Read Brothers in Arms Online

Authors: Odd Arne Westad

Tags: #Political Science, #International Relations, #General, #test

Brothers in Arms (89 page)

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China, late on October 2, informing him that because dispatching Chinese troops to Korea "may entail extremely serious consequences," including "provoking an open conflict between the United States and China," many leaders in Beijing believed that China should "show caution" in entering the Korean War. Mao therefore told Stalin that the Chinese leadership had decided not to send troops to Korea.

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Over the ensuing two weeks, the Sino-Soviet alliance underwent a major test. Before October 7 (when he informed Kim of the communication), Stalin cabled the Chinese leadership, advising Beijing that for the sake of China's security interests as well as in the interests of the world proletarian revolution, it was necessary for China to send troops to Korea. Indeed, Stalin even introduced a thesis that may be called the Communist version of domino theory, warning Mao and his comrades that Beijing's failure to intervene could result in grave consequences first for China's Northeast, then for all China, and then for the entire world revolution. Again and ironically, however, Stalin did not mention how the Soviet Union would support China if Chinese troops did enter operations in Korea.
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Although it is not clear precisely when Stalin's message reached Beijing and what impact it had on deliberations there, we do know that by October 7, Chinese leaders had made the decision to enter the war. From October 3 to 6 the CCP leadership held a series of strictly secret meetings to discuss the Korean issue. Although most CCP leaders had opposed, or at least had reservations about, dispatching troops to Korea, Mao used both his authority and his political insights to secure the support of his colleagues for the decision to go to war.
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On October 8 Mao Zedong formally issued the order to establish "Chinese People's Volunteers" forces with Peng Dehuai as the commander
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and informed Kim II Sung of the decision the same evening.
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But, to strengthen China's bargaining position in pursuing Soviet military support, Mao decided to "play tough with" Stalin.
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On October 10-11 Zhou Enlai, who had traveled from Beijing to the Soviet Union, met with Stalin at the latter's villa on the Black Sea. Zhou, according to Shi Zhe, did not tell Stalin that China would send troops to Korea but persistently led the discussion to Soviet military support, especially air cover, for China. Stalin agreed to provide China with substantial military support but explained that it was impossible for the Soviet air force to engage in fighting over Korea until two to two and a half months after Chinese land forces entered operations there.
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In view of this situation, on October 12 Mao again ordered Chinese troops to halt preparations for entering operations in Korea.
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The next day the CCP Politburo met again to discuss China's entry into the Korean War. Pushed by Mao, the Politburo confirmed that entering the war was in the fundamental interests

 

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of the Chinese revolution as well as the Eastern revolution. Mao then authorized Zhou Enlai, who was still in Moscow, to inform Stalin of the decision. At the same time, Mao instructed Zhou to continue to "consult with" the Soviet leaders, to clarify whether they would ask China to lease or to purchase the military equipment that Stalin agreed to provide, and whether the Soviet air force would enter operations in Korea later.

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On October 17, the day Zhou returned to Beijing, Mao again ordered the troops on the Chinese-Korean border to halt their movements. The next day, when Mao was convinced that the Soviet Union would provide China with all kinds of military support, including air cover in a later stage of the war, he finally ordered Chinese troops to enter the Korean War.
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Mao Zedong was always the central figure in the process of deciding whether to intervene in Korea. Early in July 1950 it was Mao who proposed the establishment of the Northeast Defense Army. In August Mao twice set up deadlines for completion of China's preparations for military operations in Korea. During the first three weeks of October, when the CCP leadership made the final decision, Mao was almost the only person who consistently favored intervention. Using both his reasoning and his authority, he convinced his comrades that China had to enter the conflict even without direct Soviet air cover at first.
The concerns over safeguarding China's physical security certainly played an important role in bringing Chinese leaders in Beijing to the decision to enter the war. Yet factors more complicated than these narrowly defined "security concerns" dominated Mao's conceptual world. When Chinese troops entered the Korean War, Mao meant to pursue a glorious victory over the American-led UN forces, which, he hoped, would transform the challenge and threat posed by the Korean crisis into added energy for enhancing Communist control of China's state and society as well as promote the international prestige and influence of the People's Republic.
This was why at the same time when Mao and his comrades were considering entering the Korean War, the CCP leadership started a Great Movement to Resist America and Assist Korea, with "beating American arrogance" as its central slogan. The party used every means available to stir the "hatred of the U.S. imperialists" among common Chinese, emphasizing that the United States had long engaged in political and economic aggression against China, that the declining capitalist America was not as powerful as it seemed, and that a confrontation between China and the United States was inevitable.
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When the Chinese troops were crossing the Yalu River to Korea in October 1950, a nationwide campaign aimed at suppressing "reactionaries and reactionary activities" emerged in China's cities and countryside.
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All of this indicates that China's entrance into the Korean War must be understood as part of Mao's ef-

