Former American adviser to the Communist Party of China, Sidney Rittenberg, passed away on Saturday, August 24.
Rittenberg, known as Li Dunbai (李敦白) in China, first arrived in the country in 1944 as an American solider slash linguist who was proficient in Chinese – a language he learned after the US Army sent him to its language school at Stanford University, according to the New York Times.
After a stint in Kunming working as a linguist for the Judge Advocate General, he headed to Shanghai to work for a United Nations relief agency. It was there that he met members of the Communist Party who encouraged him to head to Yan’an, where Mao was leading the Communist Revolution in China.
Rittenberg arrived in Yan’an at the impressionable age of 25, working as the foreign expert at the Xinhua News Agency’s main office. His job responsibilities included translating and editing propaganda for the CPC and advocating their message to the outside world, China Daily reported.
From there, the South Carolina native went on to develop a good rapport with China’s top brass – Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. According to the Washington Post, the Communist leaders and their American friend would discuss life in America, play cards and watch Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy flicks, with Rittenberg providing translations for Mao and Zhou.
But it was not all smooth-sailing, as Rittenberg would come to learn after being imprisoned by his own party not once but twice over the course of his China tenure. Coming at the request of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, he was jailed for allegedly being a spy sent from America to “undermine the revolution.” His six years in prison came to an end after Stalin died in 1953.
Sydney Rittenberg in 2012. Image via Wikimedia
In early 1968, Rittenberg was imprisoned yet again over accusations of being a Western spy, for which he spent 10 more years of his life in prison. NYT reported that Rittenberg had attributed his arrest to Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao’s wife and a member of the Gang of Four. After Jiang and other members of the faction were put on trial, Rittenberg was released in 1977.
Right at the time when China and the US had established diplomatic relations in 1979, Rittenberg decided to return to the US, where he had always remained a citizen. But the Communist Party member continued to play an integral role in US-China relations, forming his own consultancy company and helping big companies like Intel, Prudential Insurance and Polaroid, among others, establish their businesses in the Middle Kingdom.
Over the years, Rittenberg continued “advocating for better collective understanding” of China and remained “an uncompromising champion of fair-minded appreciation of Chinese culture and society,” as is stated in his biography on the Pacific Lutheran University website, where he was a visiting professor.
To learn more about the life of Sidney Rittenberg, his story is chronicled in the documentary The Revolutionary as well as in written works, such as The Man Who Stayed Behind.
[Cover image via @瞭望亚太/Weibo]
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