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Tributary State and Transnationalism

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China’s War in Korea

Part of the book series: New Directions in East Asian History ((NDEAH))

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Abstract

China played a central role in geopolitical history of Northeast Asia. Beijing’s policy to keep North Korea out of Western control is traditional. The two countries had been closely connected since Korea became independent during the disunity of the third century, and China had been heavily involved in Korea for two millennia. Korea had long been most faithful to the Chinese in the tribute system, and China realized that the time had come to uphold its agreement. In 1592, the Ming emperor intervened promptly by sending Chinese forces to stop a foreign invasion in the Imjin War. In 1894, to answer the call of the Korean king, the Qing emperor dispatched troops to Korea in the Sino-Japanese War.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Colonel Lee Jong Kan (NKPA, ret.), interview by the author in Harbin, Heilongjiang, in July 2002. Also see Lee, “A North Korean Officer’s Story,” in Peter and Li, Voices from the Korean War, 76–84.

  2. 2.

    Robin Higham and David A. Graff, Introduction to A Military History of China, ed. Graff and Higham, extended ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 14.

  3. 3.

    Michael J. Seth, A Concise History of Korea: From the Neolithic Period through the Nineteenth Century (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 18–20.

  4. 4.

    Higham and Graff, Introduction to A Military History of China, 14.

  5. 5.

    David C. Kang, East Asia before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), chapters 1–2.

  6. 6.

    Jahyun Kim Haboush and Martina Deuchler, eds., Culture and the State in Late Choson Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 68.

  7. 7.

    Kenneth M. Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592–1598 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 9–10.

  8. 8.

    Seth, A Concise History of Korea, 52–56.

  9. 9.

    Curtis Andressen, A Short History of Japan: From Samurai to Sony (Canberra, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 2002), 62–63.

  10. 10.

    Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America (New York: Perennial, 2003), 64–65, 105–106.

  11. 11.

    James L. Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the McCartney Embassy of 1793 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995).

  12. 12.

    Seth, A Concise History of Korea, 122–24.

  13. 13.

    Peter Lorge, War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795 (London: Routledge, 2005), 131.

  14. 14.

    Ming officials’ words quoted in Zhang Xiuping, Yingxiang zhongguo de 100 ci zhanzheng [One Hundred Decisive Battles in Chinese History] (Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe [Guangxi People’s Press], 2003), 278.

  15. 15.

    Emperor Wanli’s words quoted in Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, 297.

  16. 16.

    Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, 110–12.

  17. 17.

    Morgan Deane, Decisive Battles in Chinese History (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2018), 112–14.

  18. 18.

    Zhang Xiuping, Mao Yuanyou, and Huang Pumin, Yingxiang zhongguo de 100 ci zhanzheng [The One Hundred Battles That Shaped China] (Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe [Guangxi People’s Press], 2003), 279.

  19. 19.

    Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, 251.

  20. 20.

    Peter Lorge, “Water Forces and Naval Operations,” in A Military History of China, ed. Graff and Higham, extended ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 93.

  21. 21.

    JaHyun Kim Haboush, The Great East Asian War and the Birth of the Korean Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), introduction.

  22. 22.

    Swope, A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail, 296.

  23. 23.

    Samuel Hawley, The Imjin War: Japan’s Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China (Seoul, Korea: Royal Asiatic Society, 2005), 565–67.

  24. 24.

    George Elison, “The Inseparable Trinity: Japan’s Relations with China and Korea,” in Cambridge History of Japan Volume 4: Early Modern Japan, ed. John Whitney Hall (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 290.

  25. 25.

    China National Military Museum, comp., Zhongguo zhanzheng fazhanshi [History of Chinese Warfare] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 2001), 1: 395.

  26. 26.

    Xiaobing Li, Yi Sun, and Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox, East Asia and the West: An Entangled History (San Diego, CA: Cognella, 2019), 94.

  27. 27.

    Wang Yufeng, Taiwan shi [History of Taiwan], 3rd edition (Taichung, Taiwan: Haodu chuban [How-Do Publishing], 2017), 102–103.

  28. 28.

    The policy advice submitted to Emperor Guangxu in 1881 by Zhou Derun, member of the Imperial Academy, quoted in Jiang Tingba, Zhouguo jindaishi [History of Modern China] (Beijing: Tuanjie chubanshe [Untied Publishers], 2006), 87.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., 88.

  30. 30.

    Bruce Cummings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: Norton, 1997), 119.

  31. 31.

