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China's Road to the Korean War
The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation
New York
1994
Conclusions: The Chinese Experience During the War
China's entry into the war immediately altered the balance of power on the Korean battlefield. With Mao's approval, Peng adopted a strategy of inducing the enemy troops to march forward and then eliminating them by superior forces striking from their rear and on their flanks. On October 25, the CPV initiated its first campaign in Korea, suddenly attacking South Korean troops in the Unsan area. In twelve days, South Korean troops were forced to retreat from areas close to the Yalu to the Chongchun River. According to Chinese statistics, about 15,000 South Korean soldiers were killed in this campaign. 1
This setback should have sent a strong warning to UN forces, but General MacArthur was too arrogant to heed it. He, like many policymakers in Washington, underestimated the size and determination of his Chinese adversaries. In mid-November, he decided to initiate a new "end the war" offensive. Considering MacArthur's aggressiveness and the fact that the CPV's heavy equipment remained on the north bank of the Yalu River, Peng adopted a strategy of "purposely showing ourselves to be weak, increasing the arrogance of the enemies, letting them run amuck, and luring them deep into our areas." He ordered all CPV units to retreat for about 30 kilometers, to occupy favorable positions, and to wait for the best opportunity to strike. 2 In late November, advancing UN forces entered areas where CPV troops had laid their trap. Starting on November 25, Chinese troops began a vigorous counteroffensive. Under tremendous pressure, UN troops had to undertake what the political scientist Jonathan Pollack has called "the most infamous retreat in American military history." 3 By mid-December, the CPV and the reorganized KPA troops had regained control of nearly all North Korean territory.
In light of the achievements of the CPV's first two campaigns in Korea, Mao reemphasized the original goal of "eliminating the enemy troops and forcing the Americans out of the Korean peninsula." He refused to consider any proposal about ending the Korean conflict through negotiations, and was determined to solve the Korean problem by winning a clear military victory. On December 21, he ordered Peng "to fight another campaign" and "to cross the 38th parallel." 4
On the last day of 1950, the Chinese troops started the third campaign, and UN forces again retreated. Seoul fell to Chinese and North Korean troops on January 4, 1951. Concluding that Beijing's war effort was progressing smoothly, the Soviet air force entered the Korean War on a limited scale in early January. 5 Both North Korean leaders and Soviet advisers in Korea pushed Peng to develop the offensive into one "to end the war by a total victory." 6 With their supply lines extended and casualties increased, however, the Chinese offensive gradually bogged down. Peng then ordered the Chinese-North Korean forces to halt offensive operations and consolidate their gains. 7 This decision angered Kim Il-sung, who had hoped to drive the Americans out of the Korean peninsula. 8
Before the Chinese and North Koreans had the opportunity to coordinate their strategies, the UN forces began a counteroffensive in mid-January. On January 27, Peng, with his troops exhausted and short of ammunition and food, proposed a tactical retreat to Mao. The chairman, however, was not willing to consider anything short of a total victory. The next day he ordered Peng back on the offensive. 9 Peng, again, had to obey Mao's order; but the Chinese counteroffensive, as Peng had predicted, was quickly repulsed by the UN forces. In late February, Peng returned to Beijing to convey to Mao in person the real situation on the battlefield. Peng believed that the CPV should shift to the defensive, that new troops should be sent to Korea to replace those units that had suffered heavy casualties, and that preparations should be made for a counteroffensive in the spring. In the light of Peng's report, Mao's ideas on Chinese strategy in Korea began to change subtly. He now acknowledged that the war would be prolonged and that the best strategy was to rotate Chinese troops in and out of Korea. Still, Mao believed that the Chinese could force the UN forces out of Korea in a war of attrition: he believed that the Americans lacked the heart to sustain heavy losses. 10
After two months of readjustment and preparations, the Chinese-North Korean high command gathered twelve armies to start an overall offensive in late April, planning to destroy the bulk of UN forces and to establish clear Communist superiority on the battlefield. Without adequate air cover and reliable logistical supply, this offensive failed too. In the last stage of the campaign, several Chinese units that had penetrated too deeply into the UN front were surrounded by counterattacking UN forces. One Chinese division, the 180th Division, was totally lost. 11
The cruel reality forced Beijing leaders to reconsider China's war aims. Becoming willing to accept a ceasefire, Mao and the Beijing leadership began to place tight controls on the scale of the CPV's war operations. On July 10, 1951 Chinese and North Korean representatives and U.S./UN delegates met for the first time at Kaesong to discuss conditions for an armistice. Neither the Chinese nor the Americans, though, would trust the value of negotiations unless they themselves could be in a position of strength. It would take two long years for the two sides to reach an agreement. Fighting ended on July 27, 1953, with each side holding approximately the same positions as they had three years before.
