Exclusive Interview with author Steven W. Mosher
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Steven W. Mosher – China expert, Catholic convert, staunch pro-lifer and president of the Population Research Institute (PRI) – recently spoke with Souls and Liberty about his latest book, The Devil and Communist China: From Mao Down to Xi.
The work is part history, detailing China's descent into a Communist hell in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is part theology, cataloguing Mao Zedong's breach of every commandment of the Decalogue and the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) subsequent move to sinicize all religious belief.
It is also part autobiography, narrating Mosher's up-close-and-personal witness in 1980 of the CCP's implementation of the murderous One-Child Policy – an experience that awakened him to the demonic nature of Communism, and turned him toward pro-life advocacy and religious belief.
In a moment of profound reflection, Mosher told Souls and Liberty how he believed that the almost full-term babies he saw aborted during his time in China were sacrificially responsible for his conversion from a pro-abortion atheist to a pro-life, practicing Catholic. He says he remains eternally grateful to them for their ultimate act of redemptive suffering.
Mosher himself describes The Devil and Communist China as "a cautionary tale of the evil that awaits us if we abandon God," nothing that it is written especially for younger cohorts, many of whom are deceived about the essential wickedness of Communism and view it as a benign system of communal sharing.
Souls and Liberty: Why did you write this book, and what audience are you targeting?
Steven W. Mosher: I wrote this book for younger generations – the ones we call Millennials, Gen Z'ers and Gen X'ers. They are the ones who have been miseducated, indeed propagandized, by the schools and by social media into believing that Communism is not entirely bad and that true evil doesn't exist. The Devil and Communist China is the antidote to this mind poison.
Anyone who is worried that their children and grandchildren have been deceived into voting for those who would take America down the socialist road to ruin needs to get this book into their hands. It will show them that Communism leads to death.
S&L: What inspired the title? Why not just call it 'The Dangers of Communist China'?
Mosher: As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, "Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all of their political and economic pretensions."
That hatred, which Mao shared, is ultimately diabolical in nature. Chairman Mao Zedong, the founder of Communist China, proudly referred to himself as wu fa wu tian – a Chinese phrase meaning that he was both "godless and lawless."
"Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin ... hatred of God is the principal driving force ..."
And, as it happens, when Mao was a boy, his mother forced him to worship a stone "god" not far from their village. During the course of this pagan ritual, Mao was even given a new name. He was renamed "Third Son of the Monolith," a name which has echoes of the demonic. Placing young Mao under the protection of the spirit – or demon – thought to live there may have opened him to demonic influence at an early age.
S&L: A reader walks away from your book persuaded that Communism – especially, as you explained, in China – is the antithesis of Christianity. Say more about that.
Mosher: The difference between atheistic Communism and Christianity spans the distance between Heaven and Hell. Here, I like to compare and contrast the thoughts of Chairman Mao and Abp. Fulton Sheen.
It is hard to imagine two men who had less in common than the leading Chinese Communist and the saintly archbishop. Yet they strongly agreed on one thing. Communism, they both insisted, was inspired not by love but by hate, and that it was precisely that hate that gave it its terrible power to destroy.
"Communism is Christianity's evil twin."
Mao, for his part, exulted in the destructive power that this hate unleashed. "Communism is not love," he once gloated. Driving the point home, he added, "Communism is a hammer we use to crush the enemy." Coming from someone who wielded the hammer of Communism so effectively that he became the greatest mass murderer in human history, Mao's description of Communism as "hate weaponized" should give us all pause.
While Mao was celebrating the deadly utility of Communism, Abp. Fulton Sheen was at pains to distinguish this ideology of hate from its opposite, Christianity, which is centered upon love. In his first book, entitled The Cross and the Beatitudes, he wrote, "In contrast to [the] Christian philosophy of forgiveness, there exists for the first time in the history of the world a philosophy and a political and social system based not on love, but on hate, and that is Communism."
"Godless and lawless" – Communism is Christianity's evil twin.
S&L: You describe the Chinese Communist Party as "the biggest killing machine in human history." Can you expound on that?
Mosher: The CCP killing machine cut a wide swath through the Chinese population over the past century. The Black Book of Communism [a catalogue of Communism's crimes published in 1999] estimated that the total death toll from 20th century Communism approached 100 million, and that the CCP was responsible for 65 million of those deaths.
