John Roderick (correspondent) - China

China

Roderick remained in China as an Associated Press reporter after World War II. His first major postwar assignment was to cover the breakdown in relations between the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang government and the Chinese Communist forces led by Mao Zedong. The two sides had collaborated to fight the Japanese during World War II, but had turned on each other following the defeat of Japan. Like many of the other American, British and Australian war correspondents, Roderick was a military veteran of a war (World War II).

Roderick was 31 years old when he began living with leaders of the Chinese Communist rebel movement for seven months between 1945 and 1947. He resided with the rebel leadership, who included Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Jiang Qing and other guerilla leaders, at their headquarters in a series of caves in Yan'an, China. The city of Yan'an, which is located in central China, had been devastated by Japanese aerial bombings in 1938. Thus, by the mid-1940s it was largely composed of thousands of caves which had been dug out of the hills that surrounded the city and the nearby Gobi Desert. The Communist rebels, as well as reporters, such as Roderick, used the caves as a place to live and conduct their raids against their Japanese and Kuomintang opponents. Mao Zedong had been based in the city since 1935 as Ya'an was at the end of Mao's Long March.

Roderick lived at Ya'an (also called Yenan) in the same way as everyone else, including the Communist leadership. He lived and slept in a tiny cave with a makeshift bed and a pillow filled with sand. He filed his reports and typed out stories with a portable typewriter, which was next to a charcoal brazier. He observed Mao Zedong and other leaders during meal times, dances and lectures, which he would later chronicled in his book, "Covering China."

Roderick initially admired Mao Zedong and his supporters for their ideas saying, "I admired the fact that they were trying to do something for the poor Chinese." However, unlike other reporters, such as Edgar Snow, Roderick was never a full supporter of their goals. His opinion of Mao became much more negative following Mao takeover of China. Roderick disliked the brutality of Mao's rule which he observed, as well as the failure of many of his policies, such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Roderick famously called Jiang Qing (Mme Mao) “that evil bitch” long before she became known as a key member of the Gang of Four during the 1970s.

After he left Ya'an, Roderick covered the breakdown of peace talks between the Communists and the Kuomintang as well as the ensuing Chinese Civil War from Beijing. He continued to cover the Chinese Civil War from Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing.

In 1948, Roderick was sent by the Associated Press to the Middle East to cover the establishment of the state of Israel. However, he remained engaged with China and its politics throughout his career. Though he often worked outside of China, he became known as a leading "China watcher" during the 1950s. He often studied scraps of information and Chinese Communist government news dispatches for clues to what was going on behind the scenes in China. Roderick though disliked to be called a "China watcher."

British Reuters correspondent David Chipp was allowed to open a Reuters news office in Beijing in 1956, passing over Roderick and the Associated Press. (The British government had informal relations with the Communist government at the time, while the American government did not.) Roderick was forced to report on China from Hong Kong and Tokyo. Finally, in 1971 Roderick was able to return to China when he accompanied the United States ping pong team on a trip to the country in 1971. The so-called "Ping Pong Diplomacy" was the first time that Americans had been invited to China since 1949.

Roderick was able to reopen the Associated Press bureau in Beijing in 1979, following the normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. He became head of the Beijing bureau.