Posted on 06/30/2011 7:15:22 PM PDT by decimon
As China's Communist Party marks its 90th birthday, one man has a unique perspective - an 89-year-old American ex-Communist who spent 35 years in China and rubbed shoulders with Chairman Mao.
Sidney Rittenberg has lived a life usually seen only in Hollywood movies.
As a young man, he turned his back on the country of his birth, the United States, and threw in his lot with China's fledgling communist party.
He personally knew the revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, spent time in solitary confinement after being accused of spying and, disillusioned, finally returned to America following a second stint in prison.
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"The normal state of existence for way over half of the people was hunger and the communists were the only group trying to get China out of that kind of poverty," he told the BBC while visiting the home he still keeps in Beijing.
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His verdict on Mao now? "He was a great historical leader and a great historical criminal - very few have reached this status in both of those aspects."
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Disenchanted with communism, on his release he decided to leave China for good with his Chinese wife and four children.
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(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
It took two stays in prison BEFORE he finally became disillusioned with communist China?
What a moron.
At least this guy went there to do his work instead of staying to tell us we should be like them.
true!
89 years old and stupid as f&$k is no way to go through life, son. Chairman Mao was going to bring an end to poverty? How’d that work out for this guy?
I do not understand why we let garbage like this back in the country.
That was foolish but Chiang Kai-Shek wasn't much better. The Chinese people had pretty much been screwed over forever.
Name one communist country that has done that.
I have no time for the memories and so-called experience of idiots like this.
HIs leftist blindness and sheer stupidity meant it took him 70 years to learn what most people can learn in a week.
Two years? More like 15 years. One 6 year stint with a 12 year reprieve followed by a 9 year stint. Then he got the message.
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