CHAPTER IV

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The Sino-Soviet
Alliance

THE ROOTS of the Sino-Soviet relationship of the early 1950s, which was sufficiently close to be perceived in Washington as “monolithic,” go back into the history of Chinese Communism, which therefore needs to be briefly discussed.

The Chinese Communist Movement

The Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded in 1921, under the auspices of Lenin’s Communist International (Comintern), by Chinese who believed that Marxism-Leninism and Soviet support could eliminate China’s backwardness and oppression at the hands of the “imperialist” powers. In 1922 they were ordered by the Comintern to ally themselves with Sun Yat-sen’s stronger party, the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party). The reason was that the Comintern had decided to support the “national bourgeois” Sun as the best hope of combatting “imperialist” influence (mainly Japanese and British) and ultimately revolutionizing China. The problem was that the latter objective obviously required strengthening the Kuomintang, but if this were done the Communists would have great difficulty in taking control over it as the Comintern intended. In 1927 Sun’s successor Chiang Kai-shek, who had been greatly strengthened by Soviet political advice and military aid, but who distrusted the Comintern and feared the social revolution that the CPC was working to bring about, turned against his leftist allies.

The CPC was nearly but not quite destroyed as a result of Stalin’s excessive trust in Chiang Kai-shek and Stalin’s confidence in his own ability to manage the turbulent situation in China by remote control. For the time being, however, Stalin and the Comintern retained their domination over the central leadership of the CPC, while the emergence of Communist-controlled rural bases in the interior of Central and South China initiated a process over which he could exert almost no control at all. The most successful of the bases was one in Kiangsi created by Mao Tsetung, who proved remarkably effective in combining organizational work among peasants with revolutionary warfare by Red Army troops so as to expand the base. His control over it was badly eroded after 1932 by a combination of pro-Comintern elements and the able organizer Chou En-lai, who for a time acquired control over the Red Army. This combination had the misfortune to be in charge when mounting Nationalist military pressures dislodged the CPC from its bases in Central and South China, including the one in Kiangsi, in 1934 and set them in motion toward Northwest China in the famous Long March. During this epic trek Mao exploited his adversaries’ setbacks and alleged errors to achieve control over the Party’s military machinery, as well as a political position that was “more equal” than that of his colleagues. He refrained, however, from assuming formal Party leadership at that time, probably in order to avoid a possible choice between subservience to Stalin (nominally, the Comintern) and a break with him; Mao assumed the title of Chairman of the Central Committee in June 1943, the month after Stalin dissolved the Comintern. In spite of Mao’s rise, the extraordinarily adaptable Chou En-lai remained an important figure in the Party leadership, in some ways second only to Mao.

Mao and his colleagues took advantage of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) to increase the Party’s power and to enlarge its autonomy with respect to Stalin. For two years before the war Stalin showed his belief that only Chiang Kai-shek could lead a Chinese national resistance to Japanese aggression, negotiated a substantial program of military aid to the Chiang government, and put pressure on the Chinese Communists to accept Chiang’s leadership in connection with the war with Japan. Mao outwardly deferred to Stalin and Chiang, as well as to Chinese public opinion, but in reality insisted on operating politically and militarily against the Nationalists as well as against the Japanese, as the opportunity presented itself. As a result of this strategy, but probably still more as a result of the damage inflicted on the Nationalists’ position by the Japanese invasion, the CPC emerged from the war in 1945 much stronger than at the beginning. Corresponding to this growth, and to a large extent flowing from it, occurred a further decrease in Stalin’s ability to influence the CPC and an increase in Mao’s power within the party to virtually unchallengeable proportions.

Nevertheless, Stalin tried to use the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945, in connection with the collapse of Japan, as a lever to reestablish control over the CPC and push it into another coalition with the Nationalists so as to minimize the chances of a civil war and a Soviet-American confrontation in and over China. He was unsuccessful regarding the first but not the second, since the United States government was as eager to avoid such a confrontation as he was. Once the Soviet Union and the United States withdrew their forces from Manchuria and China proper, respectively, in the late spring of 1946, their Chinese partners went at each other in full-scale civil war. Weakened by its own shortcomings, by the effects of the Japanese invasion, and by a falling off in American aid to levels lower than had been hoped for, the Nationalists lost by 1949 to the politico-military strategy that the Communists under Mao Tse-tung’s leadership had developed during the two previous decades.