Revolution Versus Containment: Origins of the Confrontation
The pursuit of an overall explanation of the origins of the Sino-American confrontation in Korea requires an understanding of the environment in which Beijing and Washington found themselves. One encounters two sides interacting with little understanding of each other's rationales.
As suggested by this study, three fundamental and interrelated rationales had dominated Beijing's formulation of foreign policy and security strategy: 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. Beijing's management of the Korean crisis cannot be properly comprehended without an understanding of these rationales and the mentality related to them.
Mao and his fellow CCP leaders grew up in an age when China had lost the status as the "Central Kingdom" and the very survival of the Chinese nation was at stake. Their conception of China's national interests was deeply influenced by the unequal exchanges between China and the foreign powers; and their commitment to Communist revolution in China grew out of the belief that the revolution would revitalize the Chinese nation and lead to the destruction of the "old world," and that China's position as a "Central Kingdom" would be resumed in the emergence of the "new world." Mao's concept of revolution reflected his generation's emotional commitment to China's national liberation as well as of its longing for China to take a central position in world politics. Not surprisingly, with the Communist seizure of power in China the CCP's revolutionary nationalism became a persistent driving force for changing China's weak power status and pursuing a prominent position in the world. All of this played a crucial role in defining Beijing's sense of security (or insecurity), strongly influencing the PRC's foreign policy in general and Beijing leaders' management of the Korean crisis in particular.
Closely related to the CCP's revolutionary nationalism was the Beijing leaders' lofty aspiration to promote an Eastern revolution or even a world revolution following the Chinese model. With the victory of the Chinese revolution, Mao and the CCP leadership were more confident than ever before that the Chinese revolution had established for other "oppressed peoples" in the world a brilliant example of national liberation. Mao believed that it was the duty of Chinese Communists to support Communist revolutions and national liberation movements in other countries. Communist China's foreign policy was in essence revolutionary: Mao and the other CCP leaders made it clear that the "new China" would not tolerate any of the diplomatic legacies of the "old China," that Communist China would lean to the side of the Soviet Union and other "world revolutionary forces," and that, in the final analysis, Communist China would not be bound by any existing norms and codes of behavior in international relations. Again, Mao's perception of the significance of the Chinese revolution was interwoven with Chinese ethnocentrism and universalism. He believed that the rejuvenation of China's position as a central world power would be realized through the promotion of Asian and world revolutions following the Chinese model. The Korean crisis presented a test case for this rationale.
In a deeper sense, the CCP's foreign policy in general and its attitude toward the Korean crisis in particular were shaped by the determination on the part of Mao and the CCP leadership to maintain the inner dynamics of the Chinese Communist revolution. When the Chinese Communists achieved nation wide victory in 1949, Mao and his comrades were worried that their revolution, which had merely accomplished the "first step in its long march," might lose its momentum. How to maintain and enhance the inner dynamics of the great Chinese revolution thus became Mao's central concern. When Mao first encountered this problem as the ruler of the new China in 1949, among other things, his train of thought developed in terms of emphasizing the continuous existence of outside threats to the revolution. While identifying the United States as the PRC's primary enemy, Mao and the CCP leadership did not necessarily perceive Washington as an immediate threat to China's physical security (in fact, after the summer and fall of 1949, they concluded that the United States lacked the capability to engage in major military conflicts in East Asia in the near future); but they did continue to emphasize the seriousness of the "American threat" and prepared for a long-range confrontation with the United States. After the outbreak of the Korean War, Mao and the CCP leadership found that the Korean crisis challenged China's national security while at the same time offering them a possible means to mobilize the Chinese nation under the CCP's terms. That the CCP's understanding of China's security interests was defined by the perceived necessity of maintaining and promoting the momentum of the Chinese revolution explains to a large extent the uncompromising character of Beijing's management of the Korean crisis. In this sense, it is legitimate to believe that China's road to the Korean War started long before the outbreak of the war itself.