The thought that two-thirds of the total victims of Communism died at the hands of the criminal enterprise known as the Chinese Communist Party is horrifying enough. But 40 years of studying the People's Republic of China (PRC) has convinced me that the figure of 65 million given in The Black Book of Communism is actually an underestimate.
"Only God knows the exact number of those killed by Chinese Communism, but by my calculations, the number is close to 500 million — a truly insane level of butchery."
Two major campaigns, each of which produced tens of millions of additional casualties, must be added to the list. The first major addition to this figure would be the 45 million or more Chinese who were starved to death by the Communists from 1960-62 in the worst famine in human history.
The second, even greater addition to this number, are the 400 million tiny victims, both born and unborn, of the CCP's long-running One-Child Policy, a policy of which Mao was the godfather.
Only God knows the exact number of those killed by Chinese Communism, but by my calculations, the number is close to 500 million – a truly insane level of butchery.
S&L: You've said that your year-long stint in China as a graduate student in 1980 changed your views on abortion, overpopulation – and God. Please explain.
Mosher: I had been taught at Stanford – one of America's high temples of secular humanism – that Mao's Communist Revolution had been a great success, that China's poverty was a result of its overpopulation, and that an abortion had no more significance than a tooth extraction.
Once I arrived in China, I soon realized that everything I had been taught was a lie. The Communist Revolution had been a disaster for China and its people. China's continued poverty was not the result of "overpopulation," but because the Chinese people were being viciously exploited by the criminal enterprise known as the Chinese Communist Party.
"The Communist Revolution had been a disaster for China and its people."
As far as abortion is concerned, when the One-Child Policy began in 1980, I found myself in an operating room where Red Army doctors were preparing to forcibly abort a woman who was eight months pregnant. Witnessing an actual, real-life abortion – by cesarean section, no less – in all its gruesome detail made me pro-life. A tiny son of Adam, perfect in every detail of his anatomy, had been executed by government fiat. I could not help but mourn his passing — and recognize abortion as a great evil.
This led me on a search for the good which, because God is the source of all goodness, led me to Him. On a beautiful Easter Sunday in 1991, I was confirmed in the Catholic Church.
S&L: What was Mao's attitude toward Catholics and Catholicism?
Mosher: As a Communist, who wanted the people to worship the state and claimed sovereignty over their very souls, Mao hated all religions. There was no room for God in their calculations because they were going to take His place – or try to.
"As soon as Mao took power, he began brutally suppressing Christians in general and Catholics in particular."
But he reserved a particular animus towards Catholics and Catholicism. He regarded the Vatican as a hostile foreign power, and Catholic missionaries as no better than "terrorists" and "Nazis." As soon as Mao took power, he began brutally suppressing Christians in general and Catholics in particular.
Missionaries were accused of being spies and either deported or sent to prison. A few, like Maryknoll bishop Francis X. Ford, now Servant of God, were tortured to death.
S&L: What is the current state of Catholicism — the situation of Catholics — in China, given the attacks on it from the days of Mao to today's regime under President Xi Jinping?
Mosher: Xi Jinping, like Mao, is utterly hostile to religion. The so-called Sino-Vatican Agreement has been a disaster for the Catholic Church in China. It is being used – wrongly, according to the Vatican – to strong-arm Catholics in China to join the Catholic Patriotic Association [a Communist-backed "Catholic" group loyal to Beijing, not Rome].
Moreover, whatever provision the still-secret agreement made for the joint appointment of bishops has been violated by the CCP, which recently appointed a new bishop in Shanghai without consulting the Vatican.
All Catholic churches are expected to promote the CCP and socialism. Those who don't, according to a recent directive on the "Sinicization of Religion," will be considered "foreign hostile forces and extremist forces that are using religion to infiltrate and sabotage [China]."
S&L: In your opinion, how close is the United States to devolving into a Communist state like China?
Mosher: We are closer to the abyss at this moment than many think. Many of our federal agencies – I think here of the FBI and the National Security Division of the DOJ – are hopelessly corrupted and simply need to be shut down.
As far as the leading Democrats are concerned, Kamala Harris is clearly what we call a "red diaper baby," raised by people of Communist sympathies. Kamala's father, Donald Harris, was a Marxist economist at Stanford University when I was there in the 1980s.
