Section:GDN 1J PaGe:8 Edition Date:190829 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 28/8/2019 17:57 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Thursday 29 Aug ust 2019
8
Dame Susan
Bailey, former
president,
Royal College
of Psychiatrists,
69; Bob Beamon,
Olympic long
jumper, 73;
Michael Clarke,
former director,
National Gallery
of Scotland, 67;
Doña Croll, actor,
66 ; Rebecca De
Mornay, actor,
60; Elizabeth
Fraser, singer
and songwriter,
56; William
Friedkin, fi lm
and television
director, 84;
Diamanda Galás,
musician, singer
and performance
artist, 64; Elliott
Gould, actor, 81;
Chris Hadfi eld,
astronaut, 60 ;
Sir Lenny Henry,
actor, writer
comedian, 61;
Angela Huth,
writer, 81; Lea
Michele, actor
and singer, 33 ;
Mark Morris,
choreographer,
63; Meshell
Ndegeocello,
musician, 51;
Liam Payne,
singer, 26; Eddi
Reader, singer
and songwriter,
60 ; Matthew
Reed, chief
executive, Marie
Curie UK, 51;
Sir Evelyn de
Rothschild,
banker and
philantrhopist, 88;
Simon Thurley,
historian and
former chief
executive, English
Heritage, 57.S
idney Rittenberg, an
American from South
Carolina, was one of
the few non-Chinese
people to become
a senior member
of the Chinese
Communist party.
Known in China, and still revered,
as Li Dunbai ( which sounds like
Rittenberg to Chinese ears), he
was an active participant in the
communist revolution of the late
1940s and its aftermath.
An intimate of Mao Zedong ,
Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and
almost every other veteran rev -
olutionary, Rittenberg, who has
died aged 98, gained prominence
at the Broadcast Administration in
Beijing, one of the most important
agencies of government, and for a
few months in 1967 was the direc-
tor of Radio Peking, on which he
occasionally broadcast in his dis-
tinctive southern US accent.
Rittenberg also translated Mao’s
Complete Works and the Little
Red Book into English and became
a leading rabble-rouser in the
Cultural Revolution that began in- At that time he would address
rapturous crowds of up to 100,000.
Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife and the
leader of what would come to be
Sidney Rittenberg
US translator who became
a senior member of the
Chinese Communist party
and an adviser to Mao
China as an idealistic GI interpreter at
the end of the second world war.
The corruption and inequalities
of life in China under the Chiang
Kai-shek nationalists shocked him,
and, honourably discharged, he
made contact with the communists
in Shanghai and was soon trekking
for 45 days across China to join
Mao’s guerrilla army at Yan’an.
After the communists won
power, he was asked to stay on as,
in his words, “an engineer to build
a bridge from the Chinese people
to the American people”. Mao had
always been fascinated by the US
and, while camped out at Yan’an,
would spend hours with Rittenberg
going through old copies of Ameri-
can magazines and asking questions
about the US. Rittenberg also did
simultaneous translations of Laurel
and Hardy fi lms, which Mao loved.
His fi rst spell in prison, of six
years from 1949, of which the fi rst
was spent in total sensory depriva-
tion, driving Rittenberg to the edge
of insanity, came about after Joseph
Stalin wrote to Mao warning him
that the American was a spy.
His captors never quite seemed to
believe the charge, but Mao wanted
to test him. “They did say once,
‘If you’re a real revolutionary, you
should be able to stand this test, ’ ”
Rittenberg said, “and that was all I
needed. ” He was off ered the chance to
go back to the US, but decided to stay.
“I was just getting into ever deeper
study of his writings and deciding he
was a genius,” Rittenberg said.
Although he denied all his life
that he spied for the US, even in old
age Rittenberg would be asked by
retired FBI and CIA chiefs whom he
had been reporting to in Washing-
ton while under his “deep cover” in
China. When he insisted he was not
a spy, Rittenberg related, the former
spooks would typically tap their noses
and say : “You’re still very good.”
“I think China has to face the fact
that Mao was one of the worst peopleknown as the Gang of Four , once
commented acidly that, at 45, Rit-
tenberg was a little old to be a Red
Guard, but he pressed on , until Jiang
Qing, thought to have been jealous
of this popular foreigner, had him
thrown into jail for a 10-year term.
The convulsions of a China
constantly reinventing itself led to
Rittenberg twice falling foul of the
leadership. Of his 35 years in China,
he served a total of 16 imprisoned
in solitary confi nement, accused of
being an American spy. Disillusioned
with communism, he returned to the
US in 1980 with his wife, Wang Yulin,
whom he married in 1956, and their
four children. There, he founded
Rittenberg Associates, a consulting
company that helped businesses
from Colgate Palmolive to Warner
Music to PricewaterhouseCoopers,
Intel and Microsoft to establish
themselves in China.
The son of Muriel (nee Sluth) and
Sidney Rittenberg, he was born into a
prominent Jewish family in Charles-
ton, where his father was a member
of the city council. Sidney Jr dropped
out of the University of North Caro-
lina , where he was stud ying philo-
sophy, aged 19, and bec ame a trade
union and civil rights activist. Hav-
ing joined the US army the day after
Pearl Harbo r, he eventually arrived inRittenberg at his
fl at in Beijing. Of
the 35 years he
spent in China, he
served a total of
16 imprisoned in
solitary confi ne-
ment. He returned
to the US in 1980
BETTMANNin human history,” was Rittenberg’s
assessment of Mao in old age. “He
was a genius, but his genius got out
of control, so he was a great historic
leader and a great historic criminal.
He gave himself the right to conduct
social experiments that involved
upturning the lives of hundreds of
millions of people, when he didn’t
know what the outcome might be.
And that created famines in which
tens of millions died, and a revolution
in which nobody knows how many
died.” At a personal level, he sa id: “I
didn’t feel any warmth, although he
said nice things about me.”
Rittenberg explained that his ideal-
ism and the belief that he was taking
part in the development of a better
world blinded him to the atrocious
persecution and murder of even close
friends. “It’s a kind of corruption,
exactly the kind of corruption that
ruins the whole thing,” he said. “I
believed I was part of history. That’s
what you get with ideology and power.
You learn to harden your heart in the
name of the wonderful new world
you’re building. Once you do that,
you do all kinds of things. I did.”
Rittenberg, in later years at least,
had an impish sense of humour,
loved jokes and was called upon as
a commentator on Chinese aff airs
by both western and Chinese media.
In 1993 his memoir, The Man Who
Stayed Behind, was published, and in
2012 he was the subject of the docu-
mentary The Revolutionary.
He taught into his 90s at several
US universities. On his offi ce door
at one there was a sign that read
“S. Rittenberg. History.” Under it,
he wrote: “Not yet.”
He is survived by Yulin and their
children, Jenny, Toni, Sunny and Sid-
ney Jr, and four grandchildren.
Jonathan MargolisSidney Rittenberg, writer and political
activist, born 14 August 1921; died
23 August 2019Birthdays
Announcements
Obituaries
[email protected]
@guardianobitsI believed
I was part
of history.
That’s
what you
get with
ideology
and powerRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws