Mao and the Korean War
The newspapers are
littered with reviews of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s Mao: The Unknown
Story. Critics call it a bombshell and even groundbreaking. One reviewer
from The Sunday Times (London)
judged it “A triumph…and a superb piece of research.” However, upon careful
examination, the elaborate claims of Chang and Halliday unravel to reveal
distorted accounts and hyperbolic assertions, resulting in a story more
inaccurate than unknown. The 800-page behemoth provides the skeptical scholar
the ideal crime scene to search out tall tales and white lies. This paper will
focus upon the book’s misrepresentation of the Korean War, one of the more
controversial sections of Chang and Halliday’s book.
The four major
players involved in the Korean War were the Soviet Union,
China, the United
States, and North
Korea. According to Chang and Halliday, the
Korean War was a product of Mao Zedong and Stalin’s conniving, not the decision
of North Korean Communist dictator, Kim Il Sung. This line of argument is
evident from the provocative titles of the Korean War chapters of the book:
“Why Mao and Stalin Started the Korean War” and “Mao Milks the Korean War.” The
book claims that the Korean War was fought on Korean soil at the cost of
millions of Korean soldiers’ and civilians’ lives, but not for Korean
intentions. The war becomes a mere steppingstone in Stalin’s endeavor to thwart
the United States
and Mao’s aspirations to extort arms and technology from Russia.
Chang and Halliday Self-Contradictions
The book asserts
that Mao’s intervention in the Korean War was motivated by his belief that
“only such a war would enable him to gouge out of Stalin what he needed to
build his own world-class war machine.”[1]
While technology certainly played a role in Sino-Soviet discourse, there is
little support for Chang and Halliday’s assertion that Mao’s quest for
technology was the driving force behind China’s
dedication of millions of men and billions of dollars to the Korean War effort.
Furthermore, the book is inconsistent
in its account of the origins of the war.
On one hand, the book clearly credits the start of the Korean War
to Mao, though failing to clarify that the Korean War began June 25, 1950 while China
entered the war only three months later on the 19th of October. On the other hand, Chang and Halliday call
the initial plan for a North Korean offense in June the “Kim-Stalin plan,” in which Mao was merely an endorser.[2]
China Against Intervention
A careful review of the record
shows that China
was actually hesitant to enter armed engagements against the United
States. Notable Korean War scholars,
including Bruce Cummings, Chen Jian, and even Jon Halliday himself in an
earlier book, all using many of the same sources listed by Chang and Halliday,
have determined that Mao’s decision to enter the Korean War was not made
lightly. Clearly Mao had not strategically planned the Korean War for his own
gain as Chang and Halliday lead readers to believe.
In reality, before
the outbreak of the Korean War, Mao and his closest colleagues shared the view
that “the Americans are afraid of war.”[3]
For example, Mao, in a report to Liu Shaoqi about his meetings with Stalin in
late 1949 and early 1950, stated “according to
him [Stalin], it is unlikely that a war will break out, and we agree with his
opinions.”[4]
Thus it is difficult to believe that Mao was in a position to “milk” a war he
did not even expect to occur. Instead,
he was said to have pondered China’s
possible intervention “long and hard.”[5]
Historical research and documentation from the period also support this view.
For example, an internal report by the Foreign Ministry of the USSR clearly
stated that, “the Chinese government, under pressure from Stalin, adopted the
decision to send volunteers to Korea only after a real threat to the security
of China had arisen and the very existence of the DPRK had been called into
question.”[6]
Many top
officials closest to Mao in the Central Party Committee stood against
intervention and presented several legitimate arguments:
- The
country had not recovered from many years of warfare
- Land
reform had not been completed
- Taiwan
and Tibet
remained to be liberated- bandit KMT troops still needed to be cleared
- The
Chinese army was insufficiently equipped and trained
- Some
portion of the population and army did not want the war.[7]
A careful review of the record by a
team of Russian, Chinese and American authors concludes that “Mao was more
cautious than both Kim and Stalin.“ [8] The
possibility of armed conflict with the United
States did not excite Mao as Chang and
Halliday would have readers believe. In fact, in December 1949, Mao, during a meeting with Stalin, explained to him that the most important issue for
China was
peace. According to the records of the conversation, Mao opened his talks with
Stalin by stating, “The most important question at the present time is the
question of establishing peace. China
needs a period of 3-5 years of peace, which would be used to bring the economy
back to prewar levels and to stabilize the country in general.”[9]
Clearly, going to war with the US
was not part of Mao’s plans for China.
