After his early experiences in China, Buchman was acutely aware that the failure of the vast Western missionary effort in China enabled an alternative set of beliefs, communism, to take root. In his subsequent work in British and American universities, he found that communism was a potent and attractive force. Though he did admire the boldness, and the passion for change, of communists, he believed that communism was inadequate because he found it to be built on moral relativism and militantly anti-God. A frequent theme became that the commitment and strategic ideology of communism must be matched by equally committed and strategic forces working for God. After visiting South America in the early 1930s, he told some of the young people working with the Oxford Group: "In one country I was told two young Communists had made it their duty to attach themselves to each Cabinet Minister to win him to the Party line. Which of you will plan as thoroughly to bring a Christian revolution to your leaders?"