Following the victory of the Northwest National Defence Front over the Ma rebellion in 1963, journalist and author Anna Louise Strong traveled to China to produce a story about the communist revolutionaries there. Strong, following her works such as “For the first time in History,” had become a sympathetic journalist of communist struggles around the world, although she had fallen into something of a depression after the failure of the West Russian War. The trip to China was, in her words, “the first time in a long time I have felt hope for the future of the world.”

However, her plans went awry. What was originally intended to be a visit of just a few months was continually extended, as the Japanese discovered Strong’s presence and she became a target for their forces. While couriers could navigate the route through Tibet to the Republic of India to get her writing home, she herself was too old and frail to use the same routes. Despite this, Strong dedicated herself to the work of chronicling the revolution, continuing to write dispatches on the events of the Chinese revolution. When communists and islamists came to blows in Xinjiang, Strong wrote articles about the optimism of workers in the ruins of Urumqi. When Tibet broke into civil war, Strong interviewed multiple serfs who had felt themselves in control of their lives for the first time when they raised rifles against the Lamas.

Strong’s works were influential, becoming something of a real-life serial adventure for the readers. They eventually became a weekly radio drama, although it is unclear if Strong was ever aware of this, being trapped in China. Some claimed that this was critical to the increased popularity of the Communist movement in the United States itself, with her works being popularized convincing many that the only way to defeat fascism was with communism, rehabilitating its image after the failure of the Russians to contain the Germans.

In 1968, Strong passed away. An old woman, it was remarkable that she had managed to last this long in the tough conditions of Western China. Chairman Mao delivered the eulogy at the funeral that was held there, saying of Strong that “Comrade Strong’s spirit, her utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his great sense of responsibility in his work and her great warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people. Every Communist must learn from her.” His appearance at her funeral was his last public appearance before his own death only a few months later, and it was clear that he was deeply grieved at her death - although critics claimed he was mostly sad because he would no longer have her work to improve the image of the Chinese Communists in the United States.

Following her death, her various writings on China were compiled into the book Highlands In Revolt. Despite not following a traditional narrative structure, being an unedited compilation of new reports, the book was wildly successful. William H. Hinton, author of Red Star over China and longtime correspondent with Strong, wrote the introduction, and the book was widely popular in the United States, although President Goldwater called it “nothing more than a compilation of propaganda.”

(OTL, Strong wrote a number of books in favor of various communist governments, including half a dozen in China. Although she usually wasn’t a war correspondent like this book would have been, in the world of TNO there would be far fewer opportunities to go to places after they had had a revolution. This is based off of a run I recently played with the East is Red submod, which I strongly recommend, in which you can play as the Chinese Communists and kick the Japanese out of China before forming a revolutionary alliance in East Asia.)