China Enters the War

Of all the errors leading to the Korean War, the Americans' underestimation of the Chinese was one of the gravest. An accurate view of China had become virtually impossible in the United States during the cold war, a period of political tension and military rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and other communist countries that began following World War II (1939–45) and continued until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The reasons for American blindness had deep roots in the past.

In the nineteenth century, China had become prey to trade exploitation at the hands of the British, and later the French, Russians, and Americans. After two small wars, the European nations forced China to open more ports, legalize opium (an addictive narcotic drug made from the opium poppy), and welcome Christian missionaries (people who conduct religious or charitable work in a territory or foreign country). Westerners then carved up China among themselves, setting up areas in which the different nations predominated.

During the next generations, many Christian missionaries served in China and returned to the United States with a one-sided view of the Chinese people as a submissive, colonialized people who were grateful and devoted to Americans. Time magazine publisher Henry Luce (1898–1967), who had been born in China as the son of missionaries, promoted this stereotypical view of the Chinese people in his publications, as did other prominent politicians and writers.

The China Lobby

By the mid-twentieth century, a romanticized view of American friendship with the Chinese people prevailed. Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) was held up as a heroic anticommunist figure. Churches and social groups set up charity drives for China. The large group of Americans who participated in this effort came to be known as the "China Lobby." Although the movement was quite strong, very few people had any idea what was actually happening in China, where Chiang was losing the popular support due to his corrupt government. Therefore, the American public was truly shocked when the Chinese Nationalists lost power to Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung; 1893–1976) and the Chinese Communists in 1949.

The rise of the Communists in China should not have surprised Americans. Communism is a political belief system that advocates the elimination of private property, a system in which goods are owned by the community as a whole rather than by specific individuals and are available to all as needed. At its heart it is at odds with the American economic system, capitalism, in which individuals, rather than the state, own the property and businesses, and the cost and distribution of goods are determined by the free market. In the 1940s, professional American diplomats who understood the political factions and issues facing China urged the U.S. government to take the Communists seriously. They knew that the Chinese Communists were of a different breed than the Soviet Communists. In the early days, many of the new leaders were open to a range of economic and social ideas; the Chinese Communists had a history of tensions with the Soviets and were also open to alliances with other nations. The diplomats also knew that Chiang Kai-shek was on his way out. The country, ruled by warlords (often military leaders who control parts of a country, particularly when the central government is not in control) and other local leaders, as well as the Nationalist government, did not support Chiang. The diplomats, who had kept open communications with the Communist Chinese, were harassed by the China Lobby and accused of being communist sympathizers or even spies for the Soviets. They finally withdrew from their posts in China. Consequently, when the United States went to war in Korea, there was no adequate source of information on the Chinese. The United States did not know its enemy.

China

China is one of the oldest cultures in the world and has been the "Middle Kingdom," the center and leader of Asian countries, for centuries. At the time the Korean War started in 1950, China had the largest army in the world, with over five million men and 253 divisions. Because of the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists and the longterm war against the occupying Japanese (see Chapter 1), the Communist Chinese Forces (CCF) were very experienced in combat. They were excellent tacticians—well-versed in employing forces in combat—with strong roots in guerrilla warfare, an irregular form of combat that often involves small groups of warriors who use ambushes and surprise attacks to harass or even destroy much larger armies.

The CCF was organized quite differently than the U.S. or even the Soviet and North Korean armies. The Chinese soldiers all wore the same uniform: in winter, a mustard brown quilted cotton garment with rubber-soled shoes and a cotton cap with ear flaps. The Chinese did not use a ranking system like the American military hierarchy, although there were certainly officers and troops. The organization was created to be egalitarian, with each person in it given more or less equal powers. This was evident to Americans when they captured Chinese prisoners: the privates knew the most intricate details

of the Chinese strategy. At first the Americans dismissed what the prisoners of war (POWs) told them, but later they understood that the Chinese army sponsored discussion groups in which strategy and planning were discussed by all.