Her mother is of like mind. Her hackneyed ideas about "free" housing, medical care, and price controls comes directly out of the socialist playbook.
"Compared to Biden, Harris and Walz’s relationship with the CCP is even more dangerous because it is not primarily financial but ideological."
Tim Walz, for his part, made 30 trips to China on the CCP's dime, taking groups of American students on what were in fact propaganda tours of the Communist giant. As a China hand of longstanding, I can assure you that the CCP would not have been funding Walz's trips to China without an expectation of a return on their "investment" in their "good friend." And they got one: Walz frequently argues that we should not treat China as an adversary.
Joe Biden's relationship with the CCP was transactional: they paid him and his family handsomely in return for changes in American policy. In my view, Harris and Walz's relationship with the CCP is even more dangerous because it is not primarily financial but ideological. At least one, and maybe both, are true believers.
If they are elected in November, America's continued existence as a Republic of the people, for the people, and by the people will be under serious threat.
S&L: Do you see parallels between Mao's political modus operandi and that of contemporary American politicians?
Mosher: In my view, the leaders of the Democrat Party are as godless and lawless as Mao. They are careful to frame everything they do as a defense of "our democracy," while at the same time deviously trying to undermine it by rigging elections, undermining free speech, and encouraging violence against their political opponents.
Mao, likewise, claimed to be a great admirer of democracy during the civil war, only to create a rigid Communist dictatorship once in power.
"[T]he leaders of the Democrat Party are as godless and lawless as Mao."
Like Mao, to distract attention from their radical socialist agenda, Harris and Walz engage in malicious fictions. Among other things, they continuously lie that Trump plans to cut Social Security and Medicare (he has pledged to protect it), that Project 2025 is his platform (it is a creation of the Heritage Foundation), and that he is "only out for himself." (His net worth declined while he was in office.)
Mao also propagated endless lies about his political adversaries, both before and after the Communist Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution, for instance, he pilloried some of his closest comrades as "capitalist roaders" and had them killed.
Only the hand of God saved Trump from being felled by an assassin's bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
S&L: In the upcoming US presidential elections, a Democratic win will most assuredly usher Communism into the nation. No doubt, the CCP is hoping for, even supporting, a Harris-Walz ticket. What do you say?
Mosher: The CCP is indeed hoping that Harris and Walz, who are ideologically aligned with them, will be elected, and that the US economy and military will continue the downward decline that started under Obama and continued under Biden. This will give China a free hand in the South China Sea and the Western Pacific, not to mention in wider parts of the world.
S&L: I've read that your book is set to become part of junior and senior high school-level curriculum. Can you tell us more about that effort?
Mosher: Florida has recently passed legislation, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which mandates the teaching of the history of Communism in public schools from kindergarten through 12th grade, starting in the 2026-27 school year.
The Devil and Communist China will be used as a reference work in Florida's new curriculum and will be helpful in exposing the dangers and evils of Communism in China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia.
S&L: What else would you like Souls and Liberty viewers to know about this book? Why is it important for them to read it – and to share it with others?
Mosher: The demonic nature of Communist China ought to be self-evident to everyone. But it is not, and the young – the products of a failed public education system and destructive social media – are especially ignorant of the truth.
They, above all, need to know what awaits America if we follow China down the socialist road, as some of our leading politicians want us to do. The destruction of the family, informing on friends, and virtual enslavement of the population that follows are all on full display in China.
The Devil and Communist China is a cautionary tale of the evil that awaits the United States if our nation abandons God.
Editor's note: To purchase Steven Mosher's book and other works warning against Communism, click here.
Dr. Barbara Toth has a doctorate in rhetoric and composition from Bowling Green State University. She has taught at universities in the US, China and Saudi Arabia. Her work in setting up a writing center at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahmen University, an all-women's university in Riyadh, has been cited in American journals. Toth has published academic and non-academic articles and poems internationally.
Kamala Harris represents the most extreme left wing of a Democrat party already captured by anti-Christian, Marxist elements. Throughout the run-up to the election, Souls and Liberty will be sounding the alarm against her candidacy and arming you with the information you need to take action in the public square to stop the takeover of our republic, and even Western Civilization.
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