As the world watched U.S. President Donald Trump meet Kim Jong Un, communist leader of North Korea, at Hanoi, and fail to reach an agreement on relaxation of tension on the Korean Peninsula in March 2019, many American pundits worried about strategic intentions of more than 170,000 Chinese troops deployed along the Sino-Korean border. In October 1950, China sent 260,000 PLA forces (the People’s Liberation Army, China’s combined army, navy, and air force) to Korea against United Nations forces. For the next three years, over three million PLA troops, the “Chinese People’s Volunteer Force” (CPVF ), fought the United States, which provided 90 percent of UN (United Nations) forces in what was essentially a proxy war between the two powers in the period 1950–1953. Why did Beijing intervene in Korea? What was behind Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung)’s decision to go to war against the United States? Are there any historical lessons relatable to current Chinese strategy to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding, crisis, or even another war over the Korean Peninsula?
Conventional texts have adopted a U.S.-Soviet-centric approach, characterizing the Korean War as a by-product or a sideshow of the Cold War, a confrontation between two post-World War II (WWII) superpowers, as well as two contending camps: the free world and the communists/socialists in Europe. Therefore, China’s intervention has been described as an ideological conflict or part of international politics, either the result of Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s decision or Chinese reactions to U.S. General Douglas MacArthur’s war strategy in October 1950. Some Cold War historians consider Mao’s decision irrational, unreasonable, irresponsible, costing hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers’ lives.1 Some insisted the decision for war was unique and accidental, and therefore should not govern responses to future crisis on the Korean Peninsula. A few blamed Mao as a dictatorial leader, who controlled decision-making through an overpowering personality, implying that no lesson can be drawn from as long as there is no leader like Mao in China. Really? These arguments offer little about what China has learned from the Korean War.
This book provides a different interpretation of the origins and development of China’s intervention in the Korean War. It explores new trends in the geopolitical history of modern Northeast Asia by revisiting Beijing’s decision to send Chinese troops to Korea in 1950. With an emphasis on Chinese perspectives, it elucidates China’s position in the Korean War as not peripheral but, in many key senses, central. It identifies some non-Cold War factors, which were as important as international Cold War factors. These China-centered factors were, and still are, in the DNA of Chinese security and geopolitical concerns. Our reinterpretations include the safety of Chinese northeast as its industrial center, border security for political legitimacy, active defense to stop any foreign invasion from neighboring countries, and China’s status in East Asia. Traditional and realistic, they were among the most important factors for Mao and many other Chinese rulers, including Ming and Qing emperors, to make decisions to go to wars in Korea.
By intervening in the Korean War, China’s political position in East Asia had changed from peripheral in World War II to central through the Cold War. China regained its dominant power status in East Asia and created a favorable international condition in which it could survive then and succeed today. Throughout the Cold War from 1945–1991 and beyond, international relations in East Asia begin with China. Russia , America, the European Union, and everyone else must deal with China. This is the legacy of China’s war for Korea. China’s participation in the war contributed significantly to shaping post-WWII international relations. Xi Jinping emphasizes this in his speech at the celebration of the CPVF’s participation in the “War to Resist the U.S. and Aid Korea.” Xi states that the tremendous impact and historical significance of the war “will never fade away with time.”2 Xi Jinping was reelected president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its Central Military Commission (CMC) for 2017–2022. Even if forgotten in America, the war in Korea is by no means forgotten in China.
Security, Legitimacy, and Defense Strategy
This book revisits China’s intervention in the Korean War of 1950–1953 by moving beyond the Cold War-centered perspective. Our questions, then, are not about the Beijing-Moscow relationship or Washington’s policy of a new “limited war.” Rather, it is why China sent its forces to Korea to “defend the homeland and safeguard the country?” How did the Chinese forces secure Northeast China (Manchuria) by holding the 38th Parallel? Why did Beijing consider its Korean War intervention a victory? This work examines Beijing’s war decision, operational planning, campaign objectives, and truce negotiations. It also discovers how expansive and flexible its strategic cultural repertoire was during crucial moments of the war, and how interactive the “new society” was with the party-state in a foreign war against the Western militaries.
After founding the PRC on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong began building a new republic according to the CCP’s vision. Although he promised the Chinese people that the “new government” would do better than the “old regimes” of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and the Republic of China (ROC, 1912–1949), New China was still a weak, poor, and backward country. Mao faced similar state-building issues like Manchu emperors and Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), including Western threats, border insecurity, and lack of defense technology. Moreover, his visit to Moscow in December convinced the CCP chairman that Stalin was not going to assist his attack on Taiwan for national unification and the Russian Red Army was not ready anytime soon for China’s defense in case of invasion by Western powers like the United States. In early 1950, Mao developed a China-centered, self-reliant defense based on geopolitical condition and military power. The independent defense strategy is best understood historically by focusing on three variable elements underlying Mao’s considerations: the new regime’s need for political legitimacy, international threats to border security, and military and economic resources available for national defense.
Weak national defenses could have potentially cost the CCP’s control of China, undermining its twenty-eight-year record of winning wars. To overcome military “technology gaps” between China and the West, Mao favored taking the fight to the enemy rather than reactionary strategies at home. Instead of waiting for Western powers to invade China, Mao engaged foreign forces in neighboring countries like Korea and Vietnam. This “proactive defense” stopped enemies outside Chinese borders and avoided any major confrontation on the mainland. Chinese generals found proactive defense sensible: no matter the outcome of fighting in a neighboring country, Chinese territory was not endangered.
To consolidate and protect its territorial gains, China adopted an outward-looking policy starting in early 1950. Referred to as “active defensive,” new military measures sought to expand China’s defensive parameter. Beijing provided military assistance to North Vietnam (then Democratic Republic of Vietnam, DRV) to secure China’s southwestern borderlands. On January 18, 1950, the PRC was the first nation to establish diplomatic relations with the DRV. To assist Ho Chi Minh in the First Indochina War, the PLA organized the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) in April and sent more than 450 military advisors, including fifteen generals, and aid to Vietnam. Additionally, China transferred 37,000 troops with their weapons that spring to the NKPA (North Korean People’s Army), making its total 150,000 troops.3 These seasoned Korean-Chinese soldiers played an important role in Kim Il-sung’s invasion of South Korea in June.4
After June, Mao stated, “The American armed forces have occupied Taiwan, invaded Korea, and reached the boundary of Northeast China. Now we must fight against the American forces in both Korea and Taiwan.”5 Mao made it clear to the Political Bureau (Politburo) on August 4 that “[We] will take back Taiwan, but now can’t just sit by and watch Vietnam and Korea.”6 Justifying necessity and the significance of China’s possible involvement in the Korean War, Mao used the “lips-and-teeth alliance” rhetoric tha...