The People's Liberation Army

When the Korean War started, the Communist Party had only been in power in China for a year and a half. The Chinese were facing tremendous economic crises. They had little technology, and their military equipment was almost nonexistent. The famous Chinese attack signal—the sounding of eerie bugles along with drums, cymbals, and other loud noises—was, in fact, a primitive way of communication necessitated by a lack of radios and telephones. The Chinese army used humans and animals to transport their supplies because they had few vehicles. Even their railroad system had fallen into disrepair. They had very little air or naval support. And they had never fought in a battle with the kind of weapons the United Nations (UN) forces were using.

But the Chinese had several things their enemy did not have. First, the Chinese army made sure that each soldier in battle was passionately committed to the war. The Chinese believed that if China lost the war, the United States would enter their country as an occupying force. To lose the war meant the loss of independence and freedom in China. The Chinese stressed this in the "political training" of a soldier, which was, to them, as important as tactical training. Second, the Chinese had the advantage of manpower. They had many troops in Korea, always with more on the way. As Edwin Hoyt pointed out in his book The Day the Chinese Attacked Korea, 1950: "Mao Tse-tung chose to put force against force; his force of human hordes against the American force of modern weapons and technology." This meant that when a Chinese soldier went down in battle, another stepped in and quickly took his place. The gruesome fact was that UN forces could fire continuously on an attacking unit of Chinese soldiers; although many soldiers were killed, the group would keep coming on at full strength.

The Chinese, unlike the Americans, also had the advantage of knowing what they were up against. South Korean general Paik Sun Yup (1920–) noted this in his memoirs From Pusan to Panmunjom: "The Chinese understood combat tactics thoroughly, and unlike the UN Command, the Chinese Army knew its enemy well." Paik then quoted a bulletin that

was published by the Chinese military on November 20, 1950, on the results of the battle at Unsan. Written by Chinese deputy commander Teng Hua, the pamphlet provided a solid description of its enemy:

The U.S. Army relies for its main power in combat on the shock effect of coordinated armor and artillery… and their airto-ground attack capability is exceptional. But their infantry is weak. Their men are afraid to die, and will neither press home a bold attack nor defend to the death.… Their habit is to be activeonly during the daylight hours. They are very weak at attacking or approaching an enemy at night.… If their source of supplyis cut, their fighting spirit suffers, and if you interdict their rear, they withdraw on their own.

China is snubbed by the UN

It is clear that China wished to avoid this war. Having just come out of a civil war, the Communist government needed time to establish economic and political stability and also wanted to continue its efforts in claiming Taiwan (formerly Formosa; where the Chinese Nationalists had settled) and Tibet, which had resisted China's claim to it as a "special territory" of China. China was willing to go through the channels of diplomacy in order to come to a resolution in Korea but was impeded in this because of its exclusion from the United Nations. (Since 1949, when the Communists defeated the U.S.backed Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, the United States and the UN did not recognize Communist China.) At the same time that Chinese troops were moving to Manchuria, an area in northern China just north of the Korean border, in August 1950, the People's Republic of China was trying to gain admittance to the United Nations.

On August 1, the Soviet delegate to the United Nations Security Council, Jacob A. Malik (1906–1980), returned. He had been boycotting (refusing to take part in) the proceedings during the prior resolutions on Korea in a show of Soviet displeasure at the UN's refusing to recognize the People's Republic of China as the legitimate Chinese nation. The Soviet delegate introduced a resolution to invite representatives of the People's Republic of China and both Koreas to the Security Council to discuss the war. A second part of his proposal was to stop hostilities and withdraw all foreign troops from Korea. For over a month the proposal was debated, with American representatives pushing instead for a commitment to eliminate the North Koreans and unify the country. The Soviet resolution was defeated in the Security Council on September 6 and September 11: there would be no representation of Korea or China in discussions about the war, and there would be no cease-fire.

