OP revised:
Revolution by The Beatles has a line that says, “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.” Chairman Mao, who led China from 1949 to 1976, may have descended from the Hmong, but his minority heritage was concealed like the race-effacing managerial leaders Cornell West mentioned. He was sheltered by the Hmong before he became Chairman, and so he fought for them as Chairman. This was good news for some of the Hmong in Laos, but bad news for victims of the Khmer Rouge’s Cambodian genocide supported by Chairman Mao when Pol Pot was the prime minister of Cambodia. That was because they both believed in a communist revolution. Those beliefs led to the deaths of 45 million people in Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” policy between 1958 and 1962, as well as the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people in Pol Pot’s Cambodian genocide from 1975 to 1979–nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population. What sent the Hmong fleeing from Laos to the United States and elsewhere was “The Secret War” of China and U.S. CIA support to thwart advances of the North Vietnam army by redirecting them into Laos, resulting in the loss of 10% of the Laos population. Note the historic handshake between Chairman Mao and Richard Nixon in 1972 that turned Taiwan’s leadership away from retaking the mainland of China to developing Taiwan instead. Chairman Mao and the U.S. CIA “helped” Laos because Chairman Mao did not want to struggle with Vietnam for power in the region. Some folks are still confused why it appears the U.S. helped Chairman Mao with Vietnam and Taiwan, and used Laos in “The Secret War” to redirect North Vietnam fighting.
More backstory: