Intellectuals often just means "fellow travellers" or Western socialists/communists for documentaries like the CNN one, but a fair amount of Westerners visited China in the Maoist period and got at least a handshake with Mao. Some Westerners, a much smaller number, lived in China most of their lives, such as the American Joan Hinton, who worked on the Manhattan project (her brother William Hinton wrote a famous pro-revolution sociological work on a Chinese village, Fanshen). Joan Hinton died in 2010 and spent her life in China working on a small farm with husband Sid Engst. The Norwegian Jan Myrdal, son of the Noble Laureates Alva and Gunnar Myrdal, met Mao when Myrdal was spending time writing a book about another small village in China (Report from a Chinese village, another pro-revolution book).

For example, an early visit by some well-known British figures, including intellectuals, in 1954 is documented in Patrick Wright's Passport to Peking (Oxford University Press, 2010).

I'm trying to think of famous intellectuals/artists beyond that who weren't famous for only writing about China: André Malraux comes to mind.

Others will come to mind (famous person and Westerner, but not really or solely for being an intellectual, Che Guevara met Mao).

EDIT: tl;dr lots of Western "intellectuals" met Mao, but some were only particularly famous in their own countries or are forgotten now.