Misguided Intentions: U.S. Policy in World War II and Chinese Intervention in Korea.
Abstract
In 1950, merely a year after the Communist Chinese victory over the Nationalist government in China, 600,000 Chinese soldiers began crossing the Yalu River into Korea to oppose the world's most powerful nation. Popular opinion accepts this war as a forgone conclusion, a natural consequence of the geopolitical domino game, a logical outcome of ensuing cold war polarity. Let's face it: China had gone Red, and like the Soviet Union in Europe, would naturally oppress its Asian neighbors into Communism, dropping its own iron curtain" and opposing the "running dogs" of Western imperialism. Whiting, in China Crosses the Yalu, asserts that the Chinese decision to intervene had its foundations in xenophobia and expansionism (Whiting, 5). Traditional Chinese distaste for westerners, combined with the more contemporary Communist view of the west as an antagonist, substantiated this first position. Expansionism, moreover, grew out of historical Chinese security concerns over the northern frontier.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA363031
Entities
People
- Sande J. Schlesinger
Organizations
- University of Michigan