ABSTRACT
After the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950, the Chinese People’s Volunteers Force (CPVF) crossed the Yalu and entered the conflict on October 19. The CPVF fought the forces of the United Nations Command (UNC) in Korea until the achievement of a ceasefire on July 1953. For the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Korean War was of great political and historical significance. It was a watershed event, which poisoned its relations with the United States for two decades. In China, due to political sensitivity, the Korean War was not a subject for historical inquiry before 1979. The situation changed gradually thereafter. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the PRC selectively published archival documents related to Chinese involvement in the Korean War in official collections, including telegrams, letters, and the minutes of meetings of the highest Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities (ZWY 1987–1999: vols 1–4, PDZB 1988, ZZWX 1989–1992: vols 15–18, ZWY/ZRGW 1990, ZWY 1992–1995: vols 1–4, MZJW 1993: vols 5–6, ZWY/ZRGW 1994). Military historians of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) published two important books on China’s involvement in the conflict in 1988 and 1990 (Shen and Meng 1988, 1 Tan 1990). A large number of chronologies and biographies of senior party and military leaders, such as Zhou Enlai (PRC premier and foreign minister), Liu Shaoqi (PRC vice president), and Peng Dehuai (CPVF commander-in-chief) also appeared during this period (Wang 1993, ZWY 1996, Li 1997). These studies cite a large array of Chinese documents on the Korean War.
