Talk:Edgar Snow

Where's the Rest of Him
The article states that half of the remains of Snow are at Peking University, Beijing. And the other half? Dr. Dan (talk) 04:50, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Evaluating SNow?
I tried to build evaluations into the article and present a range of them.

"Dupe" is unsourced as far as I can tell. Apologies if I missed it, but I checked Chang/Halliday Unknown Mao pp. 7, 52, 106, 117, 153, 159, 191-192, 194, 195, 204, 219-20, 231, 233, 240, 323-24, 337, and I don't see the word "dupe." Would it be ok to use their word, "American spokesman" (p. 106)? They also make clear that Snow used other material in addition to interviews, though they do charge that he placed too much weight on them. The issue of the Long March is discussed in Red Star Over China. ch (talk) 06:30, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Jonathan Mirsk pro Snow?
Snow's books are a very good read. But Mirsky does not seem to be the Snow supporter you want him to be. In a letter on Snow for the nyrb (free on the net) Mirsky is very critical of Snow's his degrading self-censorship. And the great socialist, Belgian, Australia based sinologist "Simon Leys" shows that Snow's Chinese simply was not up to Mao's language slills, Rckmanns shows a Snow so out of his depth it is not even funny. It is in one of "Leys"'s books, or collected essays, but cannot remember which one. And isn't it a bit journalistic to call the massive Chang/Halliday biography of Mao "controversial", of course she is, as is simply everything under the sun. Hitler is still loved by some people--Radh (talk) 23:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've read Mirsky's letter, . I was puzzled that Mirsky failed to identify exactly what Snow changed from the widely-available First Edition.  Now I've actually checked this and found some very minor changes, nothing I viewed as significant.


 * If there is anything that actually matters, by all means post it. --GwydionM (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I just thought: this does not sound that friendly (?) I do like to find the Leys quotation, it is probably not in his Chinese Shadow Theatre, but in an essay.It is a bit unfair on Snow in a sense, because Ryckmanns is a thoroughly trained sinologist in the old way and Snow never pretended to have this kind of Chinese, I guess. But as Snow' s words on Mao have been taken for gospel, I thought a bit of a hint at debunking was needed. I also have read Snow with great enthusiasm once.--Radh (talk) 19:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Lee Feigon
Crackpot is perhaps a bit harsh: see this review (from the Claremont Institute) by Arthur Waldron www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308889/posts --link idiotically blacklisted.--Radh (talk) 08:06, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

The Great Leap and the Three Bad Years
If you check the UN's figures for life expectency, you'll find that it increased quite fast under Mao, faster than in India or Indonesia. THe various critics (including Juang Chang and "Tombstone" are deeply dishonest, because they fail to mention this.

The extra deaths during a food shortage were not enormous, 25 per thousand in the worst year. Less than the norm in some poor countries. This is consistent with what Snow and others reported: there was a food shortage but no one was starving, so they did not call it a famine. Again, the spate of books that talk about a famine do not give an honest summary of this.

For most Chinese, the Three Bad Years were a brief return to the high death rates of pre-Mao days. Death rate probably doubled, which makes a big total for a big country like China, but was not that drastic.

Note also that Mao's authority survived intact because people blamed local failures, and may have been correct to do so.

--GwydionM (talk) 12:29, 27 April 2013 (UTC)


 * This is a blinders on assertion. Just briefly, I'll refer to Rudolph Rummel's Deka-Megamurderers People's Republic of China Summary estimates. Rummel estimates over 10 million dead from Great Leap Forward through 1963. Rummel also shows over 15 million dead in Mao's first 10 years through terror, collectivization and the like. So Chang's estimates hold water no matter how you slice it. --- https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CHINA.TAB8.1.GIF 10stone5 (talk) 20:07, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Chinese life expentency is never mentioned in such works, since in fact it extended greatly. Likewise they mention economic failures, but not the much more extensive successes. You can find details at studies I have posted; http://gwydionwilliams.com/42-china/china-three-bitter-years-1959-to-1961/ and http://gwydionwilliams.com/42-china/mao-and-china/.--GwydionM (talk) 11:28, 10 July 2015 (UTC)


 * It is not necessary to decide whether the 1959-1961 famine delegitimized China's Communist government in the article on Edgar Snow (or for that matter anywhere else in Wikipedia). Regardless of such considerations, it was an event of great importance in the PRC's history and Snow's coverage of the famine is relevant to his career as a journalist, just as Walter Duranty's coverage of the Russian famine is relevant to his career. Duranty's coverage of the Russian famine is front and center in the article on him, but not so for Snow's work in China. This is partly because there is less discussion of this aspect of Snow's career in secondary sources than there is for Duranty, but there is more than enough material to incorporate a paragraph on this in the article which meets the requirements of reliable sources and NPOV. The article's current treatment is inadequate.


