Korean War Chapter 4

Chapter four is centered around the critical view of the changing Chinese communist strategies to end the Korean war by first analyzing the aftermath of the Korean crisis for Beijing. It also looked at the views pertinent to the goals pursued in Beijing’s management of the war. It goes further to talk about how Beijing’s motive in the Korea war changed during its intervention. Mao Zedong and the CCP did not want Korea to go to war because they were worried about the consequences. They feared it may lead to a lot of complications in east Asia and negatively affect the CCP’s efforts to liberate Taiwan which was still under the nationalist forces. Nonetheless, the PRC intervened in the Korean war. The PRC wanted North Korea to serve as a buffer

As the tension in Korea escalated, Stalin became more cautious in avoiding direct confrontation with the United States and refused to send troops to Korea. Instead, he encouraged the Chinese to send their armies to assist the North and promised, according to the alliance treaty, to support China with military equipment and air force cover for Chinese troops in Korea and to defend Chinese borders. Beijing considered the Soviet support crucial to China’s intervention. Mao specifically sent Premier Zhou Enlai to Moscow to discuss the Soviet support and made the decision to intervene only after such assurance was made. He also immediately halted all actions of the CPV after learning that the Soviet Union would not provide air support at the initial stage. Nevertheless, Beijing still proceeded in the absence of the important Soviet air support. If such a decision was made, as Allen Whiting argued, because of China’s ‘vulnerability’, then it is necessary to find out in what led to China’s vulnerability. If it is just the physical security of the mainland, why did China not withdraw from intervening and focus on protecting itself? This suggests that there are some other vulnerable aspects which raised the awareness of Chinese leaders and compelled them to intervene which begs the question, what exactly were

proceeded near the border ‘all the North-eastern border defense forces will be absorbed’. Zhou later also implicitly expressed his worries that there would not be enough troops to guard the ‘one thousand kilometers’ of borders if the Americans occupied North Korea. Such concerns imply that the leaders in Beijing were deeply worried about the fact that once American troops were stationed in the border region, China would be forced to focus most of its troops and resources on the North-eastern border region. This would be both fiscally expensive and politically dangerous. Furthermore, the troops were forced to deploy troops around the border lines, the CCP would have limited military resources to continue their plan of ‘liberation’ of Taiwan and the presence of the U.S. Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait posed another security threat to China’s Southern coastline. Moreover, the constrains on economic reconstruction and countering anti-Communist activities would heavily constrain the CCP’s efforts to consolidate its regime and domestic authorities, which, serves as an important reason for Beijing’s decision to intervene. The above analysis shows that security concern did play a role in China’s decision to intervene in Korea. While the alliance treaty could guarantee full Soviet support to protect China’s security when its territory was invaded, it could not lift the constrains on economic reconstruction and troop