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Thomas Arthur Bisson
Thomas Arthur Bisson, who wrote as T. A. Bisson (New York City, 1900–1979) was an American political writer, journalist, and government official who specialized in East Asian politics and economics.
In the 1920s and 1930s, he worked for the Foreign Policy Association and the Institute for Pacific Relations and wrote sympathetically about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
He served in the American government during World War II and then was an officer in the Occupation of Japan. He taught at University of California, Berkeley in the early 1950s but was let go after he came under criticism for his support of the CCP and because of accusations that he had been a wartime spy for the Soviet Union.
In the 1930s and the 1940s, Bisson wrote prolifically on China, Japan, India, Mongolia, international relations, politics, and economics for the American public in a series of books and pamphlets for the Foreign Policy Association. His most prominent book is Zaibatsu Dissolution in Japan (University of California Press, 1954).
Bisson graduated from Rutgers University in 1923, then went as a Presbyterian missionary to teach English and Classics in Anhui province, China, and then taught at Yenching University in Beijing. He studied the Chinese language and developed a sympathy for the anti-imperialist program of the Kuomintang, but was disheartened when Chiang Kai-shek gained control and crushed the left wing, including communists.
Bisson left China in 1928 to enroll at Columbia University. He left Columbia before he could finish the doctoral program, however, to work for the Foreign Policy Association, which had been founded in 1918 to inform the American public about world affairs. He later explained that at that time he had a wife and two children: "I went into politics to make a living."
Between 1934 and 1937, Bisson, under the pseudonym "Frederick Spencer," wrote dozens of articles supporting the CCP in China in China Today, a magazine edited by Philip Jaffe, a left-wing businessman and frequent collaborator with the American Communist Party. Financed by the FPA and the Rockefeller Foundation, he traveled in China, including a 1937 automobile trip that he and several friends, including Owen Lattimore and Philip Jaffe, made from Beijing to Yan'an to interview Mao Zedong and other CCP leaders. His book Japan in China (1938) was a detailed account of the recent Japanese invasion, based on his own extensive travels in China. Although it drew on his trip, Bisson did not publish his detailed account of the Yan'an visit until 1973, immediately after US President Richard Nixon went to China.
That book, Yenan in June 1937: Talks with the Communist Leaders, is his journal of a harrowing journey, complete with photographs of the CCP leaders and the travelers' canvas-topped touring car being towed out of mud by oxen and by local villagers.
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Thomas Arthur Bisson
Thomas Arthur Bisson, who wrote as T. A. Bisson (New York City, 1900–1979) was an American political writer, journalist, and government official who specialized in East Asian politics and economics.
In the 1920s and 1930s, he worked for the Foreign Policy Association and the Institute for Pacific Relations and wrote sympathetically about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
He served in the American government during World War II and then was an officer in the Occupation of Japan. He taught at University of California, Berkeley in the early 1950s but was let go after he came under criticism for his support of the CCP and because of accusations that he had been a wartime spy for the Soviet Union.
In the 1930s and the 1940s, Bisson wrote prolifically on China, Japan, India, Mongolia, international relations, politics, and economics for the American public in a series of books and pamphlets for the Foreign Policy Association. His most prominent book is Zaibatsu Dissolution in Japan (University of California Press, 1954).
Bisson graduated from Rutgers University in 1923, then went as a Presbyterian missionary to teach English and Classics in Anhui province, China, and then taught at Yenching University in Beijing. He studied the Chinese language and developed a sympathy for the anti-imperialist program of the Kuomintang, but was disheartened when Chiang Kai-shek gained control and crushed the left wing, including communists.
Bisson left China in 1928 to enroll at Columbia University. He left Columbia before he could finish the doctoral program, however, to work for the Foreign Policy Association, which had been founded in 1918 to inform the American public about world affairs. He later explained that at that time he had a wife and two children: "I went into politics to make a living."
Between 1934 and 1937, Bisson, under the pseudonym "Frederick Spencer," wrote dozens of articles supporting the CCP in China in China Today, a magazine edited by Philip Jaffe, a left-wing businessman and frequent collaborator with the American Communist Party. Financed by the FPA and the Rockefeller Foundation, he traveled in China, including a 1937 automobile trip that he and several friends, including Owen Lattimore and Philip Jaffe, made from Beijing to Yan'an to interview Mao Zedong and other CCP leaders. His book Japan in China (1938) was a detailed account of the recent Japanese invasion, based on his own extensive travels in China. Although it drew on his trip, Bisson did not publish his detailed account of the Yan'an visit until 1973, immediately after US President Richard Nixon went to China.
That book, Yenan in June 1937: Talks with the Communist Leaders, is his journal of a harrowing journey, complete with photographs of the CCP leaders and the travelers' canvas-topped touring car being towed out of mud by oxen and by local villagers.