Davies’s bet hung on his conviction that the Reds were not all that red; he called them pragmatists and ideological “backsliders.” He also held to the notion that like all other Chinese, they could not say no to America. He was wrong on both counts. “I obviously underestimated the commitment of the Chinese Communist ruling party at the time to ideology and the dexterity with which Mao and company manipulated it,” Davies acknowledged later in life.
