War in Korea and Indochina } 61
Foreign and domestic reactionary forces were not reconciled to their
defeat [with the establishment of the PRC]. Shortly after the birth of
new China, US imperialism brazenly sent troops to Korea and pushed
the flames of war to the Yalu River in a wild scheme to strangle to death
and uproot new China.^5
Of course absolving Mao of responsibility for starting the Korean War
neatly absolves him of responsibility for the initiation of the US protection
of Taiwan that resulted from that war. While some Chinese scholars, and
hopefully China’s leaders, may have a more accurate understanding of the ac-
tual origins of the Korean War, mainstream political culture in the PRC still
embraces the notion that the United States and/or South Korea initiated the
war to injure or threaten China.
The release of ex-Soviet archives has pretty much destroyed this old “the
South shot first” thesis.^6 The war that started on June 25 was a well-prepared
massive invasion designed to destroy the South Korean regime and incorpo-
rate all of Korea into a single KWP-ruled state.^7 The question then becomes,
what were Beijing’s and Moscow’s roles in the launching of Kim Il Sung’s
ill-fated “liberation war”? And why did Beijing decide to rescue Kim and his
regime when his war plan collapsed?
The first wave of solid scholarship that attempted to answer the question
of why China entered the Korean War focused on the crossing of the 38th
parallel by US forces in early October 1950, and then the advance of those
forces north to the Yalu River, forming the border between China and North
Korea. It was the threat to China’s Northeast posed by the US occupation of
North Korea that impelled China to intervene, according to this interpreta-
tion.^8 China viewed North Korea as a security buffer between its main indus-
trial bases in its Northeast and US forces ensconced in South Korea, Japan,
and Okinawa. The security of the PRC simply would not permit the presence
of US forces on the Yalu River within easy striking distance of China’s indus-
trial heartland. As US forces approached the 38th parallel after the successful
amphibious landing at Incheon on September 15, 1950, Beijing gave warning
to the United States: do not cross the 38th parallel. US leaders concluded that
these warnings were a bluff. After continued US disregard for Beijing’s warn-
ings, when US forces reached the Yalu, Beijing decided to strike. On October
19, Chinese forces poured across the Yalu to push the US military to under-
take the longest retreat in its history.
Much of this thesis is still sound. But more recent scholarship on the
Korean War utilizing declassified Soviet documents has stressed three addi-
tional factors: 1) Stalin’s and Mao’s roles in approving Kim Il Sung’s original
decision for war, 2) the close linkages between Mao’s decision to intervene
late in 1950 and his efforts to consolidate CCP control over China and mov-
ing the Chinese revolution into its socialist stage, and 3) Mao’s desire to