Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War: Trilateral Communist Relations in the 1950s by Shen Zhihua (review)

There are several fine studies of the Sino-Soviet relationship during the Korean War, but none comes close to Shen Zhihua’s densely textured knowledge of the Mao Zedong-Stalin interactions. Shen has been at the forefront of Cold War studies in China, where he founded the Center for Cold War Studies at the East China Normal University in Shanghai in 2000. Through his painstaking and indefatigable efforts, he has pushed the frontier of our knowledge of China’s role in the Korean War further than anybody else. Now, thanks to Neil Silver’s excellent translation, Shen’s seminal work on the Korean War has been made available to non-Chinese-speaking readers.

Drawing upon newly accessible Russian and Chinese archival documents, Shen provides a keen-edged reckoning with Stalin’s and Mao’s responses to the Korean War. Shen notes a shift in Stalin’s policy toward Korea in early 1950. Before that time, the Kremlin boss had disapproved of Kim Il-sung’s plan to unify Korea by force. Why did Stalin change his attitude early in 1950? Shen agrees with the findings of previous scholars (such as Seigei Goncharov, John Lewis, Xue Litai, and John Garver) that the changed international situation, including the victory of Mao’s revolution in China and the Soviet success in testing its first atomic bomb, emboldened Stalin. Intent on seizing the initiative in the Cold War after his setbacks in Europe, the Soviet leader saw opportunities to expand Communist influence in East Asia early in 1950. He endorsed North Korea’s war plan to advance his strategic purposes of securing a buffer zone in Northeast Asia, establishing a launching pad for a future strike against Japan, testing American intentions and resolve, driving a wedge between China and the United States, and diverting American forces from Europe to Asia.

Regarding Mao’s involvement in Kim Il-sung’s preparation and execution of his invasion of South Korea in June 1950, Shen argues that China’s role was very limited. Disagreeing with the interpretation that Mao’s repatriation to North Korea in 1949 and 1950 of ethnic Koreans in his forces signified his approval of Kim’s plan to invade South Korea, Shen contends that Mao agreed to let those ethnic Koreans return to North Korea for the simple reason that, with the conclusion of the Chinese civil war, Mao wanted to demobilize and reduce cost on military spending. Because Mao and his associates were not involved in North Korea’s war planning, they were surprised by its invasion of South Korean on June 25.

How did the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership discuss and debate the issue of whether to intervene in the Korean fighting after General Douglas MacArthur’s land at Inchon in September 1950? Conflicting accounts over which official held what position in the internal debate in the Politburo still confuse readers in China. With the support of his vast knowledge based on exhaustive research into multinational archives, Shen is able to shed new light on Chinese Communist decision making. He indicates that Mao was a firm advocate of Chinese intervention, but many of his lieutenants in the Party leadership nursed reservations about sending troops to Korea. Extremely apprehensive that doing so would worsen China’s economic difficulties at home, these officials preferred either to stay put or to delay entry into Korea. However, eventually Mao prevailed. Shen reports that Zhou Enlai and Peng Dehuai, commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers, were early supporters of Mao.

Although Shen insightfully explains the immediate strategic calculations behind Mao’s decision to dispatch troops to Korea, he does overlook an important factor in shaping the CCP chief’s choice. Shen makes no mention of the fact that when Mao decided to send troops to rescue Kim Il-sung’s teetering regime during the Korean War, one of...