A MISUNDERSTOOD FRIENDSHIP: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976 | By Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia
New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. xiv, 357 pp. (B&W photos, maps.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-231-18826-5.
The Trump administration’s policy toward North Korea has been erratic. At times, Washington has seemed to place too much hope on Beijing’s ability to curb the nuclear ambitions of North Korea’s young dictator. However, in this Trump has been disappointed. Did Beijing not have as much leverage over Pyongyang as the Americans assumed? Or, was Beijing just unwilling to help Washington achieve its goals in the Northwest Pacific? Had Trump and his advisors read this new book by Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, they might have figured out that it was both. Beijing-Pyongyang relations since the days of Kim Jong Un’s grandfather have been more complicated than any outsiders could imagine.
Based on new historical evidence from China, Russia, Korea, and former Eastern European Bloc countries, this book details the process in which the so-called “special relationship” between Beijing and Pyongyang developed, when Mao and the elder Kim were in charge. This is in contrast to some past scholarship, which either emphasized the “monolithic communist” nature of the Chinese-Soviet-North Korean alliance, or focused on its nationalistic nature, as if the conflict between Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang was more serious than their hostility toward the US. Still others would call the Korean War a “civil war.” This present study reveals that the Korean War was a war of proxies; Kim could not have waged war without support from both Stalin and Mao, as many other recent studies have already suggested. However, solidarity and disagreement among allies are never mutually exclusive, and the complications of alliance politics can be much more serious when the states involved are controlled by dictators. The unique contribution of this study is that the authors offer an insider’s look into the complications of alliance politics and details of the infighting among the leading figures in Beijing, Pyongyang, and Moscow.
Initially both Stalin and Mao did not approve of Kim’s military unification plan to attack the South. However, Stalin changed his mind early in 1950. He gave Kim the green light to start a military attack without consulting Mao in advance; but he did send Kim to Beijing, and gave Mao the final decision-making power. Stalin knew that Mao was obsessed with promoting his own brand of revolution throughout the East, to “create a supreme headquarters within China for the Asian Revolution,” as the authors write (23). If Mao wanted to be the revolutionary leader of the East, how could he refuse to support Kim’s plan to “liberate” the South militarily? Mao did not disappoint Stalin: he gave Kim his blessing and promised Chinese assistance whenever needed. Mao never wavered in sending troops to Korea after McArthur’s successful Inchon landing, in spite of his own politburo’s opposition and Stalin’s hesitation to provide air cover to the Chinese grand operations, according to the authors.
But Kim had his own ambitions and plans; he did not even inform Mao before ordering the initial attack. Only after three days did Mao receive a military briefing from Pyongyang. After the ceasefire, Kim started to purge his own comrades who had spent World War II in either China or the USSR in order to finalize his grip on power, and to minimize the influence from Beijing and Moscow. Mao and Khrushchev jointly intervened in 1956, but Kim only paid lip service to the “bosses.” As soon as the joint delegation left, he resumed his purge against those with extensive Chinese or Soviet ties. When Mao tried to put more pressure on Kim by suspending or reducing economic aid, Kim informed Mao that he would approach the UN to resolve the Korean unification issue. Mao was furious, accusing Kim of defecting to the West, just like Tito or Nagy. However, there was nothing Mao could do.
Two years later, Mao found himself in need of Kim’s loyalty, even if it was the lip-service type, when he started to openly challenge the Kremlin’s leadership in the communist world. Mao started to build a “special relationship” with Kim, and he ordered all Chinese troops to leave North Korea in 1958. Beijing no longer protected Kim’s opponents who had historical ties with the Chinese Communist Party, and Kim completed his monopoly on power with Mao’s help. While the Sino-Soviet rivalry and conflict deteriorated all the way to a military border clash between these two powers in 1969, Kim leveraged his position to milk more benefits from both Beijing and Moscow by constantly moving between the two poles.
After the Sino-Soviet border war in 1969, Mao came to identify the USSR as the number-one enemy, thus moving toward a policy of rapprochement with the US. If Mao was furious when Kim played the UN card against him in the 1950s, Kim certainly could not have been happy to see Mao shake hands with Nixon. Vietnam and Albania, the only other party-states that followed Mao’s self-acclaimed leadership, were also alienated by Beijing’s new policy. If Mao hoped that his move would intensify the Soviet-American conflict, which would lead to a revolutionary crisis worldwide, he died a frustrated man, because Nixon also moved to a policy of detente with Moscow and started nuclear arms control talks shortly afterward. At the same time, Kim was promoting himself as a revolutionary leader in the communist world, which would not succeed by any realistic means, other than helping him build his personality cult within North Korea. He would also die leaving his country isolated and extremely impoverished.
Now, the first meeting between Trump and Kim did not yield much concrete progress towards Pyongyang’s denuclearization. The second meeting in Vietnam ended abruptly without any agreement, but with both sides seeming to leave open the possibility of a third meeting. The question remains: Does Washington understand that the young Kim may be playing both Chinese and American cards to leverage his position, just as his grandfather did?
Michael Sheng
The University of Akron, Akron, USA
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