On October 2, 1950, after China's foreign minister Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai; 1898–1976) sent a message through the Indian ambassador that China would intervene in the war if the Americans crossed the 38th parallel, the Soviet foreign minister tried again, proposing to the UN General Assembly an immediate cease-fire in Korea and the withdrawal of all foreign troops, to be followed by all-Korean elections. But this was not to be. On October 7, the United Nations passed the vaguely worded, U.S.-created resolution that authorized UN troops to take "appropriate steps… to ensure conditions of stability throughout Korea," as quoted in Bevin Alexander's Korea: The First War We Lost, and to pave the way for a unified Korean government elected under United Nations supervision.

The UN resolution meant that the North Koreans, to whom Chinese loyalty was strong, would certainly be destroyed if they did not receive help. It also meant that the United States would have its forces at the Chinese borders for a long time to come, if not permanently. The United States had been tied to Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists for many years and already had a naval fleet poised between Taiwan and mainland China. The Communist Chinese foresaw the United States constantly trying to reinstate the Nationalists, as MacArthur, commander of the UN forces, had so pointedly said he wanted to do. One other factor must have stirred China toward an unwanted war. The resolution and the public statements of American and European statesmen had demonstrated a general lack of respect for the Chinese, who took pride in being one of the largest and oldest countries of the world.

The Chinese prepare

UN forces began to cross the 38th parallel soon after the UN resolution of October 7. With that provocation, Mao Zedong met with the top generals of his army to discuss intervening in the Korean War. Many Chinese commanders strongly urged against entering the war, believing the army too weak to take on the technologically superior Americans. They were also concerned about the air strength of the UN forces and the potential use of the atomic bomb on China, which had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, effectively ending World War II in 1945. On October 8, Mao selected Peng Dehuai (P'eng Teh-huai; 1898–1974), a general who had been with Mao and the Communists for decades, to be commander of the forces in Korea.

The troops targeted for Korea were to be called the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV), although they were all part of the regular army. (By calling the troops in Korea volunteers, the Chinese may have been leaving the door open to denying they had formally entered into the war.) The CPV troops had been accumulating and organizing around the Manchurian towns of Andong and Shenyang throughout the summer and the fall of 1950. From October 14 to October 18, Peng oversaw the movement of 180,000 troops from Manchuria into North Korea.

The Chinese troops wore North Korean uniforms as they silently traveled by night through the mountainous ter rain to take up defensive positions. They carried American-made mortars (muzzle-loading cannons) and machine guns captured from the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, as well as rifles seized from the surrendering Japanese in Manchuria at the end of World War II. Preparing to meet the enemy, many formed the Haichi Shiki, a Chinese battle forma tion in which the soldiers fan out to form a huge V shape. Once advancing enemy soldiers marched into the open end of the V, the soldiers at the mouth of the formation close in, effec tively cutting off the escape route, isolating and enveloping a small unit for battle. Because they were precise in their defense formations, the Chinese, silent and camouflaged (disguised to look like the surrounding plants and environment), allowed unsuspecting UN troops to march right past them before launching their first offensive.

The first Chinese offensive

While the U.S. troops were advancing toward the Yalu River after successfully taking the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on October 20, the South Korean (ROK) forces met with an unexpected blow as they hurried to the border in the east. On October 25, a regiment of the ROK First Division advancing past the town of Unsan was suddenly attacked by a unit of Chinese troops. On capturing an enemy soldier, the ROK were told that there were two groups of ten thousand Chinese soldiers facing them and another ten thousand facing the ROK Sixth Division. By the afternoon of October 26, the entire ROK First Division was surrounded by Chinese troops.

On October 26, as the ROK Sixth Division's Seventh Regiment neared the shores of the Yalu River at Onjong, it was attacked by what the regiment assumed were North Korean soldiers. The attack, in fact, came from a roadblock of Chinese soldiers. Fierce fighting continued through the next day, when the entire regiment scattered in defeat.