 * One final point: You wrote above that "there was a food shortage, but no one was starving." This is a fringe view, as you are no doubt well aware, and as such does not go in this or any other article. Starvation in China during the three years of famine was widespread, as the government of China has consistently acknowledged in the years after Mao's death. It is only a question of how many millions died. Rgr09 (talk) 14:39, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Snow accurately reported a food shortage, but no actual starvation. The Western media have successfully created the opposite impression in the West. Not in China itself, apart from a few silly dissidents who believe anything the West says. --GwydionM (talk) 10:11, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Edgar Snow
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Edgar Snow's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "ReferenceA": From Communism:  From Mao Zedong: ;  From Twain–Ament indemnities controversy: Bickers & Tiedemann, Boxers, 104. From Second Sino-Japanese War: Chung Wu Taipei "History of the Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945)" 1972 pp 565 From Japanese resistance to the Empire of Japan in World War II: Imperial Eclipse: Japan's Strategic Thinking about Continental Asia before ... By Yukiko Koshiro Chapter 3 Page 100 From Wataru Kaji: From Vagabond to Journalist: Edgar Snow in Asia, 1928-1941 By Robert M. Farnsworth Page 326 -327 

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 01:36, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

First reporter to interview Mao
In the last paragraph of page 12 in his introduction to Red Star Over China, Fairbank states: "in 1936 the Chinese Communists were known generally as 'Red Bandits', and no Western observer had had direct with their leadership or reported on it to the outside world." Is there a source that contradicts this? If there is, I don't think it is cited in the article.Ferox Seneca (talk) 03:13, 5 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi -- apologies! I should have made clear that I didn't have a problem so much with the general idea as much as with the way that Fairbank put it, which was uncharacteristically lacking in nuance. There had been Western contact with CCP leaders before the Long March, and in fact a number of Westerners had a pretty good grasp of the nature of the movement, but things were changing pretty quickly. There's been a lot of new information about Snow, Mao, and the CCP since Fairbank wrote in 1968,  and lots of points of view have changed, so this Preface is not now the best source. So I hope it was ok for me to add the Brady reference instead. There's more detail there if anyone wants it (though the online version of the book lacks p. 44). She claims that Red Star was a "piece of conscious propaganda" (p. 46) but I don't think that this article is the place to debate that claim. ch (talk) 03:45, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Agnes Smedley was one of many who had some contact with the Chinese Communist Party leaders in Shanghai. She had wanted to visit the Red Bases, first in the south and then the one Snow visited. She also annoyed various people, including Madam Sun, and was not allowed to go till later. But I think Snow is correct to say that no Westerner had contact with the leaders before him. And even he was not told everything - he was unaware of the existence of Liu Shaoqi, who was running the Communist underground.

Mao was also not the party leader until 1943, though he was leader of the Chinese Soviet state. Before the Long March, he was seen as junior to Zhu De. And Wang Ming was the most senior Chinese in global Leninism, though based in Moscow. --GwydionM (talk) 17:25, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes -- well put. Brady also argues persuasivley (to me) that Mao used Snow to promote his position in the party, and that Mao was not allowed to speak freely but had to have clearance from party leaders for what he said, which was carefully scripted. But as I said, it's hard to strike the right balance for a Wikipedia article. ch (talk) 18:22, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

From "Start" to "Good"?
Thanks to, the article now clearly has gotten beyond "Start" and should be at least "C" and maybe "B." Maybe we should look the article over for things to improve. If nobody else is planning major changes, I can clean up the notes a little -- e.g. replace Hamilton 1988 with Hamilton 2003. If I have time, I'd also regularize the notes format, maybe to Harv?

I also wonder if it looks good to rely so much on Tertiary sources. The WP:ASSESS criteria for "C" specifies "Good Sources," which are generally Secondary sources. The Fairbank Introduction is 1968, and somewhat out of date, and the UM Archival note is tertiary and not footnoted, so we don't know the source. Wouldn't it be better to go directly to good recent work, such as Hamilton? OK, the differences are not major, but, for instance, the Archive did not catch the fact that ES and Peg separated as soon as they came back to the States.

Cheers ch (talk) 16:53, 7 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I believe that the article could be eligible for "good" status in the near future. I haven't had time recently to finish doing the research I would need to do in order to feel confident in nominating it yet. Some opinions:
 * - The referencing system is not standardized. It doesn't matter what standard we use, but left to my own devices I always standardize references in a style similar to this article: with a bibliography section containing full MLA citations, and with the footnotes only containing the author and page number. I think that is basically the same as Harvard, so I would be very comfortable using that system.
 * - I haven't reviewed the sources that were in the article before I started editing it, but tertiary sources (Sparticus?) should be reviewed and replaced with secondary sources over the course of the research. If I added any, it was mostly because they were easily accessible. Everything should be checked for plagiarism.
 * - The article is about 90% sourced, but I think it should be 100% sourced in order to pass as "good". I assume the unsourced parts will be filled in over the course of the research.
 * - If we could get it to be 100% sourced, I would rank the article as "B". Until then, I would rank it as "C".
 * - I agree that the Fairbank introduction is relatively old, but I haven't read any guideline that would indicate that the age of a source necessarily implies that it as unreliable. If there is more recent, contradictory information, then of course we should add it.
 * - I don't have access to them now, but I will comb through JSTOR and access an academic library in a week or two for articles and books on Snow. I hope that will fill in most of the necessary details.Ferox Seneca (talk) 08:39, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Nanjing Massacre
We've just had an attempt at Nanking Massacre denial, eliminating Edgar Snow's fairly minor role in reporting this. I restored the well-established facts, which are spelt out in the main article.