Indeed, Communist China was a new type of international actor. As a revolutionary country it intended to break with the existing principles and codes of behavior in international relations, which, in the minds of Beijing leaders, were the product of Western domination of international relations. Communist China's foreign policy had its o and logic. Accordingly, the CCP leadership consistently treated the Untied States as China's primary enemy and prepared throughout 1949-1950 for the coming of an inevitable confrontation.
The Chinese Communists encountered an America that was not in a position to understand either the rationale or the mentality galvanizing Mao and the CCP leadership. Profound divergences in political ideology and perceived national interests did exist between Beijing and Washington; and suspicion and hostility between the CCP and the United States were further crystallized as the result of Washington's continuing support for the GMD regime and the CCP's determination to "make a fresh start" in the new China's foreign policy. But what made the situation more complicated was American policymakers' superpower mentality. President Truman, Secretary of State Acheson, and other American policymakers of their generation came to the political scene in an age when the United States had emerged as a prominent world power and American interests abroad were expanding continuously. This fact, combined with a long-existing belief in America's special destiny in the world as well as traditional American hostility toward revolutionary changes, made it easier for this generation of American policymakers to assume that American values held universal significance. 12 In the case of China, this assumption took on greater importance because of a long-held notion of America's "special relationship" with China based on the "Open Door" ideology. 13 American policymakers, who had fundamental problems adjusting to the realities created by the Chinese revolution, were also unwilling to understand the environment in which Beijing leaders made decisions. As a result, there was little possibility that Washington might correctly perceive the foreign policy behavior of the Chinese Communists; nor would Washington's China policy easily serve its perceived aims. (For example, Washington's "wedge strategy," designed to force Beijing's detachment from the Soviet orbit, led only to Beijing's increasing hostility toward the United States.) Consequently, when Communist China first faced the United States in the international arena, no common language or common codes of behavior existed to bind the two sides. 14 It was easy for each side to misperceive the intentions of the other; and it was difficult for both sides to avoid sharp collision in a crisis situation. It is therefore hardly surprising that a confrontation between Communist China and the United States finally occurred.
These observations, however, are not meant to deny the extremely complicated circumstances involved in the Beijing leadership's adoption of a decision to go to war against an international coalition composed of almost all the industrial powers; nor is it the conclusion of this study that Beijing's response to the Korean crisis had been predetermined or crystallized at its beginning. Rather, the decision to send Chinese troops to Korea was certainly the most difficult one that Mao and his fellow CCP leaders had to make in the early years of the PRC. Top Beijing leaders were under intense pressure caused by cruel domestic and international conditions while making the decision. In fact, as revealed by this study, the opinion of the party leadership was far from unanimous on the necessity of entering the Korean War. Lin Biao and many others were worried that Beijing's intervention in Korea might hurt the newly established PRC. At the Politburo meeting of October 4-5, the majority of CCP leaders, with Mao's encouragement, expressed reservations about sending troops to Korea. Even after Mao had issued the formal order to enter the war on October 8, he twice postponed the deadline in the wake of the Soviet renege on the promised air support. The historian Michael Hunt is certainly right when he argues that "any effort to pin down the exact motive behind Mao's decision to intervene must enter a mind as complicated as the crisis it wrestled with." 15
Nevertheless, with the support of the insight gained from new Chinese sources, it is still possible for historians to sketch out the main considerations underlying Beijing's decision to enter the Korean War, thus identifying the basic tendency of this decision-making process. For Mao and his colleagues, the Korean crisis had multiple implications from the beginning. It is apparent that American military intervention in Korea and the Seventh Fleet's movement into the Taiwan Strait after the eruption of the Korean conflict endangered the PRC's security interests. It is also true that when the UN forces crossed the 38th parallel and marched toward the Yalu in early October 1950 the PRC's physical security, especially the safety of the strategically and economically important Manchuria, was under immediate threat. Mao and the other Beijing leaders could not allow American forces to reach the Yalu River; nor would they be willing to see a friendly neighboring Communist regime destroyed by a hostile imperialist power. The motive of defending China's territorial safety, as well as safeguarding a neighboring country belonging to China's traditional sphere of influence, certainly played an important role in bringing the Beijing leadership to the decision to enter the Korean War. And, with hindsight, it can also be seen that Washington's decision to cross the 38th parallel provided a justification for Beijing's entrance into the Korean War.
