Politics & Power Quote by Anna Louise Strong

You can hear the recruitment pitch inside the travel advice. Strong isn’t merely noting that Americans are “already in Peking”; she’s laundering the extraordinary through the mundane, implying China is accessible, survivable, even already vetted by the right kind of visitors. The phrase “a certain number” is deliberately vague, a soft-focus statistic that functions like social proof: others have gone, therefore you can go, therefore you should go.

Her real target is domestic. China is framed less as a place to understand than as a tool to use: “very useful for the United States and especially for the Left-wing progressive movement.” That “especially” gives away the game. Strong imagines the tour not as cultural exchange but as political technology - a way to import legitimacy, morale, and imagery back home. Students are the ideal carriers: impressionable, mobile, and rhetorically potent. If they come back convinced, they can become living pamphlets.

The subtext is Cold War triangulation. Writing in an era when “Red China” was an American obsession and diplomatic nonrecognition shaped public knowledge, Strong is proposing an end-run around official channels. Travel becomes counter-propaganda: firsthand experience as a weapon against U.S. anti-communist narratives. Yet the candor about usefulness also reveals the ethical blur. She’s not pretending neutrality; she’s advocating a curated encounter designed to produce a political effect. The line between witness and instrument is the point, and that tension is why the quote still crackles.