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Definition of Spying. Rickett tried to explain how it was after four years of imprisonment that he considered his jailer right and his own country wrong. When he first went to Peking in 1948, he thought the Communists were wrong; he thought that the Russians were coming down into China, that the U.S. should stop them. "After my arrest, I came to realize that the Chinese had a right to run their own country any way they wanted to run it. The new China exists. It is there, and it is a fact. No matter how we feel about it, we have to live with it."
Rickett is obsessed with the evils that he attributes to Chiang Kaishek. "When I criticize the U.S., what I am really criticizing is its position on Formosa." He believes that the U.S. should abandon Formosa and drop its embargo on strategic trade with Red China. He remarked with quiet satisfaction that from what he had heard about the Geneva negotiations (which resulted in his release), "things are going the way I think they should." He claimed that he had been a U.S. spy, but, when questioned, he admitted that he had merely reported his observations of China to an American consul. That's spying, said Rickett. Walter Rickett concluded: "I feel that as an American I have a right to say what I please."