On October 28, two more ROK regiments went to Onjong to try to retrieve some of the weapons and vehicles that had been left behind during the battle. These regiments were shattered by the Chinese as well. On that same day the ROK Seventh Regiment came upon a Chinese roadblock at Kojang. After brutal fighting that day, the Seventh Regiment was ambushed. As many as twenty-seven hundred men were lost. The ROK II Corps was shattered.

Americans in denial

The Chinese attacks at Onjong and Unsan were initially casually dismissed by MacArthur. It was not until October 31, with great loss of lives and ground near the border, that MacArthur's chief intelligence officer conceded that the reports of the Chinese invasion were turning out to be all too true. By that time General Walton H. "Johnnie" Walker (1889–1950) had sent in the First Cavalry to support the surviving South Korean troops. He found that the entire ROK II Corps had disintegrated and was retreating south. Still, the Americans thought the end of the war was just around the corner and that the Chinese soldiers were not a real threat.

General Paik Sun Yup, commander of the ROK First Division, knew better. In his book From Pusan to Panmunjom he said:

Although we were now capturing a succession of Chinese prisoners who unequivocally [without doubt] identified their units as part of the conventional Chinese Army, the Americans continued to fool themselves because the Chinese had yet to challenge a U.S. Army division directly, and because to the American eye, the Koreans and Chinese looked and sounded very much alike. To us, of course, the differences were vast. The Americans clung to the view that at worst we were facing small numbers of Chinese volunteers who had joined defeated NKPA [North Korean People's Army] units.

China's first offensive

On November 1, many observers reported huge columns of Chinese soldiers marching toward the town of Unsan. The Chinese were hidden by smoke they had produced by burning the forests in the area so air support could not locate them. During the night the Chinese surrounded the Eighth Cavalry Regiment at Unsan as well as the ROK Fifteenth Regiment. After destroying most of the Fifteenth, the Chinese trapped and attacked the Third Battalion of the Eighth Cavalry. Attempts were made to rescue the Third Battalion without success, and it became painfully clear that nothing more could be done. After three days of being trapped and in close combat with the Chinese, more than one-half the battalion's survivors were seriously wounded. The two hundred remaining ablebodied men decided to try to escape, leaving behind the battalion's chaplain and surgeon with the two hundred fifty wounded. In all, six hundred died or were missing in action.

Sharp, short attacks began to hit many units of the Eighth Army, mainly at night and always entailing heavy casualties. Although the Americans were seasoned by combat, the power of this new enemy seemed overwhelming. "The attackers came in the hours before the dawn, making enormous noise with drums, whistles, and off-key bugles," Hoyt described in The Day the Chinese Attacked Korea, 1950. "Their attacks were ushered in by machine gun fire and mortar fire, but no artillery. The use of grenades was extensive. The attackers would come out of the night, rush a position, kill and wound men, and then withdraw." Facing this new and unknown enemy, Walker could see that the Eighth Army was vulnerable. He ordered a withdrawal to Kunu-ri, at the Chongchon River line.

Then a very unusual turn of events occurred. Starting November 6, the Chinese units—even as they were defeating the enemy—began, one by one, to pull out of combat and march away. By November 7, the Chinese had withdrawn into the mountains. In many instances the Chinese, before they withdrew, placed American and ROK wounded on stretchers and carried them up to the road, leaving them to be rescued by their comrades. Before freeing them, the Chinese told the wounded to tell their friends about China's compassionate treatment of them. The Chinese People's Volunteers did not strike again for three weeks, leaving enough time for the UN and U.S. policymakers to reconsider.

