Korean War Overview
Precisely one year after the People’s Republic of China was founded, Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party were drawn into an international conflict of epic proportions: The Korean War. After World War Two, the former Japanese colony of Korea was partitioned, the North safeguarded by the Soviet Union and the South by the United States. In 1950, the North Korean army crossed the divide in the hope of controlling the entire country. Prompted by Stalin and fearing a US attack, China sent a volunteer army to North Korea in October 1950, intending to demonstrate loyalty to the Soviet Union who supplied them with aid and expertise, counter the threat of the United States and achieve a sense of national pride in a fledgling, new-born nation.
Turning first to the issue of the United States, the PBS documentary, ‘China: A Century of Revolution: The Mao Years’ (Source 1), poignantly notes: ‘The United States did not recognise Mao’s government’, holding steadfast to the notion that Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist party, exiled in Taiwan, were the legitimate government of China. The US appealed to the United Nations after North Korea breached the partition and troops from fifteen countries were sent to drive the North Korean army out of the south. The US army was led by General Douglas MacArthur and his original orders were to stick to this strategy. However, MacArthur’s troops advanced north towards the Yalu river and the Chinese border, in effect, threatening Chinese territory.
While this was one of the immediate causes of conflict, animosity towards the US in China ran much deeper. As Hao (1990:96) comments, ‘To help the KMT to wipe out communist forces, Washington gave Chiang Kai-shek's KMT government more than US$2 billion of military and economic aid in the civil war.’ Unsurprisingly, Mao believed the US wanted to invade China, so much so that he decided to draw even closer to the Soviet Union. In actual fact, the US had no plans for invasion. A lot of the money was intended to appease the communist-fearing Republican opposition to President Truman, himself a democrat. Mao became further outraged when on the 27th June 1950, on the outbreak of the Korean War but before China’s entrance:
‘Truman not only ordered direct American air and naval support for South Korea, but also decided to re-intervene in the Chinese civil war by interposing the 7th Fleet between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, to “neutralize" the Taiwan Strait. Since Taiwan had no capability to attack the CCP then, it was pointless to protect the mainland and simply an action to defend Chiang Kai-shek. (Hao: 1990:100).
Mao believed China would not be unified until Taiwan was ‘liberated’ from the Nationalist Party, so this gesture served as another trigger to push China into an international conflict at a time when it was still trying to tackle many domestic issues.
In the face of this affront to Chinese unity, Mao began an intensive propaganda campaign against the United States. The ‘Resist America, Aid Korea’ campaign (Source 2) gained traction amongst the Chinese public with many members of the public donating money to fund the war effort. Between work units, competition broke out as to how much money was donated. Indeed, source 2, published in 1952, states that public contributions have been sufficient to purchase 3710 airplanes. Rawnsley (2009: 304) even argues: ‘the Korean War allowed the Chinese Communist Party to use propaganda to strengthen and consolidate its domestic programmes’, also noting that those who did not support Land Reform were labelled as GMD spies or American Imperialists. On a military level, this of course imbued the People’s Liberation Army with the same resolve and determination that Mao benefitted from during the Civil War.
In 1950, the Communist Party magazine China Pictorial (Source 3), featured an infamous spread that depicted the United States as a ‘Paper Tiger’. This is an ancient Chinese saying used to denote something that appears to be powerful but is weak in reality. The idea of the paper tiger, first used by Mao Zedong in 1946, is astutely analysed by Powell (1965:57):
‘The ideological rationale for the concept of the "paper tigers" gains practical support from history as the Chinese tell it. They observe that events proved that the Tsar, Hitler, Tojo and Chiang Kai-shek were "paper tigers," who originally appeared to be strong, but who were defeated. They quote Lenin and call upon the history of revolutions from the American and French to the Russian to the recent revolutions of China, Cuba and Algeria as evidence of the superiority of politically motivated men over advanced weapons.’
So did Mao’s thesis of the US as a ‘paper tiger’ come to pass on the battlefield? Zhou Enlai, the foreign minister for the CCP, outlined the strategy for combat on the 20th September 1950:
‘The war to resist America and assist Korea should be conducted as a protracted war on the basis of self-reliance. In every campaign and battle, we have to gain superiority by concentrating our manpower and firepower in order to break up and destroy the enemy. By weakening the enemy gradually, we will be able to carry out a protracted war.’ (Chen: 1992:16)
This is what is commonly known as a war of attrition whereby the enemy is gradually worn down through continued loss. This strategy, of course, was accompanied by the fact that the PLA was greater in number than the US although the US were stronger in terms of military equipment and weaponry. Chinese troops were commanded by Peng Dehuai, who employed a strategy of feigning to retreat, luring the enemy into positions beneficial to the Chinese. The first two campaigns were a resounding success with control of the majority of North Korea regained by December 1950. The undeniable bravery of many Chinese troops was utilised on a domestic level for propaganda purposes to shore up public support for the conflict (Source 4).
Indeed, the official reason for the Chinese going to war in Korea was to combat the threat of the US and this was the overriding public perception of the Korean War. The US had miscalculated China’s willingness to be involved in the conflict so soon after its foundation. Perhaps one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for this has been identified by Rawnsley (2009: 312) who cites a US investigation into the beliefs of enemy Chinese POW’s:
‘One question asked the Chinese POWs: ‘Why is the People’s Democratic Republic of China [sic] fighting?’ Sixty per cent of the 238 informants replied: ‘For the defense of China, next victim of the US’. Only 2 per cent answered that China was fighting to unify Korea, 8 per cent the liberation of South Korea and 17 per cent to defend North Korea.’
