What Communist China Taught a 6-Year-Old American Boy

With Tiananmen Square as My Playground, I Learned Lifelong Lessons About Diplomacy, Authority, and Democracy


A worker comes to Beijing, to Communist Party headquarters, and asks to see Chairman Mao.

A soldier stops him. “You can’t see Mao,” he says. “He’s dead.”

The worker returns the next day, and again asks for Mao. The same soldier turns him away: “You can’t see him. He’s dead.”

The third day, the worker returns, and insists: “I must see Chairman Mao.”

The soldier loses his temper. “I told you yesterday, and the day before that. Chairman Mao is dead. Dead! Dead! Dead!”

“I know,” says the worker, with a smile. “I just …

The (Actual) Communist Agents Who Lurked Among Us

American Fears About Soviet Spycraft Never Seemed to Match Reality

Russian spies held a morbid fascination in the minds of Americans dating back to the Red Scare in 1919, following the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of the Communist International, …

“Frivolous” Humanities Helped Prisoners Survive in Communist Romania

Covertly Studying Language and Literature Connected Captives and Freed Their Minds

In a recent New York Times article on the movement to promote university majors promising higher employment and income, Anthony Carnevale, a professor at Georgetown University, sums up the utilitarian …

How Latin America’s Left Could Lose Their Scapegoat

Will Obama’s Trip to Cuba and Argentina Be the Nail in the Coffin for the Region’s Tired Anti-American Script?

Barack Obama took a deserved victory lap in Latin America last week.

Critics of the president’s opening to Cuba accuse Obama of appeasing the Castro regime, but they missed the historic …

Obama’s Visit to Cuba Spells the End of a Grotesque Amusement Park

The Island’s Opening Will Deny American White-Collar Subversives Their Once Forbidden Fruit

As every librarian or pornographer knows, one of the most reliable ways to excite interest in a creative work is to ban it. When the authorities clamp down and announce …

How Do You Say Laissez-Faire in Chinese?

Beijing Is Trying to Control the Stock Market, But It Only Makes Investors Even Jumpier

China’s Communist leaders are struggling to embrace one of the pesky truths of the capitalist system they have adopted (and adapted) with such success: Markets don’t just go up; sometimes …