To safeguard China's physical security, however, was only one element of Beijing's policy. Beijing's management of the Korean crisis has to be understood in the context of the escalating confrontation between the PRC and the United States in East Asia in 1949 and 1950: by the summer of 1950, each country had firmly perceived the other as a dangerous rival. We should also take into our account the CCP's need to consolidate its rule in China while at the same time mobilizing the Chinese population for a total transformation of Chinese society. Moreover, we should not forget that Mao and his fellow Beijing leaders were eager to revitalize China's great power status through the promotion of revolutions following the Chinese model in East Asia and in the world. These complicated motives explained why the magnitude of Beijing's preparations for intervention had reached such a degree even before the Inchon landing, and why the Beijing leadership was so eager to win a total victory over the United States on the Korean battlefield.
Mao played a central role at every crucial juncture in the formulation of Beijing's war decision. In early July 1950, only two weeks after the outbreak of the Korean War, the CMC followed Mao's instructions to establish the Northeast Border Defense Army, which proved to be a pivotal step toward China's entry into the war. In mid-July, in accordance with Mao's ideas of crisis management, the CCP leadership initiated the "Great Movement to Resist America and Assist Korea," starting to fit the entire country to a war orbit. When the North Koreans' position began to deteriorate continuously in August, Mao came to the fore of Beijing's decision-making. His speech to the August 4 Politburo meeting and his August 5 and 18 telegrams to the NEBDA established the deadlines for completion of China's preparations for beginning military operations in Korea and revealed his inclination to intervene. Facing doubts among top party leaders about the wisdom of engaging China in a major military confrontation with the United States, Mao's address to the September 5 People's Government Council meeting clarified that his ideas about confronting the United States and his belief that China did not need to fear America's nuclear power. Consequently, even before the Inchon landing, Mao used his credibility and authority within the party leadership to establish the pattern for Beijing's management of the Korean crisis, which was based on the assumption that China would eventually enter the war. During the first three weeks of October, when the Beijing leadership made the final war decision, the chairman's role became even more important. At the October 2 Politburo Standing Committee meeting, he argued that China had to enter the war, and pushed top CCP leaders to make the primary decision to send troops to Korea. At the October 4-5 Politburo meeting, he applied both his authority and political wisdom to securing the war decision's confirmation and implementation. Finally, when Beijing leaders faced a severe challenge posed by Moscow's withdrawal of its promise to provide air support in Korea, he again convinced his comrades that China had to enter the conflict. Considering the above, it is clear that without Mao's leadership role, Beijing's response to the Korean crisis could have been dramatically different.
To understand Mao's handling of the Korean crisis, one has to refer to his challenge-oriented personality. The chairman regarded the Korean crisis as both a challenge and an opportunity for the new China to achieve greater domestic and international aims: if the PRC could successfully meet the challenge posed by the United States, the world's number one power, it would not only greatly enhance the CCP's ruling position at home and push forward Mao's perceived revolutionary transformation of Chinese society; but it would also signal revolutionary China's reemergence as a prominent world power. Mao surely understood the tremendous difficulties involved in sending Chinese troops to Korea, but it was his deep-rooted eagerness to change the challenge into the dynamics of the continuous progress of the Chinese revolution that dominated his handling of the Korean crisis.
The CCP's foreign policy structure, in retrospect, gave Mao the freedom to manipulate the party's policy-making process. By the late 1940s, Mao had become the CCP's paramount leader and key decisionmaker. As the result of Mao's repeating efforts to place the CCP's external activities under the tight and direct control of the party's central leadership, the new China's external policies became a domain reserved exclusively for the party's top leadership and, particularly, Mao himself. During the discussion on whether or not China should enter the Korean War, different opinions and reservations for the decision to intervene did emerge among top leaders. But none of this went beyond the framework of "democratic centralism," and there is no evidence of factional opposition to Mao's leadership or the decision to enter the war.
