Borodin’s tools in promoting communism in China were his organizational capabilities, personal impression, and “extraordinary intellect and encyclopedic knowledge”, especially of Marxism and Western philosophy and history (69). Officially, Lenin sent him to China as an adviser to Sun Yat-sen, who led a separate nationalist régime in Guangzhou (Canton).

Borodin arrived in Beijing in 1923, proceeding to Guangzhou on October 6. His message to the GMD, only partly accepted, included land distribution; raising workers’ wages; and shortening their workdays. He regarded these land and labour reforms as a basis for uniting the [Communist Party of China] and the GMD — and China.

According to Russian sources, a group of Americans, probably antisemitic, asked Sun Yat-sen if he had known Borodin’s real name. Sun reportedly replied: “I Know”, it is “Lafayette” (as cited in Jacobs, 1981, 126). Unlike other Jewish Soviet agents who, while in Kaifeng, established relations with the remnants of the Jewish community there (155), Borodin’s interests lay elsewhere. His efforts focused on the communists whose influence in the GMD grew quickly, also thanks to him.

[…]

Among the Jewish activists who associated themselves with Chinese communism were a number of Americans. Sidney Rittenberg was one of them. Influenced by his grandfather (on his mother’s side), who had been a Russian Jewish revolutionary, Rittenberg joined the American Communist Party in 1940 when he was eighteen, and enlisted in the US Army in 1942. Instead of Japanese, he decided to study Chinese, planning to go to China and support the Chinese revolution, hoping to create a better world (Rittenberg & Bennet, 1993: 13, 31, 144).⁷

When he arrived in China in September 1945, the war was over. As a Jew living in South Carolina, he “never felt completely accepted”. Aware of his religion “I found some comfort in Bible stories and old hymns, but I didn’t believe in a personal God (161).” Usually, Chinese he met did not know what a Jew was.

He began to meet Chinese communists and, as a soldier free to move, did them modest favours — including helping several underground activists to escape from the police. He noticed that, occasionally, people preferred the [Imperial] occupiers to the brutalities of the Nationalist Government.

Sometime by late 1946 or early 1947, Rittenberg became a Party member, approved by the top communist leaders, including Mao, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Ren Bishi and Zhu De (92–93). He was the first U.S. citizen to become a [Communist Party of China] member (Charzuk, 2019). His main rôle was to make information about communist victories — discounted and ignored outside China — available to the West.

[…]

While secular, Epstein studied and knew Jewish religious and historical stories and he — and his family — never concealed their Jewishness nor changed his name. However he, and his parents, rejected theism and Zionism. Instead, he adopted communism, and considered it his mission to propagate China’s version to the outside world. He worked for news agencies like UPI (United Press International) and newspapers (The New York Times).

In his writings, Epstein was “a tireless champion of the [Chinese] United Front (Messmer, 2012: 208).” One of China Reconstructs founders, he became, in May 1979, its editor-in-chief. In 1983, he was admitted to the CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference). Half of its ten non-Chinese members at one time were Jewish (209). Jews played constructive rôles in most of China’s media, directed to the outside world.

I am reluctant to recommend this paper given its at times condescending tone (‘Bolshevism was supposed to cure social evils everywhere’) and questionable conclusions (‘Stalin’s antisemitism’), but if I knew of a good alternative I would share that instead.

Further reading: ‘Jews in China: Legends, History, and New Perspectives’