15 Facts About Jack Belden

Jack Belden was an American war correspondent who covered the Japanese invasion of China, the Second World War in Europe, and the Chinese Civil War in the late 1940s.

Jack Belden acquired fluent Chinese and in 1942 accompanied General Joseph Stilwell on the Chinese Army's retreat from Burma.

Jack Belden learned Chinese and eventually got a job covering local courts for Shanghai's English-language newspapers.

Jack Belden was noted for getting closer to the action than most of the international press corps who, hampered by their inability to speak the language, usually stayed close to official sources of information.

In 1942, Jack Belden earned some fame for being the only reporter who remained with Stilwell in Burma when the American General and his headquarters staff were cut off by the invading Japanese.

Jack Belden went on to cover the war for Life in North Africa and Europe.

Again, Jack Belden distinguished himself by getting as close to the combat and the people fighting it as possible.

Correspondent Don Whitehead, who would go on to win two Pulitzer Prizes declared that Jack Belden had inspired him.

When Whitehead asked where he had been, Jack Belden replied that he had been at the front with the troops.

In 1943, Jack Belden's leg was shattered by machine-gun fire during the Salerno invasion.

Jack Belden's best remembered work was his last, which joins Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, Graham Peck's Two Kinds of Time, and Theodore White and Annalee Jacoby's Thunder Out of China as classics which shaped Western understanding of the Chinese Revolution.

Jack Belden devoted sections to village personalities: Gold Flower, the story of an abused woman; Field Mouse, a guerilla commander; The Beggar Writer; and the Guerilla Girl.

Jack Belden goes on to make a strong second point: while the local village revolution had the potential for democratic progress, Mao's national revolution had the potential for despotism.

Jack Belden published China Shakes the World in 1949, when the American public had lost interest in reports from China.

Jack Belden eventually returned to Paris, where he died in 1989.