American policymakers fail to understand the fundamental assumptions underlying the CCP's policies toward the Korean crisis. From the early stage of the crisis, Washington fixed its eyes on possible reactions from Moscow and paid little attention to the implications and logic of Beijing's behavior. Members of the Truman administration consistently underestimated the political-military capacities of Communist China. In retrospect, it is ironic that American policymakers, while publicly warning about the danger of Communist expansion in East Asia, misjudged Communist China's determination and capacity to act in Korea. In the final analysis, all of this was a natural result of Washington's mentality: if all important clues of China's intervention had been ignored, this was simply because policymakers in Washington did not view the Chinese Communists as a qualified challenger to the strategic interests of the United States.
Revolution Enhanced: The Aftermath of the War
A superficial glance would suggest that the effect of the Korean War on China was largely adverse. China's participation in the war caused the loss of tens of thousands of its soldiers on the battlefield, forced the expenditure of billions of dollars on military purposes at the expense of China's economic reconstruction, prevented Beijing from recovering Taiwan, made Beijing, at least in the short-run, more dependent upon Moscow than before, and excluded Beijing from the UN until the early 1970s.
But from Mao's perspective, China's gain was considerable. China's involvement in the Korean War stimulated a series of political and social revolutions in China that would have been otherwise inconceivable during the early stage of the new republic. In the wake of China's entrance into the Korean War, as Mao had anticipated, the Communist regime found itself in a powerful position to penetrate into almost every cell of Chinese society through intense mass mobilization. During the three years of the war, along with the "Great Movement to Resist America and Assist Korea," three other nationwide campaigns swept across China's countryside and cities: the movement to suppress counter-revolutionaries, the land reform movement, and the "Three Antis" and "Five Antis" movements. 16 When the war ended in July 1953, China's society had been different: the reactionary resistance to the new regime had been destroyed; land had been redistributed and the landlord class had disappeared; the Communist cadres who were believed to have lost their revolutionary momentum had been either "reeducated" or removed from leading positions; the national bourgeoisie was under the tight control of the Communist state, and the "petty-bourgeoisie" intellectuals had experienced the first round of Communist reeducation. Consequently, the CCP had effectively strengthened its organizational control of Chinese society and dramatically increased its authority in the minds of the Chinese people. Never before in modern Chinese history had a regime accomplished so much in so short a period. Mao was therefore more confident and enthusiastic than ever before to take a series of new steps to transform China, including the collectivization of agriculture, the nationalization of industry, the anti-rightist campaign, and the Great Leap Forward. Mao and the CCP would have undertaken these tasks even without the "Great War to Resist America and Assist Korea." However, the Korean War experience made the timing, magnitude, and depth of the CCP's designs to transform Chinese society more ambitious than they would have been otherwise.
The Korean War also symbolized China's rise to prominence in the international arena. The simple fact that Chinese troops forced the UN forces to retreat from the Chinese-Korean border areas to the 38th parallel allowed the Beijing leadership to call its involvement in the Korean War a great victory. For the first time in its modern history China had succeeded in confronting a coalition of Western powers and emerging undefeated. At the Geneva Conference of 1954, which was designed to solve both the Korea and Indo-China problems, and attended by such big powers as the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France, China played a crucial role. 17 Mao and his fellow Beijing leaders then had powerful grounds on which to claim that international society- friends and foes alike- had accepted China as a real world power. Moreover, China's performance in Korea enhanced the image of Beijing as a leader in the revolutionary struggle against Western domination in Asia and other parts of the world, and Beijing would play a central role at the Bandung Conference of 1955. This remarkable change in China's international status further stimulated the Chinese people's patriotism, revolutionary nationalism and, in turn, gave Mao and the CCP leadership more freedom in escalating the transformation of China's state and society.
