This free issue of the newsletter is an excerpt from Bloomberg journalist Peter Martin’s new book China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy. We chose the chapter about Edgar Snow, the American journalist who introduced Mao to the world.

Snow is very popular again this year, with multiple official calls for journalists like him in this New Era, including at the first Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference this year:

The year 2021 will be of historic significance to China as we will celebrate the CPC's centenary. In the 1930s and 1940s, when the then Kuomintang government sealed off Yan'an and spared no efforts to "demonize" the CPC, foreign journalists like Americans Edgar Snow, Anna Louise Strong and Agnes Smedley, curious about who and what the CPC is, chose to blend in with the CPC members in Yan'an after going through various difficulties to get there, where they wrote many objective reports as well as works like the famous Red Star over China, giving the wor…