The pause in battle: November 7–24, 1950

The Americans were puzzled by the Chinese withdrawal-in-victory. Unfortunately, there was little expertise available. The Chinese tactic of withdrawing to lure the enemy deeper into their trap had been written about extensively by Mao Zedong in his book on warfare. But Mao's books had not even been published in the United States and no copies were available. On November 3, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the advisors to the president and the secretary of defense on matters of war) asked MacArthur for a report on the situation. He replied that he could not at that time foresee whether the Chinese would actually execute a large invasion. MacArthur then sent a message to the United Nations, reporting that UN forces were meeting hostile Chinese troops in battle. The UN Security Council met but did not make any decisions about what to do.

Despite the lack of urgency in his November 3 message to the Joint Chiefs, on November 5 MacArthur ordered the Far East Air Force to prepare a large-scale bombing offensive, in which the Korean sides of all the bridges crossing the Yalu River into Manchuria, as well as all North Korean cities and towns, factories, and lines of communication, were to be destroyed. In order to prevent any more Chinese troops from entering Korea, he ordered the air force bombers to work around the clock, if necessary, to accomplish the bombings within a two-week period. When the Joint Chiefs got word of MacArthur's order—he had not bothered to inform them of his intent—they ordered him to stop this attack. MacArthur responded with a cable on November 7, 1950, quoted by Bevin Alexander in Korea: The First War We Lost:

Men and material are pouring across all bridges over the Yalu from Manchuria. This movement not only jeopardizes but threatens the ultimate destruction of the forces under my command. The actual movement across the river can be accomplished under cover of darkness and the distance of the river and our lines is so short that the forces can be deployed against our troops without being seriously subjected to air interdiction. The only way to stop this reinforcement of the enemy is the destruction of these bridges and the subjection of all installations in the north area supporting the enemy advance to the maximum of our air destruction. Every hour this is postponed will be paid for dearly in American and other United Nations blood.

Bombings at the Yalu River

On November 7, MacArthur reported that some enemy aircraft had been striking UN aircraft and then flying back across the border into China. MacArthur wanted permission to bomb aircraft in the skies above Manchuria. UN forces had no authority to cross the Yalu, and widespread international concern over the extent of American aggression in Korea ruled this out. But the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and then the National Security Council met and eventually decided that MacArthur should be allowed to continue his operations as he wished, with the Joint Chiefs continuing to closely monitor the situation.

It was agreed that nonmilitary negotiations with the Chinese would be conducted in the meantime. The Chinese were invited to attend a United Nations meeting to discuss MacArthur's November 6 report. The Chinese foreign ministers agreed to come to the UN to discuss American aggression in Taiwan, not MacArthur's report. They were to arrive at the UN's headquarters in New York on November 19, but they intentionally delayed, not arriving until November 27, after their second offensive in Korea had started. MacArthur's bombings in North Korea and at the Yalu had begun on November 8 and continued until December 5.

Britain proposed that the United Nations forces fall back to provide China a buffer zone on the Korean side of the Yalu River. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893–1971) liked this idea. At a November 21 meeting of the heads of the military services and the State Department, China's entry into the war and dissatisfaction with the UN's position were on everyone's minds. The demilitarized zone south of the Yalu was discussed, as were the grave concerns shared by all about the split in command between the X Corps, led by Major General Edward M. Almond (1892–1979), and the Eighth Army, led by Walker. But no firm decisions were reached at the meeting. Acheson wrote later in his memoirs Present at the Creation:

We were all deeply apprehensive. We were frank with one another, but not quite frank enough. I was unwilling to urge on the President a military course that his military advisors would not propose. They would not propose it because it ran counter to American military tradition of the proper powers of the theater commander.… If General [George C.] Marshall and the Chiefs had proposed withdrawal to the Pyongyang-Wonsan line and a continuous defensive position under united command across it—and if the President had backed them, as he undoubtedly would have—disaster would probably have been averted. But it would have meant a fight with MacArthur, charges by him that they had denied him victory—and his relief under arguable circumstances. So they hesitated, wavered, and the chance was lost. While everyone acted correctly, no one, I suspect, was ever quite satisfied with himself afterward.

