A recently released book by a New York Times diplomatic correspondent offers a deeply personal and riveting account of his father’s experiences in Communist China. In At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China, author Edward Wong explains how Yook Kearn Wong became enamoured with the ruling Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao Zedong.
The author integrates this family history with stories about modern China’s economic resurgence and increasing authoritarianism under President Xi Jinping. Wong was a New York Times correspondent in China from 2008 to 2016.
In the wake of the Chinese Civil War, Yook moved to Beijing. His brother, Sam, on the other hand, immigrated to the United States, where he became an engineer in the U.S. Army.
In 1950, Wong’s dad even took part in a parade of military officials, students, and workers in Tiananmen Square in front of Mao. Not long after, Wong’s father joined the army, hoping to fight U.S. forces in Korea.
However, Yook ended up being dispatched to Xinjiang in western China, where he remained for six years. Wong’s dad hoped to join the Communist Party of China but his application was rejected.
In a recent interview with U.S. author Walter Isaacson on the PBS program Amanpour & Co., Wong said that his father believed that he could help build China into a stronger nation. He eventually became disenchanted by the level of mistrust and fled to Hong Kong, which was then under British rule. Yook was born into a merchant family in Hong Kong. That elevated the prospect of him being labelled as a counterrevolutionary.
Moreover, Wong said that his dad experienced hunger and fill ill along with his classmates during the Great Leap Forward. This was Mao’s term for a massive campaign of rapid industrialization in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which resulted in a widespread famine. It killed an estimated 23 million to 55 people.
Edward Wong speaks to Walter Isaacson on Amanpour & Co.
Wong calls Xi a “princeling”
Because Wong’s mother was from the land-owning class, her family fled to Hong Kong much earlier.
In his interview on Amanpour & Co., Wong spoke about the motivations of Xi, who views himself as a “core leader” like Mao and Deng Xiaoping. Furthermore, Xi’s father was a major figure in the party who was punished during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. However, he rose to great power again under Deng. As a result, Xi views himself as a “guardian of the Communist revolution”.
“He comes from red royalty,” Wong declared. “He’s a princeling.”
Wong pointed out that China reconstituted its empire under Communist rule by sending troops into Tibet in the 1950s. More recently, Xi crushed nationalist aspirations in Xinjiang, home to approximately 12 million Muslims.
“I say in the book that one of Xi’s big fears is what happened to the Soviet Union,” Wong stated. “He talked about that privately with President Biden in a dinner in 2011 in China. He’s talked about that in private speeches with Communist Party officials.
“I dug all that out for the book. When he talks about that, he has this idea in his head the Soviet territories—like the Central Asian territories—really leaving the empire,” the author continued. “And I think he has a great fear of that in China. And so, the increasing use of force and paranoia and the idea of China as a state that must maintain internal security is ever-present for Xi because of this.”
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