Sarah Paine

For civil messengers, they would be activists, maybe in the local government, labor unions, peasant organizations, women organizations, any number of these things.

And it's your broadcasting system to reach a population and mobilize it.

Military messengers are a little different.

Every single military unit had about a 20-member propaganda team.

That's a lot of people.

According to Mao, the propaganda work of the Red Army is therefore first...

priority work of the Red Army.

This is very different from soldiering in the West.

This is not how it would work.

Also, Mao had his international broadcasting system.

These would be foreign journalists, and while Mao was holding court up in Yan'an, he invited many of these journalists up there.

Edgar Snow was by far the most famous.

Why?

Because he was like the first one in, and then he was the last one out.

And he had really long interviews with Mao.

And when he was a young man, he never asked, why does this A-list political leader spending so much time with me?

That never occurred to Edgar.

But, you know, it's hours.

And he was a very fine writer, Edgar Snowe.

And what Edgar Snow writes, Red Star Over China, you can probably go to Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy there.