--GwydionM (talk) 11:18, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

First off, GwydionM, I wasn't denying the Nanking massacre, or downplaying the atrocity, In fact, I find it offensive that Japan's political leaders deny the Nanking Massacre, and pay homage to Japanese war criminals at Yasukuni Shrine. War criminals who were responsible for the Nanking Massacre, and other atrocities committed against Allied civilian, and military in the Second Sino-Japanese War, and World War II.

I just thought a reference (This reference http://spartacus-educational.com/USAsnowE.htm) had to explicitly say Nanking Massacre in order for it to be used in the wiki article, even though the reference obviously describes the Nanking Massacre. I even knew straight away in the reference that Edgar Snow was referring to the Nanking Massacre. (Greg723 (talk) 17:12, 7 January 2015 (UTC)).


 * Can we all just stop typing "Nanking" ? Please ? There are about three people in the entire world who properly pronounce that stupid Wade-Giles garbage. For everyone else, "nanjing" looks how the name of the city sounds. Sounds now, and has sounded for I dunno, the past thousand years or so ? N-A-N-J-I-N-G. Nan as in "south" and "jing" as in "capital". 南京 Why Mssrs Wade and Giles thought that using a k for a j sound was smart, I will never understand. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.160.68.16 (talk) 16:47, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The point is much the same, but "Nanking" is not Wade-Giles, but Chinese postal romanization, as are almost all the old place names. Wade-Giles would be "Nan-ching." ch (talk) 05:05, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

External links modified
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Not letting the Brady version replace mainstream views
I just rolled out a number of changes. They seem to come from one book that is available only in a Kindle version. "Making the Foreign Serve China: Managing Foreigners in the People's Republic (Asia/Pacific/Perspectives)". It sounds intensely partisan, and should be mentioned as just a viewpoint.

Saying 'Beiping' for Beijing is ideological. It is almost unknown except among Kuomintang enthusiasts. Anti-Mao books hardly ever use it. GwydionM (talk) 09:19, 30 June 2022 (UTC)


 * I am sorry to disagree with respected long-term fellow editor, with whom I share many interests and views, but the edits HEREare wrong on every point.
 * The edit summary is also wrong:
 * "Rolling out a collection of changes by a dedicated anti-Communist. Including saying Beiping, a Kuomintang change hardly anyone used . But insisting on a version not in the standard histories as if it were generally accepted."
 * Yikes! I am not now nor have I ever been a "dedicated anti-Communist."


 * When in 1928 the Nationalists established their government in Nanjing (Lit. Southern Capital), they officially renamed "Peking" (Postal Romanization for "Northern Capital") to "Beiping" (pinyin "Beiping", lit. "Northen Peace"). Simply not true that "hardly anyone" used "Beiping." It was official international usage. Snow used it in Red Star. After the Japanese occupation returned the name to Peking/ Beijing, patriotic Chinese insisted on "Beiping."


 * Even if being available "only in a Kindle version" were to disqualify a source (which it does not), Brady's book is widely available in hard-cover and paperback. Her information on Party leadership preparing Mao is also in Thomas' Season of High Adventure and several other Reliable Sources in English and Chinese.


 * These facts are not necessarily denigrating, but in any case they are the version in the "standard histories" that appeared after this evidence came to light (I don't count Jang Rung as a standard history).


 * The Xi'an Incident does not need to be explained here, but the info on Zhang's motives seems useful.


 * The roll-back restored the sentence "George Hatem (a friend of Agnes Smedley), who had written about the Chinese communists, but whose presence was kept secret for many years." This is ambiguous, as it seems that Smedley's presence was kept secret.


 * The rolled-back version is also more helpful, smooth, and correct. What is wrong with Party leadership wanting to present the world with their story? Why not mention that the articles were translated? In light of later accusations that Snow passed Mao off as an "agrarian reformer," what is wrong with saying that Mao was a "sincere Communist"? Anyway, what was wrong with being one?


 * In light of these considerations, I will restore the rolled-back edits, but am glad to discuss further. ch (talk) 19:31, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Hardly a single English-language book uses the terms Peiping. Beijing is even rarer, reflecting a shift in orthography that the People's Government made in the 1970s.

And the views of one book on Edgar Snow should not be allowed to replace the mainstream view held by most Western sources, however anti-Beijing.

But I have also found that the people dominating the Wiki mostly let their politics get in the way of being a good encyclopedia. I have had to give up correcting rubbish on other matters. Let someone else do the work, it they care.--GwydionM (talk) 07:41, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Not a translator
He spoke fairly good Chinese, but needed a translator for his long talk with Mao. He also never published any translation of a work in Chinese, as far as I know. GwydionM (talk) 08:46, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Is there any copies of Far eastern front available online? does this book even exist?
Has anyone got any information on this? Fidel-Lenin (talk) 20:26, 14 October 2023 (UTC)