through the military quarantine lines to Bao'an, where he spent nearly three months. Snow had been preparing to write a book on the Communist movement in China for several years, and had even signed a contract at one point. However, his most important contribution was the interviews he conducted with the top leaders of the party. After he returned to BeijingBeijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
in the fall, he wrote frantically. First he published a short account in China Weekly Review, then a series of publications in Chinese. Red Star Over China
Red Star Over China
Red Star Over China, a book by Edgar Snow, is an account of the Communist Party of China written when they were a guerrilla army still obscure to Westerners. Along with Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, it was the most influential book on Western understanding and sympathy for China in the 1930s...
, published first in London in 1937, was given credit for introducing both Chinese and foreign readers not so much to the Communist Party, which was reasonably well known, but to Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
. Mao was not, as had been reported, dead, and Snow reported that Mao was a political reformer, not the purely military or radical revolutionary he had been during the 1920s. After the outbreak of war in 1937, the Snows were founding members of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives
Chinese Industrial Cooperatives
Chinese Industrial Cooperative Association "gōngyè hézuòshè , that is, the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, known as INDUSCO, was formally established in August,1938 in Hankow, then the wartime capital of China...
. Edgar again visited Mao in Yan'an
Yan'an
Yan'an , is a prefecture-level city in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China, administering several counties, including Zhidan County , which served as the Chinese communist capital before the city of Yan'an proper took that role....
in 1939.
Later Journalism
Snow and his wife returned to the United States in 1941, but they soon parted, and divorced after the war. In April 1942 the Saturday Evening Post sent him abroad as a war correspondent. Snow traveled to India, China and Russia to report on World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
from the perspective of those countries. In Russia he shared his observations on the Battle of Stalingrad with the American Embassy. At times, Snow's defense of various undemocratic Allied governments took on the character of blatant war propaganda, not neutral journalistic observation, but Snow defended his reporting, stating
in this international cataclysm brought on by fascists it is no more possible for any people to remain neutral than it is for a man surrounded by bubonic plague to remain “neutral” toward the rat population. Whether you like it or not, your life as a force is bound either to help the rats or hinder them. Nobody can be immunized against the germs of history.
By 1944, Snow was wavering on the question of whether Mao and the Chinese Communists were actually "agrarian democrats" and not dedicated Communists bent on totalitarian rule, a view encouraged by Mao and his party leadership. His 1944 book People On Our Side emphasized their role in the fight against fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
. In a speech, he described Mao and the Communist Chinese as a progressive force who desired a democratic, free China, not a communist one-party state. Writing for The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Snow stated that the Chinese communists "happen to have renounced, years ago now, any intention of establishing communism [in China] in the near future." After the war, Snow would retreat from this view of the Chinese communists as a democratic movement.
Because of his relationships with communists and his highly favorable treatment of them as a war correspondent, Snow became an object of suspicion following World War II. During the McCarthy period, he was questioned by the FBI and asked to disclose the extent of his Communist activities. In published articles, Snow lamented what he saw as the one-sided, conservative, and anti-communist mood of the United States. Later in the 1950s, he published two more books about China: Random Notes on Red China (1957), a research aid for scholars containing previously unused China material; and Journey to the Beginning (1958), an autobiographical account of events prior to 1949. However, Snow found it increasingly difficult to make a living through his writing, and he decided to leave the United States in the 1950s. He moved with his second wife, Lois Wheeler Snow, to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, but retained his American citizenship.
Return to China
He returned to China in 1960 and 1964 and interviewed Mao ZedongMao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
and Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...
, as well as traveling extensively and talking to people. His 1963 book The Other Side of the River details this, including his reasons for denying that China's 1959-1961 crisis was actually a famine.
In 1970, he made a final trip to China and was told that President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
would be welcome to visit either officially or as a private citizen. The White House followed this visit with interest but distrusted Snow and his pro-communist reputation. When Snow came down with pancreatic cancer, Zhou Enlai dispatched a team of Chinese doctors to Switzerland, including George Hatem. Snow died on February 15, 1972, the week President Nixon was traveling to China, and did not live to see the normalization of relations.