The split in the ground command

On November 24, the day MacArthur set aside for the start of the UN's "final drive," the Far East Command esti mated that there were anywhere from 40,000 to 70,935 Chi nese troops in Korea and about 82,800 North Korean troops. In fact, by that time there were about 380,000 Chinese troops in North Korea. Once his bombing campaign was underway, MacArthur began movement of all UN forces to the northern border of Korea. The Eighth Army was to advance in the west and X Corps was heading for the Chosin (Changjin) Reservoir from the east.

Not everyone was as enthusiastic about this advance as MacArthur. As the November 24 offensive began, it was clear to many military planners that the UN forces were too spread out and lacked proper communication, and that Almond's X Corps should have been in a position to support the Eighth Army if it were in trouble. General Walker, commander of the Eighth Army, and General Oliver Smith, commander of the First Marine Division (in X Corps, under General Almond), were very concerned about their assignments to advance without coverage at their flanks (sides).

There were ill feelings between the generals of the Eighth Army and the X Corps, Walker and Almond. Almond made it clear he did not want to report to Walker, who was his superior. General Walker wanted both armies to advance slowly together, in the east and the west. Almond wanted to head north as quickly as possible, in line with MacArthur's plans, leaving the Eighth Army to its caution.

Where to Learn More

Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969.

Alexander, Bevin. Korea: The First War We Lost. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986, revised edition, 2000.

Hoyt, Edwin P. The Day the Chinese Attacked Korea, 1950: The Story of the Failure of America's China Policy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.

Paik Sun Yup. From Pusan to Panmunjom: Wartime Memoirs of the Republic of Korea's First Four-Star General. Dulles, VA: Brassey's, 1992.

Roe, Patrick C. The Dragon Strikes, China and the Korean War: June-December 1950. Novato, CA: Presidio, 2000.

Whiting, Allen S. China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1960.

Web sites

"Joseph Raymond McCarthy." CNN Interactive. [Online] http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/mccarthy (accessed on August 14, 2001).

"Senator Joseph McCarthy, Speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950." [Online] http://138.110.28.9/~kemarsh/mccarthy/speech.html (accessed on August 14, 2001).

Words to Know

artillery: large weapons, such as howitzers, rockets, and 155-millimeter guns, that shoot missiles and generally take a crew to operate.

atomic bomb: a powerful bomb created by splitting the nuclei of a heavy chemical, such as plutonium or uranium, in a rapid chain reaction, resulting in a violent and destructive shock wave as well as radiation.

battalion: a military unit usually made up of about three to five companies. Generally one of the companies is the headquarters unit, another the service unit, and the rest are line units. Although the numbers differ greatly, a battalion might consist of about 35 officers and about 750 soldiers.

buffer zone: a neutral area between the territories of opposing forces.

casualties: those who are killed, wounded, missing, or taken prisoner in combat.

China Lobby: a group of Americans during the late 1940s and early 1950s who fervently supported Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in his struggles against the Communist Chinese, and who held a romanticized and sometime patronizing view of the Chinese people and their relations with Americans.

delegate: a person who represents another person, a group, or a nation.

demilitarized zone (DMZ): an area in which military presence and activity are forbidden.

egalitarian: promoting equality; allowing each person in a group more or less equal powers.

guerrilla warfare: an irregular form of combat; in Korea it usually involved small groups of warriors who hid in mountains, enlisted the help of the local population, and used ambushes and surprise attacks to harass or even destroy much larger armies.

infantry: the branch of an army that is composed of soldiers trained to fight on foot.

hierarchy: organization by rank; in most hierarchies, the higher the rank, the greater the individual's power and authority.

mortar: a muzzle-loading cannon that shoots high in the air.

tactician: a person who plans how to use the military forces in combat.

warlord: a leader with his own military whose powers are usually limited to a small area that, in most cases, he took by force.