Once
the war broke out, security became a critical issue on China’s
agenda, and it had good reasons to feel threatened by the presence of hostile
forces near the Chinese border. As American troops were advancing toward the
Chinese border on the Yalu River,
Mao explained at a Politburo meeting on October 13, 1950 that it was necessary to intervene in
the Korean War by stating:
“If we do not send
troops and allow the enemy to march to the Yalu river, it will encourage
reactionary morale… It will be detrimental to all sides…the Northeast Frontier
Army will be pinned down and the electricity supply for South
Manchuria will be controlled. All in all, we believe that we
should enter the war and we must enter the war.”[10]
Zhou Enlai, China’s
Premier and Foreign Minister at the time, also asked, “If American imperialists
fight to the Yalu River
how can we continue production peacefully?”[11]
Peng Dehuai, one of Mao’s most prominent military leaders, also concurred with
Mao and Zhou’s concern about China’s
safety during this precarious period. In his autobiography, Peng explained that
“The US could find a pretext at any time to launch a war of aggression against China.
The tiger wanted to eat human beings…”[12] A
past president of Taiwan,
Li Zongren, even argues in his memoirs that “the American government used the
Korean War as an excuse to send its Seventh Fleet into Chinese waters…. This
action, in fact, forced the Chinese Communists into the Korean war…”[13]
Chang and Halliday conclude their discussion of the
Korean War by stating that “out
of the global ambitions of the two Communist tyrants, Stalin and Mao, as well
as the more local ambition of Kim, China
was hurled into the inferno of the Korean War on 19 October 1950.”[14]
Their stress on Mao’s global ambitions is consistent with the analysis of Mao’s
actions throughout the PRC period, but let us examine carefully the evidence on
what drove China
to intervene. After the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25th 1950, Soviet aid to the
North Koreans increased and North Korea’s
armies successfully pushed south of the 38th parallel in an all-out
offensive while China,
interestingly, took only defensive action. Chang and Halliday omit a large body of evidence
clarifying China’s road to involvement.
Evidence refuting
Chang and Halliday’s claim that “Mao needed the war”[15]
is ample and well known. China’s
entrance into the Korean War was driven not only by security concerns and its
desire to safeguard its “national construction,”[16]
but also by its ideological support for North
Korea.
Mao Zedong and his closest colleagues felt an obligation to help the
North. For example, Liu Shaoqi proclaimed
that “the Korean people’s movement opposing the American imperialist puppet,
Syngman Rhee, and demanding the founding of a unified Korean People’s
Democratic Republic can never be impeded.”[17]
This statement was reiterated by Zhou in 1950 in his assertion that the Chinese
people would not “tolerate foreign aggression, [and] they will not supinely
tolerate seeing their neighbors being savagely invaded by imperialists.”[18] Though one might question such statements as
merely the public face of China’s policy, they strongly suggest that the
motivations for the war included China’s sense of solidarity with its North
Korean neighbor and not, as Chang and Halliday vehemently argue, simply Mao’s lust for military power
and domination.
Conclusion
There is no doubt
that Chairman Mao was a man responsible for the deaths of multitudes of Chinese
people. Chang and Halliday clearly find Mao’s policies and actions repulsive
and their book represents their views well. Unfortunately, the book represents
these views at the high cost of truth.
It is not just one man’s reputation that is at stake; the stake is much
greater than that. It is history which is threatened by the clear inaccuracy of
this book. The lives of hundred of thousands of Koreans, Chinese, and Americans
were lost during the Korean War. The sacrifice of their lives is an important
part of history and the integrity and entirety of this history is worth more
reverence and honor than it was afforded by Chang and Halliday.
Stacy Jer
sjer@ucsd.edu
[1] Jung Chang & Jon
Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. P.358
[3] Mao Zedong. “Telegram,
Mao Zedong to Liu Shaoqi, 18 December 1949.” Cold War Bulletin (Hereafter:CWB), nos. 8-9, 1996. P. 266
[5] Qiang Zhai. The Dragon,
the Lion, and the Eagle: Chinese-British-American Relations, 1949-1958. Ohio:
Kent State University Press, 1994. P. 69
[6] Foreign Ministry of the USSR. “On the Korean War,
1950-53, and the Armistice Negotiations: 9 August 1966.” CWB, nos 3, 1993. P. 15
[7]Qiang Zhai, 1994. P. 69
[8] Sergei N. Goncharov and
John W. Lewis, Xue Litai. Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean
War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. P. 140
[9] Mao Zedong. “Conversation between Stalin and Mao,
Moscow, 16 December 1949.” CWB, nos.
6-7, 1995. P. 5.
[10] Qiang Zhai, 1994 . P. 69
[12] Peng Dehuai. Memoirs
of a Chinese Marshal: The Autobiographical Notes of Peng Dehaui. California:
University Press of the Pacific, 2005. P. 472-475
[13] Li Tsung-Jen and Te-Kong Tong. The Memoirs of Li
Tsung-Jen. Colorado: Westview Press, 1979. P. 561
[14] Jung Chang and Jon
Halliday, 2005. P.364.
[16] Peng Dehuai, 2005. P.
472-484
[17] Liu Shao Ch’I. Collected
Works of Liu Shao Ch’I (1945-1957) Hong Kong: Union
Research Institute, P. 177
[18] Zhou Enlai's speech at
the convention celebrating the first anniversary of the establishment of the
PRC, September 30, 1950, Renmin
ribao, October 1, 1950