“We Lean to One Side”

Although Mao made a few overtures to the United States during the years from 1945 to 1949, it is very unlikely that anything the United States could reasonably have done would have prevented an accommodation between Mao and Stalin as the Chinese civil war drew to a close. They were linked by a common ideology-somewhat differently interpreted to be sure and later to become a source of disunity between them—a mutual historical relationship, a desire not to repeat the disaster of the Stalin-Tito controversy, and a common fear and dislike of American “imperialism.” The Chinese were probably afraid that Stalin would put pressure on their Inner Asian territories (Manchuria, Sinkiang, or even Tibet) unless they conciliated him. Fearful of the United States and of a possibly resurgent Japan under American patronage, they saw in the Soviet Union the only possible source of needed aid, support, and protection. With something close to this in mind, Mao announced in mid-1949 at his party would “lean to one side,” Stalin’s, in the Cold War. Stalin, for his part, regarded the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a major addition to the “socialist camp” (the Communist bloc), one that helped to compensate him for the setbacks he had been suffering in Europe since the takeover of Czechoslovakia.

During an important visit by Mao to Moscow (December 1949-February 1950), Stalin gave a defensive military alliance against the United States and Japan and an increment of economic aid, in return for Mao’s recognition of Stalin’s effective control over the Mongolian People’s Republic and of certain Soviet railway and port rights in Manchuria originally acquired at the Yalta Conference. The two men discussed a number of problems relating to the rest of Asia, the outcome being roughly that Mao conceded Stalin the primary role with respect to Northeast Asia (Japan and Korea), and Stalin did the same for Mao with respect to Southeast Asia. After China’s entry into the Korean War late in 1950 (see below) Peking began to receive Soviet military equipment in significant amounts. With the help of many Soviet advisers, the Chinese began to apply the Soviet model in their own economic planning and development and in many other fields, as well as praising Soviet experience and the Soviet Union in general to the skies in their domestic and foreign propaganda. Peking, in short, really believed that it was leaning to the Soviet side, although it did so in an essentially Chinese way that Moscow did not much like, and that did not amount to the subservience that Stalin would have preferred, even though he was not in a position to demand it.

The Korean War

Since its occupation by Soviet troops in August 1945, North Korea had been a Soviet satellite, although the occupying forces had withdrawn in late 1948. Kim II Song, the leading North Korean Communist, was naturally eager to reunite his country, which had been a Japanese colony for nearly half a century before 1945, by “liberating” the South. Since various less violent ploys failed, he evidently decided after American forces left South Korea in 1949 that an invasion was both feasible and necessary.

It was probably in January 1950 that Stalin, with Mao Tsetung’s knowledge and consent, gave agreement to this idea. Stalin and Mao were almost certainly afraid that, if not “liberated” first, South Korea might later become a springboard for a later American-Japanese military adventure on the continent of Asia. For the time being, however, it appeared vulnerable because various prominent Americans, including Secretary of State Dean Acheson (on January 2, 1950), were indicating that the United States would probably not defend South Korea if it were attacked.

The time for the North Korean attack was apparently fixed for August, but if so Kim II Song moved it up to June 25 for reasons of his own relating to the political situation in South Korea. Having been strengthened by a recent inflow of Soviet aid, his forces advanced rapidly through the weak South Korean defenses. Contrary to the Communist side’s expectations, the United States government began to defend South Korea, and the United Nations over Communist opposition gave its approval to the defense.

In mid-August the Communist offensive was deep in South Korea but began to be rolled back. At that time the United States began to indicate an intent to reunify Korea by taking over the North, to the great concern of the Communist powers. Whereas Moscow confined itself to propaganda and diplomacy, Peking warned the United States through a variety of channels not to invade North Korea and began to put itself in a position to intervene if its warnings were ignored.

They were, in effect. General MacArthur routed the North Korean troops in South Korea by his amphibious landing at Inchon on September 15 and approached the 38th parallel two weeks later in a confident mood determined to invade North Korea and hand it over to President Syngman Rhee of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), whom he admired. He considered that Chinese intervention was unlikely, and that if it did occur it could be handled through American air power, for which (under more favorable conditions) he had acquired a vast respect during the Pacific War. For several reasons, he considered Soviet intervention even more unlikely.

He was right in the last of these opinions, but Stalin was nevertheless determined to save North Korea without confronting the United States himself. He therefore urged the Chinese, as the only available proxies, to intervene, and at Mao’s insistence promised them military aid and reaffirmed his commitment to fulfill his obligations under the Sino-Soviet alliance. The Chinese, in addition to being influenced by Stalin’s attitude, were concerned about the threat to Manchuria posed by the American advance, interested in saving North Korea, and anxious to deflate American prestige in Asia and enhance their own. After the beginning of their intervention, they tried to use it as a means of compelling the United States to withdraw its forces from Korea and cease its protection of Taiwan, and of gaining entry to the United Nations in place of the Chinese Nationalists. Peking’s strategy in pursuit of these objectives, once Chinese intervention had begun, was to try to drive American (and other non-Korean) forces beyond the 38th parallel and indeed out of Korea altogether. There are persuasive reasons, however, for believing that the minimum Chinese objective was simply to occupy and hold a buffer zone on the Korean side of the Manchurian-Korean border (marked by the Yalu River), and that a Sino-American war became inevitable only when General MacArthur insisted, apparently in ignorance of the Chinese military presence in North Korea and against the better judgment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on ordering his awkwardly disposed forces to march to the Yalu.