After his death, his ashes were divided into two parts, one of which was buried near the Hudson River and the other scattered at Peking University
Peking University
Peking University , colloquially known in Chinese as Beida , is a major research university located in Beijing, China, and a member of the C9 League. It is the first established modern national university of China. It was founded as Imperial University of Peking in 1898 as a replacement of the...
, which had taken over the campus of Yenching University
Yenching University
Yenching University was a university in Beijing, China. It integrated three Christian colleges in the city in 1919. Yenching is an alternative name of Beijing - derived from its status as capital of Yan state, one of the seven Warring States from 5th century BC to 3rd century BC.The university...
, where he had taught in the 1930s.
Recent evaluations
Snow's reporting from China in the 1930s was both praised as prescient and blamed for the rise of Mao's communism. His biographers present him as an important link between China and the United States, but in Jung ChangJung Chang
Jung Chang is a Chinese-born British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in the People's Republic of China....
and Jon Halliday
Jon Halliday
Jon Halliday is a historian of Russia and was a former Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London.Halliday authored a biography of filmmaker Douglas Sirk and has written and edited seven other books. He and his wife, Jung Chang, live in Notting Hill, West London...
's controversial recent biography of Mao, Mao: The Unknown Story
Mao: The Unknown Story
Mao: The Unknown Story is a 2005 biography of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong written by the husband and wife team of writer Jung Chang and historian Jon Halliday, and depicts Mao as being responsible for more deaths in peacetime than Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.In conducting their research...
, Chang and Halliday refers to the "myths" supplied by Snow as Mao's "spokesman," implying that he lost his objectivity to such an extent that he presented a romanticized and partial view. Simon Leys
Pierre Ryckmans
Pierre Ryckmans , who also uses the pen-name Simon Leys, is a writer, sinologist, essayist and literary critic....
does not think highly of Edgar Snow's Chinese. But, a more sympathetic writer concluded that what he did in the 1930s was "to describe the Chinese Communists before anyone else, and thus score a world-class scoop." Of his reporting in 1960, however, he says that Snow "contented himself with assurances from Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong that while there was a food problem, it was being dealt with successfully," which was not true, and "had Snow still been the reporter he had been in the 1930s he would have discovered it." In Mao: A Reinterpretation, a work sympathetic to Mao, Prof. Lee Feigon criticizes Snow's account for its perceived inaccuracies, but at the same time praises Red Star for being "[the] seminal portrait of Mao" and relies on Snow's work as a critical reference throughout the book.
Works
- Living China: Modern Chinese Short Stories
- Red Star Over ChinaRed Star Over ChinaRed Star Over China, a book by Edgar Snow, is an account of the Communist Party of China written when they were a guerrilla army still obscure to Westerners. Along with Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, it was the most influential book on Western understanding and sympathy for China in the 1930s...
(various editions, London, New York, 1937–1944). Reprinted Read Books, 2006, ISBN 978-1406798210; Hesperides Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1443736732. - The Battle for Asia
- Far Eastern Front
- People On Our Side. Random House, 1944.
- Stalin Must Have Peace. Random House, 1947.
- China, Russia, and the USA
- Red China Today: The Other Side of the River. Gollancz, 1963. New edition, Penguin Books, 1970. ISBN 0140211594.
- The Long Revolution
Further reading
- Dimond, E. Grey. "Ed Snow Before Paoan: The Shanghai Years." Diastole Hospital Hill, Inc., University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1985.
- Farnsworth, Robert. "Edgar Snow's Journey South of the Clouds." Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991.
- Farnsworth, Robert. "From Vagabond to Journalist: Edgar Snow in Asia 1928-1941." Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.
- French, Paul. Through the Looking Glass: Foreign Journalists in China, from the Opium Wars to Mao. Hong Kong University Press, 2009.
- Hamilton, John Maxwell. Edgar Snow: A Biography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
- Mirsky, Jonathan. "Message from Mao", New York Review (February 16, 1985): 15-17. Review.
- Shewmaker, Kenneth E., Americans and Chinese Communists, 1927-1945: A Persuading Encounter, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press (1971) ISBN 080140617X
- Snow, Edgar. Journey to the Beginning. New York: Random House, 1958. Memoir.
- Thomas, S. Bernard. Season of High Adventure: Edgar Snow in China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft9p30098q;query=;brand=ucpress