McCarthyism and Diplomacy

In February 1950, Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957), a little-known U.S. senator from Wisconsin, stood up at a conference in Wheeling, West Virginia, and announced that there were communists working in the U.S. State Department. In his ensuing speech McCarthy stated that the State Department was "thoroughly infested with communists," making his famous claim: "I have in my hand 57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either cardcarrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy." McCarthy never produced any evidence to back his allegations, but this speech and others he made on radio and television stirred up a political tempest in the new cold war era. A five-year witch-hunt for communists in the government ruined many careers and forced policymakers to go to extreme lengths to avoid being labeled communist sympathizers. It was not until 1954, after he had made serious allegations against the army, that McCarthy was himself investigated. At that time he was exposed as a dishonest opportunist who had taken advantage of public fears to boost his own career.

In McCarthy's early speech, he focused on one State Department diplomat in particular, John Service. Service was an accomplished expert on China who had

kept up communications with Mao Zedong and the Communist Party during the 1940s. He had urged the U.S. government to not dismiss the importance of the Communists, for he believed they were likely to take power. Service had been arrested on suspicion of being a communist and was forced to resign from his work for the State Department in China. All charges were quickly dropped, and he was reinstated in the State Department but was not returned to China. Service, and other diplomats like him, were never to have the opportunity to share their knowledge about China with the U.S. government during the Korean War, when their help was desperately needed.

Excerpt from Peng Dehuai's Memoirs

Peng Dehuai, a field commander in the army and one of Chinese leader's Mao Zedong's longtime associates, was summoned to attend an October 4, 1951, meeting with Mao and the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee at Zhongmanhai, part of the Imperial Palace. He was to report on the army's readiness for war. He arrived the night before the meeting and spent a sleepless night worrying about what lay ahead for China, as he wrote in his memoirs, quoted in Edwin Hoyt's The Day the Chinese Attacked Korea, 1950:

I could not fall asleep that night. I thought it might be because I could not enjoy the soft, cozy, spring bed, so I lay down on the carpeted floor. But sleep still did not come, and a train of thoughts flashed across my mind. The U.S. occupation of Korea, separated from China only by a river, would threaten northeast China. Its control of Taiwan posed a threat to Shanghai and east China. The United States could find a pretext at any time to launch a war of aggression against China. The tiger wanted to eat human beings; when it would do so would depend on its appetite. No concession could stop it. If the United States wanted to invade China, we had to resist its aggressions. Without going into a test with U.S. imperialism to see who was stronger, it would be difficult for us to build socialism. If the United States was bent on warring against China, it would want a war of quick decision. While we would wage a protracted war, it would fight regular warfare and we would employ the kind of warfare we had used against the Japanese invaders. As we had a national government and Soviet assistance, our situation was much better than it had been during the War of Resistance to Japanese Aggression. We should dispatch troops to Korea to safeguard our national construction.

Source: Edwin P. Hoyt. The Day the Chinese Attacked Korea, 1950: The Story of the Failure of America's China Policy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.

Chinese Anti-American Propaganda

Chinese troops were expected to firmly believe in their cause. Political leaders within the Chinese military attempted to ensure that the soldiers were passionate in their hatred of the enemy, as can be seen in this piece of Chinese military propaganda:

The United States is the paradise of gangsters, swindlers, rascals, special agents, fascist germs, speculators, debauchers, and all the dregs of mankind. This is the world's manufactory [maker] and source of such crimes as reaction, darkness, cruelty, decadence, corruption, debauchery, oppression of man by man, and cannibalism. This is the exhibition ground of all the crimes which can possibly be committed by mankind. This is a living hell, ten times, one hundred times, one thousand times worse than can be possibly depicted by the most sanguinary [bloodthirsty] of writers. Here the criminal phenomena that issue forth defy the imagination of human brains. Conscientious persons can only wonder how the spiritual civilization of mankind can be depraved to such an extent.

Source: Reprinted in Patrick C. Roe. The Dragon Strikes, China and the Korean War: June-December 1950. Novato, CA: Presidio, 2000.