This is the first English-language military history of what the
People's Republic of China called the "War to Resist U.S.
Aggression and Aid Korea." Based upon a vast array of recently
available Chinese sources, it provides a revealing new look at the
far-reaching influence of Mao Zedong's political and military
thought on China's conduct of the war.
As Shu Guang Zhang reminds us, many observers in 1950 thought it
foolhardy for this young and underdeveloped communist nation to
engage in yet another war. Coming so soon after its costly civil
war with the Nationalists, the Korean crisis presented China with
the uninviting prospect of fighting a technologically superior (and
nuclear-armed) opponent on foreign terrain.
Mao, however, was convinced from more than a decade of fighting
against the Japanese and the Nationalists that political gain and
warfare were inseparable. ("Political power grows out of the barrel
of a gun," he'd declared as early as 1927.) Zhang argues that war
in Korea offered Mao yet another opportunity to expand and
consolidate his political power at home, while at the same time
uniting the Chinese proletariat against Yankee imperialism and
proving to the international community that China had arrived as a
major world power.
As Zhang shows, Mao's decision to go to war against the United
States was guided by a devoutly romantic belief that human forces
would always triumph over modern technology. Victory, according to
Mao, did not necessarily go to those who had bigger and better
guns. It was reserved instead for those who possessed an unwavering
commitment to a superior cause.
Merging the martial thought of both Clausewitz and Sun-Tze with
Marx's concept of class struggle, Mao galvanized China's military
and citizenry at every level to fight a people's war against Yankee
imperialism. Fueled by Mao's call to safeguard China and East Asia
from American invasions, the Chinese showed how a relatively
outgunned but inspired fighting force could deprive a
technologically superior opponent of victory in a limited war. As
Zhang concludes, subsequent conflicts in Vietnam and elsewhere have
proven the value of that lesson.
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