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She survived Mao's Cultural Revolution. After 40 years in America, she calls this insanity.

Sent to Mao’s Countryside at 16, Xi Van Fleet Calls Socialism’s American Comeback ‘Insanity’

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanOctober 10, 2026 · 4 min read
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Xi Van Fleet lived through Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and was sent to work in the Chinese countryside at 16. She has lived in the United States since 1986. Asked on Fox News this week how it feels to watch Americans run for office on the same ideas she fled, she did not hesitate: “That is insanity.”

Van Fleet, the author of Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning, made the remarks in an interview on Fox News’ My View with Lara Trump, in a segment that also covered the arrest of a California woman accused of spying on the family of Taiwan’s president for Beijing. For Van Fleet, the two subjects are one subject: the regime she escaped, and the ideas it was built on, are not history.

“I thought I escaped communism”

Lara Trump put the question to her directly: what is it like to see people in America running on socialist and communist ideas? Van Fleet’s answer was blunt. “That is insanity,” she said. It was something she never dreamed of seeing in America, she said, noting that this is her 40th year in the country, and it is “absolutely unacceptable.”

Then she turned the criticism on herself. “I blame myself for not telling my stories, not sharing my experience with Americans, because I thought I escaped communism,” she said. She had assumed, she added, that everything would be fine in America.

That regret is what turned a Virginia mother into one of the country’s most recognizable anti-communist voices. In 2021, she stood up at a Loudoun County School Board meeting in Virginia and told the board that its critical race theory curriculum was teaching children to be social justice warriors and to loathe their own country, and that it all looked very familiar to someone who grew up in Mao’s China. The speech went viral. She has since written Mao’s America, appeared regularly on national television, and, according to her publisher, now devotes her life to educating Americans about the parallels between the two revolutions.

Where she comes from

Her biography is not a talking point; it is the reason people listen to her. According to her publisher, Hachette Book Group, Van Fleet was born in China, lived through the Cultural Revolution and was sent to work in the countryside at the age of 16. Only after Mao’s death was she able to attend college, where she studied English. She came to the United States in 1986.

In a June 2026 essay for Breitbart, she wrote that she spent her first 26 years “under Mao’s iron grip” and that “Forty years have passed since I first set foot in America.” Her conclusion then was the same one she gave on Fox: “freedom is not a given. It requires vigilance and the courage to defend it.”

She has been sounding this alarm for years. In a 2022 Fox News interview, she warned that Americans drifting toward socialism had no idea what it really is, and described a system in which the state controlled food, schooling, housing and jobs.

The spy case in the same segment

The interview came days after federal agents arrested Wanying “Heather” Zhang, a 34-year-old realtor from Irvine, California, at Los Angeles International Airport on Oct. 4 as she was about to board a flight to China. Prosecutors charged her with acting as an unregistered agent of the People’s Republic of China.

According to the federal complaint, as described by Courthouse News Service, Zhang acted at the direction of Chinese government officials from June to September 2025 and traveled to the Pacific Northwest with another person to surveil a relative of a Taiwanese official at his home. She allegedly texted her contact, “Saw him, young male, it’s the young one,” and sent the license plate numbers of two vehicles parked outside. The Justice Department did not name the target; CBS News, citing law enforcement, reported that it was Ting-Yu Lai, the son of Taiwan President Lai Ching-te. “She was acting as a foreign agent,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli. Zhang faces up to 10 years in federal prison if convicted, and she is presumed innocent.

Asked why Beijing would target Taiwan’s first family on American soil, Van Fleet said the Chinese Communist government regards ethnic Chinese everywhere, including American and Taiwanese citizens, as its own, and has grown bolder. She recalled the slogan of her childhood: the promise to “liberate” Taiwan. And she said most Americans are never taught the dangers of communism, so they still see China as a partner or a competitor. Her view is unambiguous: “communist China is absolutely our enemy.”

Why her warning lands now

Van Fleet did not name any candidate in the segment. She did not need to. New York City is now governed by Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who was sworn in as mayor on Jan. 1, 2026.

Her critics dismiss comparisons between American progressives and Mao as overheated. But she is not describing a textbook. She is describing her own teenage years: the slogans, the denunciations, the promise that the state would deliver equality if only the people surrendered enough. When someone who lived that tells you she recognizes the pattern, the burden is on the people selling it to explain why this time will be different.

Xi Van Fleet escaped communism once, and after 40 years of freedom she refuses to watch America sleepwalk into it.

Sources

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