Mao lost his eldest son, Anying, during the Korean War. 18 But this personal pain was mitigated by the fact that the war further strengthened his leading position in the CCP and in China, leaving him unchallengeable. If Mao's comrades in the CCP Politburo previously had doubts about Mao's determination to involve China in the conflict in Korea, they had to recognize at the conclusion of the war that Mao had a much greater vision than they had. Mao's decision to enter the Korean War was widely praised as a "brilliant decision" [yingming juece], and Mao's name became tightly linked with "truth" and "correctness." A pattern thus emerged: the new China's state building became increasingly entangled with the development of Mao's personal cult. Enjoying political power with fewer checks and balances, Mao was in a freer position to carry out his utopian plans to transform Chinese society, so that it would turn into a land of universal equality and justice. A Mao with unlimited power would finally lead the country toward such disastrous experiments as the "Great Leap Forward" and the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution."
In retrospect, the Korean War experience offered the Beijing leadership invaluable opportunities to test and redefine China's security strategy with three particularly important consequences. First, Mao and his fellow CCP leaders would feel a strong need to reexamine China's alliance with the Soviet Union and, in a broader sense, the relationship of maintaining self-reliance and seeking alliance as a principle dominating the PRC's foreign policy. They could not forget that as the result of Stalin's "betrayal" at a crucial juncture, China had to begin military operations in Korea without Soviet air support, thus making China vulnerable in pursuing its initial goals of "driving the Americans out of Korea." They could also see that even with a shared ideology, Beijing's security interests frequently contradicted with those of Moscow's. The reliability of the "lean-to-one-side" approach, the cornerstone of Communist China's early foreign policy, was called into question. As a result, Mao and the other Beijing leaders would put more emphasis on "self-reliance" as the fundamental principle in maintaining China's security interests. China's experience during the Korean War thus turned into the prelude of the future Sino-Soviet split.
Second, the Korean War experience further convinced Mao that mass mobilization was an effective way to maintain and enhance China's security status. During the Korean War, the successful mobilization of the Chinese population on the home front, as Mao and the other CCP leaders viewed it, strengthened the ruling basis of the Chinese Communist regime, thus making the Communist power more consolidated than before. On the Korean battlefield, the Chinese had pushed the Americans back to the 38th parallel from the Chinese-Korean border by outnumbering the UN forces and possessing, in Mao's belief, a higher morale as the result of successful political mobilization. Mao would thereafter take political mobilization as one of the most important means in pursuing China's national security interests.
Third, in contemplating the lessons of the Korean War, Mao could not ignore the role played by modern technology and equipment in a modern war. The American technological superiority cost hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives on the battlefield, and consequently, the Chinese did not achieve the total victory that Mao had so eagerly pursued largely because of their technological backwardness. In the years to come, Mao would still emphasize the importance of the "human factor" in modern warfare, but he would also call for the development of China's own atomic bomb and other advanced armaments, so that China's "spiritual atomic bomb" would be reinforced by the real bomb. The Korean War, seen here in fresh historical perspective, deserves credit for leaving an indelible stamp on China's foreign policy and security strategy.
Notes
Note 1: Peng Dehuai, Peng Dehuai zishu, p. 59; Chai and Zhao, Banmendian tanpan, p. 100; Shen and Meng et al., Zhongguo renmin zhiyuanjun kangmei yuanchao zhanshi, pp. 37-38. Back.
Note 2: Peng Dehuai, Peng Dehuai zishu, pp. 259-60. There exists no evidence to support the hypothesis held by some Western scholars that Beijing's temporary retreat after the first campaign was designed to give the UN forces an opportunity to retreat to areas south of the 38th parallel. Back.
Note 3: Jonathan D. Pollack, "The Korean War and Sino-American Relations," in Harding and Yuan eds., Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955, p. 224. Back.
Note 4: Mao Zedong to Peng Dehuai, December 21, 1950, MWG, 1: 731-732. Peng, as the commander at the front, had reservations about Mao's plan, but he obeyed Mao. For a more extended discussion, see Chen Jian, "China's Changing Aims during the Korean War," pp. 26-28. Back.
