George Hatem or Ma Haide – his acquired Chinese name can be loosely translated to mean “Horse” or “Virtue from the Sea” – became the first foreigner to be granted citizenship of the People’s Republic of China

At noon on July 22 1944, a C-47 transport plane loaded with nine American passengers approached a large airfield outside the Chinese Communist capital at Yan’an in Shaanxi province. The pilot, Captain Robert Champion, had found the town by locating a pagoda on a hill nearby. The field lacked a control tower but some members of the crowd below signalled where it was to land. The plane was rolling perfectly when the left wheel suddenly fell into an unmarked grave and the aircraft lurched and dropped to one side. The left-engine propeller sheared off and crashed into the pilot’s compartment, missing Champion’s head by inches. The American ‘Dixie’ mission had come to Communist China.

The Communists, led by Mao Zedong, had made this arid, desert country their headquarters having first arrived there on 22 October 1935. They had been chased out of their former base in faraway Jiangxi province into a circling retreat to evade pursuit by Mao’s nemesis, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang’s (KMT or Chinese National Party) troops in October 1934. This epic ‘Long March’ saw the Red Army of 86,000 troops traverse 9,000 kilometres over 370 days, passing across some of the most difficult terrain in China. Of those who originally set out, fewer than 5,000 accompanied Mao into Shaanxi.

Even after their escape, the weak and vulnerable Communists were still on the point of annihilation by the Kuomintang. Disaster was only narrowly averted on 12 December 1936 with the unexpected kidnapping of Chiang Kai-Shek in Xi’an. He was taken prisoner by the 34-year-old Zhang Xueliang, more generally known as the ‘Young Marshal’ (to distinguish him from his father, the ‘Old Marshal’ of Manchuria). The younger Zhang, a former warlord ally of Chiang, had come to the conclusion that the Nationalists should form a united front with the Communists to oppose the invading Japanese who had taken his homeland from him. The Generalissimo was coerced by Zhang into focusing his military efforts primarily on the Japanese in return for his freedom. The Communists were thus given a vital breathing space. Zhang however would be punished by spending the next half century as Chiang’s prisoner, kept in houses and caves all over China before being flown to Taiwan in 1946 where he was eventually released over forty-five years later.

By 1944 the Chinese Nationalists were fighting the Japanese in the South with U.S financial and logistical assistance, based at Chongqing in Sichuan province. The Communists were still based at Yan’an in the North. Neither would fully commit their forces against the Japanese. Both reserving their strength for the final conflict between them to come.

Throughout most of the Second World War, the US had been dealing solely with Chiang Kai-Shek and his forces in the South. However, President Roosevelt had become increasingly frustrated with the Generalissimo’s (nicknamed “cash-my-cheque”) corrupt, authoritarian, and increasingly unpopular regime’s ability to prosecute the war effectively.

The United States Army Observatory Group, commonly known as the Dixie Mission, was the first US effort to establish official relations with the Communists. Its purpose was to evaluate their potential as a wartime and post-war ally first hand, both politically (through John Service of the US State Department) and militarily (through Colonel Barrett of the US Army). It was essentially an intelligence mission.

After the C-47 landed, Zhou Enlai (Mao’s skilled and able diplomat) along with a group of senior Communist officials came to greet the Americans at the airfield. They were taken by truck to their quarters in Yan’an’s spartan and simply furnished ‘cave’ complex which was actually a series of dug tunnels in the region’s loess hills where most of the people lived. In stark contrast to the perfidious atmosphere in Nationalist Chongqing, Yan’an seemingly exuded an aura of romance, gallant youth, courage and high thinking due to the extraordinary collection of people gathered there.

Mao welcomed the contact and was keen to highlight the Communist’s comparative virtue. Indeed, he made every effort to be frank, open and willing to tell the Americans what they wanted to know about the strength and disposition of Japanese Forces in North China and the Red Army’s effectiveness in dealing with them.

Many foreigners, in the spirit of internationalism, had already come to Yan’an and offered to help the Communists. Among them was George Hatem, an American-born physician of Lebanese descent.

Hatem had first arrived in China in 1933 to work as a young doctor in Shanghai. Not originally planning to remain long, he soon chose complete immersion. Struck by the vast inequality and hardship suffered by the countless poor, in 1936 he went with the writer Edgar Snow to Yan’an to help serve the Communist Army’s medical needs. Snow was an American journalist known for his books and articles on Communism in China. He was the first Western journalist to give a full account of the Chinese Communist Party following the Long March and is best known for his famous 1937 book Red Star Over China. ¹

In Yan’an, Hatem and Snow met with Mao and many other Chinese Communist Party leaders. Hatem decided to stay there after becoming fully acquainted with the Party and its policies. He immediately set up a clinic in Yan’an to deliver medical care and soon became a member of the Party. Subsequently appointed chief medical advisor to the Red Army, Mao Zedong and Zhu Enlai were among his patients. Hatem gave himself a Chinese name and took a Chinese wife exhibiting a determination to spend the remainder of his medical career in China.

Hatem’s life is documented in Sidney Shapiro’s Ma Haide: The Saga of American Doctor George Hatem in China². Shapiro, another American who became a Communist after moving to China and a close friend of Hatem’s, gives an insightful though somewhat saccharine account of Hatem’s life. The consistent themes of which were both his inspiring devotion to the eradication of disease in China and unwavering loyalty to the Party.