There was of course, another very important factor at play apart from the United States that Chinese citizens were less informed about: The Soviet Union. Stalin had implored Mao to enter the conflict. Mao was hardly in a position to refuse given his reliance on Moscow for Soviet technology, equipment and expertise vital to the industrialisation of China. From a Russian perspective, China’s entrance into the Korean War would mean they would be in no position to question Soviet dominance of global communism. Mao Zedong thought and the adaption of Marxism to Chinese circumstances had not been welcomed by Stalin. The onset of the Korean war would also spell the beginning of a complex relationship between Stalin and Mao. Stalin had originally promised China aircraft but then reneged on his promise. As Chen (1992:22) notes: ‘The Chinese desperately needed Soviet support in any form at this moment, and Mao had no other choice but swallow the fruit of the Soviet betrayal. Mao, however, would never forgive it.’
Indeed, it is interesting to consider propaganda emanating from the United States office of psychological warfare, who depicted Mao as subservient to Stalin (Source 5). Source 5 is written in Korean and parodies the power relations and positions of the three communist leaders Kim Il Sung (Korea), Mao Zedong (China) and Josef Stalin (Russia). The text in Korean reads ‘Korean Ox, Chinese Servant, Russian Master.’ Indeed, the cartoon depicts Kim Il Sung as a horse roped to a hammer and sickle plough, Mao is driving the plough whilst Stalin watches on in a supervisory capacity.
By 1952, when this propaganda leaflet was distributed, the Korean conflict had taken a very different turn. Despite Peng Dehuai’s reticence, Mao had ordered troops to cross the 38th parallel, the partition between North and South Korea. As Chen (1992: 28) claims: 'He seemed to believe that by challenging the "old international impression" of the 38th Parallel, a human-made dividing line between North and South Korea before the war, the Americans would not be able to use it as an excuse to maintain their presence in the South.’ At the beginning of 1951, Chinese troops had sustained substantial losses and were suffering from physical exhaustion. 600,000 new troops were drafted, and a rotation strategy was implemented to give soldiers respite. In April 1951, the US had a change of heart and dismissed General Macarthur who wanted to wage war on Communist China. The US re-affirmed their goal of merely recovering the dividing line between north and south. After a long stalemate, the possibility of peace talks began to emerge. Interestingly, source 6 denotes a peace rally held by British and American prisoners of War published the Chinese Newspaper People’s Daily (人民日报)。One of the banners, written in English reads ‘We want peace, withdraw aggressive troops from Taiwan'. Whether the prisoners were coerced into this protest or organised it as part of their own free will is hard to say. Indeed, the war had assumed a huge amount of China’s gross domestic product with Stanley (2009:71) estimating ’The Korean War's financial costs were staggering as well, with military expenses related to the war making up 44 percent of the Chinese government's budget in 1950, 52 per-cent in 1951, and 28 percent in 1952.’ In late 1952, China had proposed the possibility of an armistice to Stalin and the Soviet Union but Stalin’s response was instead to give China more weapons to continue fighting. However, Stalin died on March 5th 1953 and the armistice was rapidly signed between the UN and Communist forces in July of the same year and Korea was left in the same situation as when the war began.
What then had China gained from this conflict, if anything? Mitter (2004) cites Mao’s speech at the closure of the Korean War: 'After three years we have won a great victory in the war to resist US aggression and aid Korea,' announced Mao Zedong on 12 September 1953. 'It has now come to a halt.’ With regards to the Chinese Economy and the death toll of Chinese soldiers, the war was an irrevocable failure in quantitative terms. Mitter places the Chinese death toll of the Korean War at around 900, 000 soliders all of whom died for an unyielding partition line. However, Mitter turns attention towards China’s world standing in the Korean War aftermath, stating ‘The end result was that the moral certainty of China’s revolutionary diplomacy was bolstered by the experience of Korea. The armistice had not provided an overwhelming victory in reality, yet China’s worst fears had not been realized.’ He also notes: ‘The Korean success was a go-ahead signal for the strengthening of Mao’s revolutionary diplomacy, and simultaneously for the growing split with the Soviet Union.’ China had once again, as in the Civil War, shown a capability to stand on her own two feet with limited international support whilst propaganda campaigns had solidified communist ideology in the minds of Chinese citizens. The Korean War was also an exercise in miscalculated diplomacy, China believing the US would imminently invade and the US assuming that a newly formed nation would not have the willpower to enter an international conflict.
Bibliography
Chen, J. (1992) 'China's Changing Aims during the Korean War, 1950—1951'. The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 1 (1), 8-41
Mitter, Rana (2004) ’ The Korean Armistice of 1953 and its Consequences’ LSE eprints Discussion paper Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/6879/1/The_Korean_Armistice_of_1953_and_its_Consequences_-_Part_II.pdf
Powell, R. L. (1965) 'Great Powers and Atomic Bombs are "Paper Tigers"'. The China Quarterly (23), 55-63
Rawnsley, G. D. (2009) '‘The Great Movement to Resist America and Assist Korea’: How Beijing Sold the Korean War'. Media, War & Conflict 2 (3), 285-315
Stanley, E. A. (2009) 'Ending the Korean War: The Role of Domestic Coalition Shifts in Overcoming Obstacles to Peace'. International Security 34 (1), 42-82
Yufan, H. and Zhihai, Z. (1990) 'China's Decision to Enter the Korean War: History Revisited'. The China Quarterly (121), 94-115