 

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forts to mobilize the population to promote his grand programs for continuing the Chinese Revolution.
Mao's already ambivalent feeling toward Stalin must have been further complicated during the first three weeks of October. Because Mao needed to use the Korean crisis as a means to increase domestic political mobilization, he should have welcomed Stalin's constant push for China to enter the war as well as his promise, even if late, that the Soviet Union would provide China with ammunition, military equipment, and eventual air cover. Stalin's promises strengthened Mao's own ability to gain his party leadership's approval of the war decision. However, Stalin's behavior of always putting the interests of the Soviet Union ahead of anything else demonstrated to Mao the limits of Stalin's "proletarian internationalism." Mao also worried about Stalin's fears of a direct Soviet-U.S. confrontation. In comparison, Mao's decision to rescue the Korean and Eastern revolutions at a time of real difficulties strengthened his sense of moral superiority, of being able to help others out, even if the Soviet "elder brother" could not. As a result, a seed for the future Sino-Soviet split was sown during the first test of the Sino-Soviet alliance.
The Alliance and China's Korean War Experience
During the three years of China's intervention in Korea, the relationship between Beijing and Moscow was strengthened. Mao Zedong consulted with Stalin on almost all important decisions. In December 1950 and January 1951, when Mao and his comrades made the decision to order Chinese troops to cross the thirty-eighth parallel, Beijing maintained daily communication with Moscow and received Stalin's support.

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In May-June 1951, when Chinese leaders in Beijing were considering adopting a new strategy to end the war, one that would shift their policy emphasis from fighting to negotiation, they had extensive exchanges of opinions with Stalin and did not make the decision until the strategy was fully backed by Moscow.
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After 1952, when the armistice negotiations at Panmunjom hit a deadlock on the prisoner-of-war issue, Beijing consulted with Moscow and concluded that the Chinese/North Korean side would not compromise on this issue until its political and military position had improved.
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As far as the foundation of the Sino-Soviet alliance is concerned, Mao's decision to send Chinese troops to Korea seemed to have enhanced Stalin's confidence in his comrades in Beijing as genuine proletarian internationalists. During the war years, the Soviet Union provided China with large amounts of ammunition and military equipment. Units of the Soviet air force, based in Manchuria, began to engage in defense of the transportation lines across the Chinese-Korean border as early as November 1950 and began operations over the northern part of North Korea in January 1951.
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In the meantime, Stalin be-

 

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came more willing to commit Soviet financial and technological resources to China's economic reconstruction; during the war years, the Soviet Union's share in China's foreign trade increased from 30 percent (in 1950) to 56.3 percent (in 1953).

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In retrospect, it would have been virtually impossible for China to have fought the Korean War without the alliance with the Soviet Union.