During the Second World War Hatem served in various medical capacities, including work in military medicine, surgery, public health, teaching and in an advisory capacity to the medical services of the Red Army. He helped broadcast the news in English via the Party’s fledgling Xinhua News Agency and transcribed news items reported by foreign broadcasting stations. Consequently, he was highly regarded by the top revolutionary leaders which meant that in addition to his role in public health, he served as an adviser to the Foreign Affairs Group in the Party’s Central Committee.

Hatem was present at Yan’an when the Dixie Mission arrived in July 1944. ‘Doc Ma’ was a source of surprise and comfort for many of the Americans when they met him. Schapiro observes: ³

‘George visited the newcomers as soon as they were settled into their cave-dwelling quarters. They were surprised and pleased to find a fellow American who knew the language and the people, who could show them around and answer their many questions. They spent a great deal of time together over the next few months. They did quite a lot of singing and beer drinking. George and several of the boys became quite good friends. The men called at Hatem’s cave dwelling very often. They were curious about the kind of people who migrated to Yan’an…Most of them couldn’t understand what he was doing in the “wilderness” as they called it, when he could be home in North Carolina “drinking mint juleps and sparking the girls”’.

No doubt at Mao’s behest, Hatem encouraged the Group to go anywhere and inspect anything they wanted to see. Shapiro quotes Hatem telling them:“All you have to do is ask. Maybe you think we’re just putting on an act here. Well, we can’t put on an act all over the country”. ⁴

The Communist’s positive PR message and their apparent clear-sightedness and clean living seemed to the Americans eminently reasonable. They were sick of the run-around they had been getting from the Kuomintang generals and liked the straightforward way the Communists seemed to operate. Foreign Officer Service wrote many favourable reports to the American military and government leadership. As Schapiro writes: ⁵

‘Service was fascinated and a bit surprised to meet this hitherto nameless man of mystery Ma Haide on arrival at Yan’an. The diplomat soon became “Jack” to George, who proved very helpful in enabling Service to form a relatively well-rounded picture of the Communist Border Region’

The Dixie Mission marked the beginning of a rising tide of American sympathy for the Party with Hatem doing what he could to foster support among the men.

However, some of the observers – like Foreign Officer Service – would later be persecuted for their credulity in the 1950s by the likes of Senator McCarthy. This right-wing reaction was not entirely unfair. Missing from the intelligence being sent back to the US was any mention of the Communist’s drug running. In 1943 a million boxes of opium were exported, raising $2 billion with revenue going up 10 times the following year. More pertinently, there was also no mention made of Mao’s Rectification Campaign, which he had launched to ensure that he and his doctrine remained dominant. This involved the forced extraction of confessions from leading figures and a purge of “enemy agents”. Hundreds were paraded to admit their guilt. A foretaste of what was to come on a much vaster scale. Mao had been consolidating his dictatorship with a mixture of force, fear, manipulation and personal magnetism. By July 1943 over a thousand had been detained by his infamous hatchet man Kang Sheng (who would later mentor the Khmer Rouge).

There was no question that Hatem was unaware of this darker side of Yan’an. As Schapiro writes:⁶

‘The party Central Committee decided to conduct a “Rectification Movement” – an educational campaign in the various liberated areas all over China. Under the leadership of Kang Sheng, it soon deteriorated into a virulent witch hunt. No charge was considered too fanciful. For the first time it was brought home to George that not all Chinese Communist leaders were of equal calibre. Casualties were high among victims stubborn enough to refuse to confess to crimes they hadn’t committed. People suffered mental breakdowns. There were suicides. The result was utter confusion. Government units were unable to function. Finally, in 1945 a “re-screening” was instituted. Fresh checks were made on all accusations. They turned out mostly to be completely without foundation. Mao convened a huge meeting in which he announced the innocence of all the slandered. He apologised and bowed deeply to the assembled thousands. The Rectification Movement would not, he hoped, sour their attitude toward the Chinese Communist Party. “If your mother wrongfully struck you, surely you would not hold it against her…” A residue of bitterness remained however. No action was ever taken against Kang Sheng who continued to climb ever higher in the Party hierarchy. Yet George remained fully committed. Neither Kang Sheng or the excesses of the Rectification Movement could ever shake his faith. Mao’s apology was enough for George. He remained convinced that the Party as an organisation was sound’.

As a committed member of the Party living in China, Schapiro perhaps understandably doesn’t probe or try to deconstruct the basis of Hatem’s unwavering loyalty too hard in his biography. Yet the questions remained to be asked, particularly after Mao achieved ultimate victory against the Nationalists in 1949. Indeed, it was the Party’s collective silence which enabled Mao to project his hellish vision of the future unchallenged for decades until his death.

As a reward for both his devotion to the sick and his loyalty to the Party, Hatem was secretly granted Chinese citizenship in 1950. The first foreigner to be so honoured, and one of the few people not born in China ever to hold such a position of trust and authority in the People’s Republic of China. He retained his American passport only until the 1960s. To do so afterwards, to be seen as less than totally immersed after the onset of the Cultural Revolution would have been extraordinarily unwise.