    Munemitsu Mutsu and Mark Berger Gordon, Kenkenroku: A Diplomatic Record of the Sino-Japanese War: 1894–1895 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 65, 77, 79–80.

  32. 32.

    Michael J. Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea: From the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 23–26.

  33. 33.

    Patricia Ebrey and Walthall Anne, Modern East Asia: From 1600; A Cultural, Social, and Political History, 3rd ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2014), 376–77.

  34. 34.

    James L. McClain, Japan: A Modern History (New York: Norton, 2002), 297.

  35. 35.

    S. C. M. Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895: Perceptions, Power and Primacy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 156.

  36. 36.

    Peter M. Worthing, A Military History of Modern China: From the Manchu Conquest to Tiananmen Square (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), 44–46, 51–53.

  37. 37.

    Hans J. Van de Ven, “War in the Making of Modern China,” Modern Asian Studies 30, no. 4 (October 1996): 737–756.

  38. 38.

    On March 1, Courbet located the three cruisers, which had taken refuge with four other Chinese warships in Zhenhai Bay, near Ningbo. Courbet settled for a blockade of the entrance of the bay, but on March 1, there was a brief exchange of fire between the French cruiser Nielly and the Chinese shore batteries, which the Chinese claimed as a major victory. For more details, see Benjamin A. Elman, “Naval Warfare and Refraction of China’s Self-Strengthening Reforms into Scientific and Technological Failure, 1865–1895,” Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 2 (May 2004), 319.

  39. 39.

    Mary Rankin, “‘Public Opinion’ and Political Power: Qingyi in Late Nineteenth Century China,” The Journal of Asian Studies 41, no. 3 (May 1982): 453–484.

  40. 40.

    Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 2013), 215.

  41. 41.

    Concise History of China Composition Team, Jianming zhongguo lishi duben [Concise History of China] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe [China Social Sciences Press], 2012), 444–45, 446.

  42. 42.

    John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer, and Albert M. Craig, East Asian: Transition and Transformation, revised ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1989), 726–27.

  43. 43.

    CCP Central Committee document, “The Statement of the CCP Second National Congress, July 1922,” in CCP Central Archives, comps., Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji, 1921–1949 [Selected Documents of the CCP Central Committee, 1921–1949], 1: 101.

  44. 44.

    Niu Jun, Lengzhan yu xin zhongguo waijiao de yuanqi, 1949–1955 [The Cold War and Origin of Diplomacy of People’s Republic of China, 1949–1955], revised ed. (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe [Manuscripts and Archival Materials of Social Sciences Press], 2013), 222, 223.

  45. 45.

    CCP Party History Research Division, Zhongguo gongchandang lishi dashiji, 1919–1987 [Major Historical Events of the CCP, 1919–1987], (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe [People’s Press], 1990), 14; Mao, “On Coalition Government,” a political report made by Mao to the CCP Seventh National Congress on April 24, 1945, in Selected Works of Mao, 3: 205–70; Tony Saich, ed., The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party: Documents and Analysis (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), 499n18.

  46. 46.

    Ibid. Edgar Snow, Red Star over China (New York: Grove, 1961), 131.

  47. 47.

    Philip Short, Mao: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 27.

  48. 48.

    Niu Jun, Lengzhan yu xin zhongguo waijiao de yuanqi [The Cold War and Origin of Diplomacy of People’s Republic of China], 221.

  49. 49.

    Chen, China’s Road to the Korean War, 8.

  50. 50.

    Ibid., 9.

  51. 51.

    The total of Korean residents in Manchuria reached 92,000 in 1910.

  52. 52.

    Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea, 46–48, 51–58.

  53. 53.

    Ebrey and Walthall point out that “a number of Koreas living across Russia formed communist parties … divided geographically between groups in Moscow, Siberia, Manchuria, Shanghai, and Korea proper.” Ebrey and Anne, Modern East Asia, 409.

  54. 54.

    Wang Yufeng, Taiwan shi [History of Taiwan], 3rd ed. (Taizhong, Taiwan: Haodu chuban [How-Do Publishing], 2017), 109–110.

  55. 55.

    Gao Mingshi, Taiwan shi [History of Taiwan], 2nd ed. (Taipei: Wunan tushu [Five South Books], 2015), 171–72.

  56. 56.

    Ma Ying-jeou (President of the Republic of China, 2008–2016), interview by the author at Taipei, Taiwan, June 9, 2017. Ma also served as Chairman of the GMD in 2005–2007 and 2009–2014.