The Soviet support was crucial for Mao's plans for his revolution. Indeed, China's involvement in the Korean War stimulated a series of political and social upheavals in the country that would have been inconceivable during the early stage of the new republic. In the wake of China's entrance into the war, the Communist regime found itself in a powerful position to penetrate into almost every area of Chinese society through intensive mass mobilization under the banner of "Resisting America and Assisting Korea." During the three years of war, three nationwide campaigns swept across China's countryside and cities: the movement to suppress counterrevolutionaries, the land reform movement, and the "Three Antis" and "Five Antis" movements.
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When the war ended in July 1953, China's society and political landscape had been transformed: Resistance to the new regime had been destroyed; land had been redistributed and the landlord class had been eliminated; those Communist cadres whom Mao believed had lost the 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 "petit-bourgeoise" intellectuals had experienced the first round of Communist reeducation. Consequently, the CCP effectively strengthened its organizational control of Chinese society and dramatically increased its authority in the minds of the Chinese people.
These domestic changes were further facilitated by the fact that during the war, the Chinese troops successfully forced the U.S./UN forces to retreat from the Chinese-Korean border to the thirty-eighth parallel, something that allowed Beijing to call its involvement in Korea a great victory. Mao and his comrades thus believed that they had won a position from which to claim that international society friends and foes alike had to accept China as a Great Power. Consequently Mao, as the mastermind of the war decision, began to enjoy political power inside China with far fewer checks and balances than before. His international victory made him more confident and enthusiastic and convinced him of the necessity of undertaking a series of new steps to transform China. Mao had good reason to be thankful for the Sino-Soviet alliance during the Korean crisis.
Yet, on another level, the Chinese experience during the Korean War also ground away at some of the cement that kept the Sino-Soviet alliance together. The extreme pragmatism Stalin had demonstrated in his management of the Ko-

 

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rean crisis, especially in his failure to commit Soviet air support to China during the key weeks of late September and early October 1950, revealed the superficial nature of the Soviet dictator's "proletarian internationalism." What really hurt Mao and his comrades, however, was the Soviet request that China pay for all the military support Beijing had received during the wax, which thereby added to China's long-term economic challenges.

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To the Chinese, Stalin's stinginess made the Soviets seem more like arms merchants than genuine Communist internationalists.

Although China's Korean War experience made Beijing more dependent on Moscow, psychologically Mao and his fellow Chinese leaders enhanced their sense of moral superiority vis-à-vis their comrades in Moscow. Stalin's death in March 1953 further hardened this feeling. As will be discussed later, this subtle change in Mao's and his comrades' view of themselves would have a crucial impact upon the fate of the Sino-Soviet alliance.
The Alliance's Golden Years
For a period of several years after Stalin's death, Sino-Soviet cooperation developed smoothly. The Soviets offered the Chinese substantial support to assist the economic reconstruction of the People's Republic as well as to promote its international position. From September 29 to October 12, 1954, Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev led a top-level Soviet party and governmental delegation to visit China to participate in celebrations of the fifth anniversary of the republic's founding. During this visit, the Soviets signed a series of agreements with the Chinese, including returning to China Soviet military bases in Lüshun (Port Arthur), together with its equipment, giving up Soviet shares in four Sino-Soviet joint ventures,
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providing China with loans totaling 520 million rubles, and offering technological support to China in initiating or upgrading 156 key industrial projects for the First Five-Year Plan of the People's Republic.
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In April 1955 the Soviet Union and China signed an agreement under which Moscow provided Beijing nuclear technology, purportedly for peaceful purposes.
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It seemed that Khrushchev and the new Soviet leadership were willing to establish a more productive cooperative relationship with their Chinese comrades.
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Chinese leaders in Beijing also demonstrated solidarity with Khrushchev and the new Soviet leadership on a series of important domestic and international issues. When the Soviet leaders made the decision to purge Lavrentii Beriia, Stalin's chief of the secret police, and when Khrushchev became first secretary of the CPSU, the CCP leadership quickly offered their support. In the meantime, on such important Soviet foreign policy issues as the formation of the Warsaw Pact Organization, the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Soviet

 

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