The American who became an intimate of Chairman Mao
Sidney Rittenberg 1921-2019
Sidney Rittenberg was an idealistic American soldierlinguist who befriended Mao Zedong at the end of the Second World War, and spent the next 35 years living in communist China. Becoming a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party, he had four children with his Chinese wife, and endured two long stints in prison on charges of being a CIA spy – something he always denied – before eventually becoming disenchanted with the regime. He returned to the US in 1980, but even then he remained welcome in Beijing, and when the People’s Republic turned capitalist, he grew rich too, introducing Western corporations to the country and providing business advice.
The rebel son of a prominent Jewish family,
Sidney Rittenberg was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1921. He became involved in the trade union movement while at university, and joined the American Communist Party in 1940. Two years later, he was drafted into the army, and – as a talented linguist – was sent to Stanford to learn Chinese. Arriving in China in 1945, he was shocked by the poverty and corruption under the Nationalist regime and, after being discharged, trekked 45 days across the country to join Mao’s guerilla army at Yan’an. Mao was fascinated by the West, said The Guardian: he and Rittenberg would pore over US magazines, and watch Laurel and Hardy movies together. Under his Mandarin name Li Dunbai, he joined the Party in 1946, travelling around the country with Mao and witnessing many of the events that led to the foundation in 1949 of the People’s Republic.
By then, however, Rittenberg had been jailed on suspicion of spying, said The New York Times. He spent six years in solitary confinement before being cleared. Yet he remained loyal, and joined the Party’s propaganda division, helping to promote Mao’s Great Leap Forward – the attempt to transform China’s agrarian economy which led to a famine in which tens of millions died. He played an even greater role in the early part of the Cultural Revolution. But in 1968, he was himself denounced, by Mao’s wife, and spent another ten years in jail. By the time he was released, Mao had died and China was in disarray. In 1980, he took his family on holiday to the US, and stayed. A man of impish good humour, he worked as an academic before going into business. In 2013, he described Mao as a “great historic leader”, and a “great historic criminal”, and expressed remorse for his role in the Cultural Revolution. “I took part in victimising innocent, good people,” he said. “It was institutionalised bullying and scapegoating, and I couldn’t see it because everything about the regime was good for me, and I felt I was part of a movement for human progress, freedom and happiness.”