Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and the first American social scientist permitted to conduct on-the-ground research in the People’s Republic of China, opens the course by introducing his book Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream Is the New Threat to World Order. Drawing on his unique history — living in Junan Commune in South China in 1979 after Deng Xiaoping personally intervened to approve his research visa — Mosher argues that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a bully in three senses: of its own people, of the Asian continent, and, in its ambitions, of the entire world. He traces the CCP’s founding in 1925 to Soviet Comintern operatives sent from Moscow to Shanghai, establishing that the Party was built from its inception to oppose democracy, the rule of law, and the freedoms enshrined in the American Bill of Rights. Mosher contends the CCP has effectively been at war with the United States since its founding, including through the period of engagement following Nixon and Kissinger’s opening to China, which he characterizes as a temporary CCP truce — not a genuine alliance — used to extract Western capital, science and technology, and market access while never intending to become a “responsible member” of the existing world order. The lecture closes by previewing the course’s central historical question: how totalitarianism took root in China, with roots tracing back to the Warring States period, centuries before Christ.
1 What was unique about Steven Mosher among the 1979 group of 50 American scholars sent to China?
2 Whose personal intervention allowed Mosher's research proposal to be approved?
3 According to Mosher, how many members does the Chinese Communist Party have, making it the largest political organization in history?
4 Who founded the Chinese Communist Party, and when?
5 Per Mosher, what was the CCP's actual motive for engaging with the United States after Nixon's opening to China?
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