It was of course an undeclared war; in order to keep it that way and avoid American escalation, if possible, by giving the United States an excuse to pretend officially that only a “police action” was in progress, Peking labeled its troops in Korea “volunteers.” This fiction also gave the Soviet Union an excuse not to involve itself on China’s behalf more than it wished to do. Moscow did little more than send arms to the Chinese and give occasional warnings against American escalation of the war beyond the limits of Korea, as initial shattering Chinese military successes galvanized MacArthur into recommending a drastic program of action (American naval blockade and aerial reconnaissance of, and Chinese Nationalist operations against, the Chinese mainland) and President Truman into suggesting that nuclear weapons might be used (they were not, for military as well as political reasons). But nervousness over the Soviet reaction, which it was feared might include a Soviet move against Western Europe, was a major factor in leading Truman and the Joint Chiefs to overrule MacArthur and refrain from escalating the war beyond Korea.

Early in 1951 the American, South Korean, and other United Nations forces, now under the competent leadership of General Matthew B. Ridgway, stabilized the front south of Seoul and began to roll the Chinese and North Koreans back, but it soon became clear that President Truman did not intend to invade North Korea again. MacArthur, who was strongly opposed to this decision, publicly revived his recommendations for drastic action and precipitated his own relief from command on grounds of insubordination. Two Chinese offensives, evidently aimed at capitalizing on the crisis created by his removal, were heavily defeated in April and May 1951. The Chinese and North Koreans then agreed to armistice talks, which went on for two years (June 1951-July 1953) while the front stabilized in the vicinity of the 38th parallel.

The talks had made considerable progress, although with difficulty, when it became clear early in 1952 that a large percentage of the prisoners taken by the United Nations Command did not want to go home for various reasons, and that their captors were unwilling to compel them to do so. This development presented the Communist side with a serious political and prestige problem, to which it responded by massive riots among North Korean prisoners still loyal to their regime and by a massive propaganda campaign, alleging that the United States had been waging “germ warfare” against North Korea and in Manchuria; the purpose was presumably to soften the American stand on the prisoner question and deter the United States from escalating the war by focusing international attention on its behavior, actual or alleged.

Tension rose during 1952 as a major deadlock developed over the prisoner issue, and as Stalin entered the last months of his life in a belligerent mood marked by a plan to purge many of his colleagues and apparently by a tendency to contemplate military action against the defiant Tito and against the United States in the Far East. The Indian government, which had been decidedly “neutral in favor of” the Communist side during the Korean War, introduced an essentially pro-Communist “compromise” resolution on the prisoner issue into the United Nations General Assembly in the autumn of 1952. American and other diplomatic pressure, however, led the Indian delegation to revise the resolution in a direction much more acceptable to the United States, whereupon it was loudly rejected by the Communist powers.

The prisoner deadlock was highly frustrating to the Eisenhower administration, which came into office in January 1953 pledged to achieve an armistice in Korea by any necessary means, preferably peaceful ones. Its first move was to “unleash Chiang Kai-shek” by removing the ban imposed by President Truman in June 1950 on Nationalist military operations against the China mainland, while keeping in force his commitment to defend Taiwan against Communist attack. This move, which was virtually meaningless since the Nationalists lacked the ability to attack the mainland at that time, made no impact on Peking, although for some reason it seems to have startled Stalin. Soon afterward, shortly before his death, he and Peking had to consider a much more serious problem: a covert, explicit threat by the United States to expand the war from Korea to the mainland of China and to use nuclear weapons.* Whatever Stalin may have thought about this, his successors were in no position or mood, given their serious domestic difficulties, to confront the United States on China’s behalf. Although they tried to conciliate Peking in a number of marginal ways, they told it in effect that it must not count on them for active support in forcing the United States to back down on the prisoner question. Accordingly, Peking had no real choice but to sign, on July 27, 1953, an armistice that incorporated the principle of voluntary repatriation of prisoners espoused by the United States and reflected in the revised Indian resolution.

Militarily and politically speaking, the Korean War was inconclusive from many points of view. Probably the most important outcome was the obvious one, the frustration of the Communist effort to seize South Korea by force, as well as a determination in both Peking and Washington to avoid another Sino-American war. Another significant result was the American policy of trying to contain the People’s Republic of China militarily and isolate it politically, which was to last for about fifteen years. Finally, although the Korean War saw the zenith of the Sino-Soviet alliance and of cooperation between Moscow and Peking, the circumstances of its termination contributed to the beginnings of the Sino-Soviet dispute.

* Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (New York: Double-day, 1963), p. 181.