After the death of Edgar Snow, Hinton became the most famous Americans sympathetic to the People's Republic of China, and he served as the first national chairman of the US–China Peoples Friendship Association from 1974 to 1976. The association published his controversial interviews with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. Hinton cooled toward official policy as market reforms under Deng Xiaoping moved away from the type of socialism originally associated with Mao Zedong. Eventually, he wrote "Shenfan" (read as the opposite of "Fanshen") and "The Great Reversal", and became an outspoken opponent of the socialist market economy ("socialism with Chinese characteristics") and Chinese economic reform that the CPC continues today.