  57. 57.

    Patrick Fuliang Shan, “Elastic Self-consciousness and the Reshaping of Manchu Identity,” in Ethnic China: Identity, Assimilation, and Resistance, eds. by Xiaobing Li and Shan (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 46.

  58. 58.

    Franco David Macri, Clash of Empires in South China: The Allied Nations’ Proxy War with Japan, 1935–1941 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), 31–32.

  59. 59.

    Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking; The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 4.

  60. 60.

    Bruce A. Elleman, Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795–1989 (London: Routledge, 2001), 205–206.

  61. 61.

    Qian Haihao, Jundui zuzhi bianzhixue jiaocheng [Graduate School Curriculum, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS): Military Organization and Formation] (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 2001), 39.

  62. 62.

    Bureau of the Historical and Political Records, Defense Department, the Republic of China (ROC), Gu Zhutong jiangjun jinianji [Recollection of General Gu Zhutong’s Works] (Taipei, Taiwan: Bureau of the Historical and Political Records, ROC Defense Department, 1988), 57–58, 275–76; China National Military Museum of Chinese People’s Revolution, comp., Zhongguo zhanzheng fazhanshi [History of Chinese Warfare], 2: 942.

  63. 63.

    The literature on the CCP military operations behind the enemy lines during the Resistant War against Japan is rich in China. For example, in Feng Chih, Behind Enemy Lines (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1979), chapters 2–5.

  64. 64.

    Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 30

  65. 65.

    Shen and Xia, A Misunderstood Friendship, 16.

  66. 66.

    You La, “We Chose Kim Il-sung in that Year,” in Jimi Dang [Classified File], ed. Fenghuang zhoukan (Beijing: Zhongguo fazhan chubanshe [China’s Development Publishing], 2011), 2: 473.

  67. 67.

    Ibid., 2: 474.

  68. 68.

    Shen and Xia, A Misunderstood Friendship, 16.

  69. 69.

    Chen Jian, “Far Short of a ‘Glorious Victory’: Revisiting China’s Changing Strategies to Manage the Korean War,” The Chinese Historical Review 25, no. 1 (May 2018): 3.

  70. 70.

    Roger Hilsman, forward to People’s War, People’s Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries, by Vo Nguyen Giap (New York: Praeger, 1968), ix–xi.

  71. 71.

    Xiaoyuan Liu, A Partnership for Disorder: China, the United States, and Their Policies for the Postwar Disposition of the Japanese Empire, 1941–1945 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 3.

  72. 72.

    Military History Research Division, PLA Academy of Military Science (AMS), Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun de 70 nian, 1927–1997 [The Seventy Years of the PLA, 1927–1997] (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe [Military Science Press], 1997), 256.

  73. 73.

    Peter Worthing, Occupation and Revolution: China and the Vietnamese August Revolution of 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 171–73.

  74. 74.

    Zhu De, “No. 6 Order from the General HQs at Yan’an,” Jiefang ribao [Liberation Daily], August 12, 1945, quoted in Niu, Lengzhan yu xin zhongguo waijiao de yuanqi [The Cold War and Origin of Diplomacy of People’s Republic of China], 224.

  75. 75.

    Shen and Xia, A Misunderstood Friendship, 17.

  76. 76.

    Liao Jinwen, “Finally Broke the Chains of 35 Years,” Jiefang ribao [Liberation Daily], August 29, 1945.

  77. 77.

    William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 18, 20.

  78. 78.

    Cummings, Korea’s Place in the Sun, 211–12.

  79. 79.

    In 1944, to avoid a collapse of the CCP-GMD coalition, U.S. Ambassador Hurley visited Yan’an, Mao’s wartime capital, and proposed a joint postwar government in China. See Patrick Hurley, “Aide Memoirs,” September 25, 1944; and his letter to President Roosevelt accompanying the memoirs, September 25, 1944, Ambassador Patrick Hurley Papers, University of Oklahoma Library, Norman, Oklahoma.

  80. 80.

    Compilation Committee of ROC History, A Pictorial History of the Republic of China (Taipei, Taiwan: Modern China Press, 1981), 2: 259.

  81. 81.

    Lanxin Xiang, Recasting the Imperial Far East: Britain and America in China, 1945–1950 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), 142.

  82. 82.

    Li, A History of the Modern Chinese Army, 71–77.

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Li, X. (2019). Tributary State and Transnationalism. In: China’s War in Korea. New Directions in East Asian History. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9675-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9675-6_2

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