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.

"[2] In 1942, 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.

Eric Sevareid, in his autobiography Not So Wild a Dream, recounts crossing paths with Belden in the final weeks before the Nazi surrender.

Belden avoided Mao's Yan'an: "that cave village had become a tourist center with every foreign correspondent in China hopping over to have a quick look...

Belden felt Mao Zedong represented the party apparatchik or the intellectual, and saw in the villages that the Communists were not trying to establish a "utopian democracy.

"[6] The first part of the book is based on eye-witness, participant reporting which leads the reader to the conclusion that the Communist dominated Border Region Government had the allegiance of local leaders.

They may have sincerely intended to represent the interests of the common people but their new power apparatus would also "elude their intentions and tend to exist for its own sake."

He warned that "there may arise a new elite, a set of managers standing above the Chinese masses", bringing a danger that "rulers not subject to democratic checks" may "confusing themselves with God", "expand their private viewpoints into an arbitrary vision of what society should be..., force their dreams on others, blunder into grave political mistakes and finally plunge into outright tyranny.

Having left journalism and his families, he moved to Summit, New Jersey to live with his mother where he worked at a series of jobs including school bus driver.