This book re-visits the history of the Korean War of 1950-1953 from a Chinese perspective, examining Chinese strategy and exploring why China sent three million troops to Korea, in Mao’s words, to “defend the homeland and safeguard the country”—giving rise to what became the war’s common name in China. It also looks into the relatively neglected historical factors which have redefined China’s security concerns and strategic culture. Using newly available sources from China and the former Soviet Union, the book considers how interactive the parameters of defense changes were in a foreign war against Western powers, how flexible Chinese strategy was in the context of its intervention, and how expansive its strategic cultural repertoire was at the crucial moment to “defend the country.” Providing a re-examination of China’s military decisions and strategy evolution, this text narrates the story of successive generations of Chinese leaders and provides a key insight into security issues in China and Northeast Asia today.

China's Road to the Korean War

"Breaks new ground in analyzing China's decision to enter the war and its subsequent struggle to hold its own against the world's most powerful nation. Should stand for some time as the standard comprehensive treatment of China in the Korean War". -- William Stueck, author of The Korean War. "Offers provocative insights into Mao's thinking about strategy, tactics, and the human costs of warfare. Highly recommended". -- John Lewis Gaddis, author of The Long Peace.

Between November 1950 and the end of fighting in June 1953, China launched six major offensives against UN forces in Korea. The most important of these began on April 22, 1951, and was the largest Communist military operation of the war. The UN forces put up a strong defense, prevented the capture of the South Korean capital of Seoul, and finally pushed the Chinese back above the 38th parallel. After China's defeat in this epic five-week battle, Mao Zedong and the Chinese leadership became willing to conclude the war short of total victory. China's Battle for Korea offers new perspectives on Chinese decision making, planning, and execution; the roles of command, political control, and technology; and the interaction between Beijing, Pyongyang, and Moscow, while providing valuable insight into Chinese military doctrine and the reasons for the UN's military success.

The Korean War was, years before Vietnam, the first great East-West military misadventure, eventually engaging sixteen countries under the U.N. flag in war against China and North Korea. Enter the Dragon examines the Chinese side of the Korean War for the first time, re-creating and dramatizing Communist China's reluctant role in the undeclared war against the U.S. in Korea. Russell Spurr's military classic is drawn from firsthand recollections of observers and participants on both sides, and focuses on six pivotal months, beginning in August 1950, when China first deliberated intervention, through their first strike in October, to the standstill at the end of January 1951.Based on five years of research and over 20 fact-finding trips to the People's Republic of China and Korea, Enter the Dragon describes why China became involved in Korea and how its strategy evolved, and recreates life on the front lines, conference rooms, and in the streets of the embattled cities. Spurr discovers a growing underground movement among the Chinese to re-evaluate their position in the Korean War, and contends that had the U.N. forces, led by General MacArthur, stayed on their side of the parallel, China would not have joined the North Korean action.

The East Asian War of 1592 to 1598 was the only extended war before modern times to involve Japan, Korea, and China. It devastated huge swathes of Korea and led to large population movements across borders. This book draws on surviving letters and diaries to recount the personal experiences of five individuals from different backgrounds who lived through the war and experienced its devastating effects: a Chinese doctor who became a spy; a Japanese samurai on his first foreign expedition; a Korean gentleman turned refugee; a Korean scholar-diplomat; and a Japanese Buddhist monk involved in the atrocities of the invasion. The book outlines the context of the war so that readers can understand the background against which the writers' lives were lived, allows the individual voices of the five men and their reflections on events to come through, and casts much light on prevailing attitudes and conditions, including cultural interaction, identity, cross-border information networks, class conflict, the role of religion in society, and many others aspects of each writer's world.

This study examines how and why Chinas military intervention in the Korean War came into existence within the time span from May 1949 to July 1951. China was involved in the war preparations much earlier and deeper than was previously known. Beijings preconditions to enter the war boiled down to three: (1) its full control of China; (2) foreign enemy forces invasion of North Korea; and (3) Moscows logistic and air support. Beijing had incorrectly calculated that Washington would dispatch only Japanese field forces to Korea, which is the very reason underlying its inadequate though early preparations for the war, while it had correctly calculated that Washington would not invade China proper via Korea before it entered the war. Expecting an enemy troops landing at Inchon followed by their invasion of North Korea, Beijing planned to ambush them in northern North Korea. It therefore failed to dispatch a symbolic force into Korea to give credibility to diplomatic deterrence against Washingtons possible invasion of North Korea. China developed ten prime interventionist goals as follows: (1) to save North Korea; (2) to dispel Stalins suspicions and to pay Maos political debt owed to Stalin in 1941 and 1942; (3) to have the PLA experienced in modern warfare; (4) to have the PLA modernized with Soviet weaponry; (5) to have its economy revitalized with overall Soviet assistance; (6) to enter the United Nations; (7) to exchange South Korean territories for an American withdrawal from Taiwan; (8) to have Nationalist forces in Taiwan; (9) to defuse an American retaliatory or nuclear attach upon China proper; and (10) to have North Korea and South Korea almost return to the status quo ante bellum. It was Maos de facto dependence upon rather than his alleged independence from Stalin that had made him rise to power in 1949. This Soviet reign turned out to be considerably more decisive than the American threat in driving China into the war in 1950.

The Korean conflict was a pivotal event in China's modern military history. The fighting in Korea constituted an important experience for the newly formed People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), not only as a test case for this fledgling service but also in the later development of Chinese air power. Xiaoming Zhang fills the gaps in the history of this conflict by basing his research in recently declassified Chinese and Russian archival materials. He also relies on interviews with Chinese participants in the air war over Korea. Zhang's findings challenge conventional wisdom as he compares kill ratios and performance by all sides involved in the war. Zhang also addresses the broader issues of the Korean War, such as how air power affected Beijing's decision to intervene. He touches on ground operations and truce negotiations during the conflict. Chinese leaders placed great emphasis on the supremacy of human will over modern weaponry, but they were far from oblivious to the advantages of the latter and to China's technological limitations. Developments in China's own air power were critical during this era. Zhang offers considerable materials on the training of Chinese aviators and the Soviet role in that training, on Soviet and Chinese air operations in Korea, and on diplomatic exchanges over Soviet military assistance to China. He probes the impact of the war on China's conception of the role of air power, arguing that it was not until the Gulf War of the early 1990s that Chinese leaders engaged in a broad reassessment of the strategy they adopted during the Korean War. Military historians and scholars interested in aviation and foreign affairs will find this volume of special interest. As a unique work that presents the Chinese point of view, it stands as both a complement and a corrective to previous accounts of the conflict. Xiaoming Zhang earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Iowa in 1994. He has had works published in various journals, including the Journal of Military History, which has twice selected him to receive the Moncado Prize for excellence in the writing of military history. Zhang currently resides in Montgomery, Alabama, where he teaches at the Air War College. Zhang's study is masterful in placing the Chinese air war in Korea in the context of China's development in the twentieth century. In addition to providing important new evidence on China's role in the Korean War, Zhang offers a particularly noteworthy analysis of Sino-Soviet relations during the early 1950s. William Stueck, Distinguished Research Professor of History, University of Georgia; author of The Korean War: An International History (1995) and Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History (2002)

Concentrating on U.S. concerns for credibility abroad, Stueck uses recently declassified documents and many interviews to analyze the origins of the Sino-American confrontation in Korea in late 1950. He demonstrates how personalities (Secretary of State Marshall and General MacArthur) and bureaucracies (the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff) influenced policy development and how congressional penny-pinching reduced prospects for a prudent American course in Korea. Originally published in 1981. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.