China's Road to the Korean War

The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation

Chen Jian

New York

Columbia University Press

1994

by Chen Jian

Why did China enter the Korean War?

What made Mao Zedong, only one year after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, decide to assist North Korea in fighting a coalition of nearly all the Western industrial powers?

Many scholars have traditionally regarded Beijing's decision to enter the war as a reaction to Washington's mistake in crossing the 38th parallel and marching towards the Yalu. But based on extensive use of newly available Chinese sources, Jian argues that China's entry into the Korean War was brought about by concerns much more complex than simply safeguarding the Chinese-Korean border.

Jian places the making of the Sino-American collision in Korea in the broad contexts of both the continuous development of the Chinese Communist revolution after its nationwide victory and the emerging Cold War. This first comprehensive account in over three decades provides a fresh analytical framework within which to understand the foreign policy and security strategy of the People's s Republic of China.

"Chen's China's Road to the Korean War ... is the most carefully researched and seriously argued discussion of the subject."

--Warren I. Cohen, The Nation

"Since 1950, Western military planners, journalists, and scholars have tried to determine the role of China and the Soviet Union in the outbreak of the Korean conflict. Because Chinese, North Korean, and Russian documents have been largely unavailable to date, the researchers' conclusions have been tentative. Through the use of recently released Chinese documents, conversations with People's Republic of China scholars, and in-depth interviews with people who were present at key decision-making meetings, Chen has been able to furnish answers to some of the most nagging questions."

--Choice

"Chen Jian's prodigious research in a wide array of Chinese sources brings an exciting new dimension to our understanding of why China entered the Korean War. This highly readable work challenges many basic assumptions about how Mao Zedong and his contemporaries saw world politics and set Chinese foreign policy along a revolutionary path. It has important implications for understanding Sino-American conflict not just in the early 1950s but throughout the Cold War era."

--Michael Schaller, University of Arizona

"This is an extraordinarily thoughtful and carefully researched account of a critical episode in Cold War history, based on important new Chinese sources. It is highly revealing--and highly recommended."

--John Lewis Gaddis, Ohio University

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