Facing the outside world was something in which the Communists-had no experience prior to 1949. They had already governed for years, at first only in a few hamlets. in the "least accessible parts of the' wild' mountain ranges of Kiangsi province, later for some years over large areas in the north comprising more than ninety million people. The new elite had also acquired superb experience in the arts or war having just emerged successfully from a long and arduous civil war. They even had become slightly acquainted with the peculiar problems concerning non Chinese ethnic groups. But foreign affairs presented, for all practical purposes, a brand-new challenge. The occasional contacts with foreigners, like Edgar Snow and Colonel Barrett, that Mao had in the caves of Yenan hardly sufficed to give the new leadership a sure footing in world politics.