It’s rare that I get to write about two female Chinese officials. Here I track the trajectories of China’s foreign ministry spin chief Hua Chunying and her only female predecessor, Kung Peng, in the 30s-60s. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-china-us-showdown-beijings-steely-propagandist-sharpens-her-attack/2020/05/21/f71133e4-94bd-11ea-87a3-22d324235636_story.html

In the 30s, Kung Peng was the main wartime conduit for Mao’s troops to Westerners. A former secretary for Zhou Enlai, she tutored historian John K. Fairbank in Chinese & struck up friendships with US diplomats, with one even donating blood to her husband
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/oral-histories/service3#258

It was a different era - contemporaneous reports on Kung almost all comment on her good looks - but she was effective. NYT ran a headline in 1944 calling Mao’s camp a “wonderland.” Her daughter wrote that Kung’s foreign friends voluntarily helped her pass along information.

During the 50s McCarthy hearings, US diplomats, Fairbank, the NYT corro & others came under scrutiny for their friendships with Kung & efforts to help her publish overseas her memoir on joining the Party. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=vxApA9rf9i4C&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA1549

Kung was purged, and her husband, China’s fourth foreign minister, was purged. He was rehabilitated on his deathbed by Xi Jinping’s father. The year Kung passed away, 1970, Hua Chunying was born in a China just beginning to open to the West (Nixon met Mao in 72).

Hua was an English major at Nanjing University in 89 when pro-democracy protests by fellow students disrupted classes & brought city traffic to a standstill for wks. The Nanjing students built a Democracy Wall on campus and launched hunger strikes.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14672715.1992.10412992

As spokesperson, she's known for a wry disdain that's often lost in translation, eg her replying to a Q on US trade talks w/ just a mirthless fake laugh, "huh huh," which went viral in China. Ministry translators were at a loss; English transcript says, "Hmm. How interesting."

This was a meandering stroll, but there’s a point here somewhere - perhaps, that fake news isn’t new, it’s always been part of the diplomatic arsenal & it works. When enough people believe something, it can become the future.

So worth looking closely at the DC and Beijing narratives, even when we know some of it is fiction.