88 { China’s Quest
As for the American freedom of creation and opportunity that some peo-
ple touted:
This is nothing else but a weird, empty, superficial and deformed psy-
chological phenomenon, promoted by the American bourgeois ... [to]
convert all their people into the same brainless animals as they them-
selves are, in order that they may be safe in their positions as keepers of
the zoo.
There was absolutely nothing laudable about the United States. The essen-
tial thing was, said another publication: “After having fully understood the
true facts about the US, every patriotic Chinese must hate the US, despise
the US, and look with contempt upon the US.” Massive amounts of propa-
ganda of this type were produced. According to one PRC report, in the first
half of 1951 New China Bookstores alone had issued over 100 million pieces
of anti-US propaganda. Committees were formed at all country levels to or-
ganize anti-US speeches, rallies, parades, posters, and so on.
This sort of propaganda had two key purposes. First, to mobilize the
Chinese people to support the war in Korea. Second, and probably more im-
portantly, to re-educate many Western-educated Chinese and/or a consider-
able segment of China’s urban middle and upper classes who looked positively
on the Western ways of life symbolized by the United States. Re-educating
these influential stratum of Chinese society would facilitate the elimination
of Western influence in China and prepare the ground for the creation of a
new socialist civilization modeled after that of the USSR.Support for Revolution in IndochinaIndochina quickly became a second key area of PRC assistance to revolution
in Asia. There was a long history of interaction between the leaders of the
CCP and Vietnamese Worker’s Party (VWP) leaders.^70 Vietnamese commu-
nist leader Ho Chi Minh became familiar with many of the future leaders of
the CCP in France in the early 1920s. Ho then served as an operative of the
Communist International for many years, and worked in that capacity with
CCP leaders in Hong Kong, in south China, in the CCP Yan’an base area, and
in Moscow. CCP and VWP leaders knew each other well and viewed them-
selves as comrades in a global anti-imperialist struggle led by the Soviet Union.
Once the KMT-CCP civil war erupted in post–World War II China, the VWP
assisted the CCP. When KMT forces in Guangdong moved against CCP troops
in that region, CCP forces fled to a VWP base area just inside Vietnam, where
they were provided with food, medicine, and supplies, along with sanctuary.
In return, the CCP trained VWP forces as the latter organized as a League
for Vietnamese Independence, or Viet Minh. The CCP’s Hong Kong office