The KMT’s act of self-humiliation is reminiscent of what happened in 1948, when it was being buffeted by the storm of the Chinese Civil War. In January of that year, a group of KMT members established the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang (中國國民黨革命委員會), which supported the CCP’s call, as one of its “May Day slogans,” to establish a democratic coalition government. In so doing, the committee sent a friendly message to the CCP. Today, the committee is a subordinate organization of the CCP, with its headquarters on humble Donghuangchenggen S Street in Beijing’s Dongcheng District (東城).

When I began my study of Chinese Communist thought reform in the 1950s, the Western world had heard mostly about thought reform as applied in a military setting: the coerced bacteriological warfare confessions and the collaboration obtained from American (and other United Nations) prisoners during the Korean War. However, these were merely export versions of a thought reform program aimed not primarily at Westerners, but at the Chinese people themselves, and vigorously applied in universities, schools, special revolutionary collages, prisons, business and government offices, and labor and peasant organizations.

[Photo shows Steel sitting on a coach emblazoned with DAVID STEEL'S LIBERAL BATTLE BUS. Photo caption reads:] STEEL'S ON WHEELS: Setting off from the National Liberal Club in his battle bus.

I hazarded the loss of whom I loved.