donggil kim

China’s Intervention in the Revisited

The United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) staged a full-scale, undeclared war for two years and nine months, and a prolonged mutual political hostility ensued for decades afterwards. The PRC was declared an aggressor by the United Nations (UN) and was isolated from international diplomacy for a sub- stantial period of time. ’s decision to fight the United States, however, strengthened Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s trust in him immeasurably and dispelled his suspicions of China, forming the cornerstone for a strong Sino-Soviet alliance. In fact, the international order of the 1950sand1960s was largely forged within the framework of the Korean War. Consequently, the reason for China’s intervention in the Korean War has been an important topic in much scholarly research. Until the 1980s, interpretations of China’s involvement in the Korean War reflected the changing political and intellectual environments in the West in gen- eral, and the United States in particular, rather than the perspective of China itself. During the 1950s, Western scholars were influenced by the intensifying Cold War and argued that China’s entry into the Korean War was primarily due to Stalin’s 1 direction to expand Communism. On the other hand, in 1960 Allen S. Whiting, using Western intelligence sources, Chinese journals, newspapers, and Beijing’s radio broadcasts, insisted that China’s intervention was essentially a reluctant reaction to a perceived security threat. He stressed that it was only after MacArthur’s successful Incheon landing in mid-September and his subsequent advance toward the 38th parallel that the Chinese leadership began making the necessary military preparations, concluding 2 that an imminent threat to China’s border security compelled China to intervene. Whiting’s argument was widely accepted in the West and developed by other historians. Specifically, Melvin Gurtov and Byong-Moo Hwang argued that after the failure of Chinese efforts to deter UN forces from advancing beyond the 38th 3 parallel, PRC leaders began to push for large scale military intervention in Korea.

1. Philip E. Mosley, “Soviet Policy and the War,” Journal of International Affairs 6 (Spring 1952): 107-14; Alexander L. George, “American Policy Making and the North Korean Aggression,” World Politics 7,no.2 (1955): 209-32. 2. Allen S. Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War (New York, 1960), 126, 159-60. 3. Melvin Gurtov and Byong-Moo Hwang, China Under Threat: The Politics of Strategy and Diplomacy (Baltimore, MD, 1980), 56.

Diplomatic History, Vol. 40,No.5 (2016). ! The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]. doi:10.1093/dh/dhv051 Advance Access publication on September 30, 2015

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Furthermore, Gerald Segal believed that U.S. troops crossing the 38th parallel, no matter how much they were accompanied by soothing words of honorable inten- 4 tions towards Chinese sovereignty, could not be tolerated in Beijing. There was virtually unanimous agreement among Western scholars that the U.S. decision to cross the 38th parallel triggered China’s intervention and that if UN forces had 5 stopped before the 38th parallel, China would not have intervened. With the declassification of Chinese documents and memoirs beginning in the early 1980s, however, Chinese scholars began to insist that the rapid U.S. engage- ment in the Korean War and Truman’s announcement of the dispatch of the 7th Fleet to the Taiwan Strait confirmed to Mao that a major direct Sino-U.S. con- frontation was imminent and inevitable. Therefore, Mao took the initiative and chose the most favorable time and battlefield for China—namely Korea—due to 6 its proximity to the Soviet Union and Northeast China, China’s industrial center. In 1994, Jian considered the previous scholarship to be “Western impact, Chinese response” and “American-centered approaches.” He contended that “the Party’s revolutionary nationalism, its sense of responsibility toward an Asian-wide or worldwide revolution, and its determination to maintain the inner dynamics of the Chinese revolution” constituted the three fundamental rationales dominating Beijing’s formulation of foreign policy and security strategy at the time. Noting that Mao pressed ahead with sending troops, irrespective of Stalin’s refusal on October 11, 1950 to offer prompt air cover, Chen Jian asserts that Mao persuaded not to resign as commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV), believing that “Korea’s fate concerned both the vital security interests of 7 China and the destiny of an Eastern and world revolution.” Chen Jian believes that Mao’s primary motivation was the global expansion of Communism. Recently, Chinese scholar Shen Zhihua has argued that despite Stalin’s notifi- cation on October 14, 1950 that “the Soviet Air Force cannot enter Korea to participate in CPV ground operations even after two or two and a half months,” Mao proceeded to send troops to Korea because he ultimately wanted to obtain 8 Soviet security guarantees and economic assistance for the future.

4. Gerald Segal, Defending China (New York, 1985), 96. 5. Rosemary Foot, “Making Known the Unknown War,” Diplomatic History 15,no.3 (1991): 418-19; Simei Qing, “The U.S.-China Confrontation in Korea: Assessment of Intentions in Time of Crisis,” in Northeast Asia and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman: Japan, China, and the Two Koreas,ed. James I. Matray (Kirksville, MO, 2012), 93-118. 6.YaoXu,Cong Yalujiang dao Banmendian [From the Yalu River to Panmunjom] (Beijing, 1985), 21-22; Hao Yufan and Zhai Zhihai, “China’s Decision to Enter the Korean War: History Revisited,” China Quarterly 121 (March 1990): 106-8. 7.ChenJian,China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York, 1994), 4, 201-14. 8. Shen Zhihua, “China and the Dispatch of the Soviet Air Force: The Formation of the Chinese-Soviet-Korean Alliance in the Early Stage of the Korean War,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 33,no.2 (2010): 211-30; Goncharov insists that, in the end, Mao decided to fight the Americans even without Soviet air support in order to protect China’s own security, fearing that non-intervention would give Stalin an excuse to ignore China in the event of war against the

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However, recent research, which has emphasized Mao’s proactive role in the military intervention, has not been able to fully address certain issues. For example, on October 3, 1950, Mao informed the Soviet Union and North Korea that China would not send troops. Second, , premier of the PRC, left China to meet with Stalin at the Black Sea with plans for both intervention and non- intervention, depending on the degree of Soviet military assistance that was pledged. Third, on October 11, 1950, Zhou, in this meeting with Stalin, agreed not to send troops. The following day, Mao informed Stalin of China’s non-intervention decision for a second time. Based on new documents and archival material recently declassified in China and Russia, as well as interview material, this study reconsiders the following issues: 1) the initial effect