Note 5: According to Soviet sources, the Soviet air force entered operations in Korea as early as November 1950. (see G. Lobov, "In the Sky of North Korea," Aviatsiia i Kosmonavtika, no. 10 (1990): 33-34, and Jon Halliday, "Soviet Air Operations in Korea," a paper for the 15th Military History Symposium on "A Revolutionary War: Korea and the Transformation of the Postwar World," Air Force Academy, October 1992, p. 10). According to Chinese sources, however, the Soviet air force did not enter operations in North Korea until January 10, 1951 (see Tan, Kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng, p. 201; and Zhang Xi, "The Sudden Cancellation of the CPV's Movement on the Eve of its' Entry into Korea," p. 4.) Back.
Note 6: Hong Xuezhi, Kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng huiyi, pp. 110-111; and Shi Zhe, Zai lishi jüren shenbian, pp. 503-504. Back.
Note 7: Hong Xuezhi, Kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng huiyi, pp. 109-110; Tan Jingqiao et al., Kangmei yuanchao zhanzheng, p. 100; and Shen and Meng et al., Zhongguo renmin zhiyuanjun kangmei yuanchao zhanshi, p. 87. Back.
Note 8: Peng Dehuai to Mao Zedong and the CMC, January 10, 1951, telegram, CMA. Peng reported in this telegram that the North Koreans were very unhappy with his decision to stop the offensive; and they put forward their complaints through Soviet advisers in North Korea. See also Li, Rui, Lushan huiyi shilu (An Factual Account of the Lushan Conference, Beijing: Chunqiu Press, 1989), p. 224. Back.
Note 9: For a detailed discussion of the exchanges between Mao and Peng, see Chen Jian, "China's Changing Aims during the Korean War," pp. 31-33; see also Qi Dexue, Chaoxian zhanzheng juece neimu, pp. 116-119. Back.
Note 10: Mao Zedong to Stalin, March 1, 1951, MWG, 2: 151-153; see also Chen Jian, "China's Changing Aims during the Korean War," pp. 34-36. Back.
Note 11: For a more extended discussion, see Chen Jian, "China's Changing Aims," pp. 37-38. Back.
Note 12: Michael Hunt emphasizes that American foreign policy was shaped by an ideology based on a conception of national mission, on the racial classification of other countries, and on suspicion and even hostility toward social revolution (Michael Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987]). I find Hunt's analysis offers an extremely enlightening background for understanding U.S. policy toward revolutionary China in the late 1940s. Back.
Note 13: For an excellent discussion of the American notion of a special relationship with China, see Michael Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); For a discussion emphasizing the sense of a special American destiny as the main cause underlying Washington's hostility toward Communist China, see David McLean, "American Nationalism, the China Myth, and the Truman Doctrine: The Question of Accommodation with Peking, 1949-50," Diplomatic History, 10, no. 1 (Winter 1986): 25-42. Back.
Note 14: A comparison between Washington's perceptions of the Soviet Union and of China will make this point clearer. Despite the sharp differences between the United States and the Soviet Union in the deepening Cold War confrontation, as pointed out by Rosemary Foot, policymakers in Washington found that at least there existed between themselves and Soviet leaders "certain interests in common" in avoiding a direct military confrontation between them. In contrast, American policymakers found that Beijing's behavior, which was "fundamentalist, violent, and revolutionary," could not be understood by any of their own rationales. They would thus distinguish between the Soviet Union as their "reasonable adversary" and China as their "irrational foe." See Foot, The Wrong War, pp. 27-28. Back.
Note 15: Hunt, "Beijing and the Korean Crisis," p. 463. Back.
Note 16: The "Three Antis" movement was designed to oppose corrupt Communist cadres; the "Five-Antis" movement was aimed at the national bourgeoisie class "who should not be destroyed at this stage but who needed to be tightly controlled by the power of the people's state." For discussions of these movements, see Lin Yunhui et al., Kaige xingjing de shiqi, chapter 7; and Frederick C. Teiwes, "Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime," in MacFarquhar and Fairbank, eds., The Cambridge History of China, 14: 88-91. Back.
Note 17: See Zhai Qiang, "China and the Geneva Conference of 1954," The China Quarterly, no.129 (March 1992): 103-122; and Chen Jian, "China and the First Indo-China War," pp. 104-109. Back.
Note 18: When CPV entered Korea, Mao Anying was appointed as Peng Dehuai's confidential secretary. He died on November 25, 1950 during an American air assault on CPV headquarters. Back.
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