Chinese Attitudes Toward Nuclear Weapons: China and the United States During the Korean War

China and the United States During the Korean War

Mark A. Ryan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315492155
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Economics

This book examines the crucial formative period of Chinese attitudes toward nuclear weapons - the immediate post-Hiroshima/Nagasaki period and the Korean War. It provides a detailed account of U.S. actions and attitudes during this period and China's response, which was especially acute after both countries had entered the Korean conflict as enemies. This response dispels some of the myths that have long existed regarding China's perceptions of nuclear war.

PART I: PREWAR AND EARLY KOREAN WAR

1

CHINESE REACTION TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 1945–1949

The appearance of nuclear (or atomic¹) weapons perhaps did not come as a complete surprise to all Chinese. Chinese Nationalist government officials may have had some knowledge of the American nuclear project, and it is also possible that the Chinese Communists had learned as early as 1944 that the United States was working to develop an explosive “super-weapon.”²

The first public CCP reaction to the August 6, 1945, nuclear explosion at Hiroshima came in a spate of articles carried in the Yan’an-published Jiefang ribao (Liberation Daily), beginning on August 9. The lead article of that date was in part headlined “A Revolution in the Technology of War” (zhanzheng jishu shang de geming) and consisted of American wire service accounts of the Hiroshima bomb referring to the bomb’s unprecedented level of destruction. A second August 9 article carried a UPI account of President Truman’s well-known August 7 announcement of the Hiroshima bomb, an announcement that claimed that the new bomb utilized “basic forces of the universe” and outlined in some detail the magnitude of the bomb-building project, giving, for example, the number of scientific and engineering personnel who had worked on the project. Another August 9 article, based on Reuters dispatches from New York and London, referred to newspaper commentary in New York concerning the instant “revolution” in warfare and science brought about by the bomb.³ The article also cited the reactions of various parties to the nuclear weapon, including a Vatican condemnation and the comments of British nuclear scientist Sir John Anderson regarding the enormous potential of nuclear power for either good or evil and the necessity of dealing immediately with political problems relating to its control. Yet other August 9 articles, again based on Reuters dispatches, contained more background information from British scientists on the history of the nuclear weapon project. On August 10 Jiefang ribao carried a report based on a UPI dispatch of the previous day’s nuclear attack on Nagasaki. This first spate of articles of August 9 and 10 are notable for their neutral transmission of foreign wire service dispatches, which contained much information and freewheeling reaction to the new weapon and multiple references to its “revolutionary” character and unprecedented level of destructiveness. No editorial comment accompanied the articles.

The coverage quickly changed tone and then largely disappeared. On August 12, Jiefang ribao carried a short article reporting that a British Labor Party organ, The Daily Pioneer, had called for a conference of major powers to deal with “the danger to peace” posed by the new nuclear weapon. The paper also warned of the danger that would follow any attempt on the part of the United States or Britain to “monopolize” the new weapon and called for public disclosure of the secrets of the weapon. On August 13, another Jiefang ribao article cited the admonition of an unnamed “Christian scientist” that it would “not be possible to use atomic power to gain peace” and that the optimistic reckonings of the United States and Britain to the contrary were “preposterous.”

Also on August 13, Jiefang ribao commented editorially for the first time concerning the nuclear weapon, and this editorial coincided with and complemented Mao Zedong’s first comments on the weapon. Taken together, the editorial and Mao’s comments marked the first expression of several key themes that would be sounded often throughout the ensuing decades.

The editorial began by giving a short explanation of the history of nuclear research and a simple explanation of the physics of the nuclear weapon with an admission of its “unprecedented destructiveness” (shashang li kongqian juda de wuqi). But, the editorial said, the atomic bomb was “certainly not an all-powerful weapon” (. . . jue bu shi wanneng de wuqi) and it had defects. These included the extreme scarcity of the uranium necessary for its construction, the enormous amounts of uranium ore necessary, and the great complexity of the uranium refinement process, a combination that prevented the manufacture of the weapon in any great quantity. Problems in accurate and safe delivery of the weapon were also mentioned. Furthermore, said the editorial, it was clear that the new weapon had not been decisive in the final defeat of Japan. Otherwise, why did the United States and Great Britain continue to seek the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan at the Potsdam Conference, when the weapon had already been successfully tested?

The editorial also referred to the mistaken opinions of “some persons” who considered that an initial attack by an air force equipped with nuclear weapons would be decisive in a war, or who considered that nuclear weapons could be used to maintain world peace. Just as the war against Japan was ended only through the combined pressure of the allies, so, too, future world peace would be maintained only through the combined efforts of allied nations and peoples of the world, and certainly not by “exaggerating” the role of nuclear weapons. In an address to cadres at Yan’an on August 13, Mao repeated some of these themes:

The Soviet Union has sent its troops, the Red Army has come to help the Chinese people drive out the aggressor; such an event has never happened before in Chinese history. Its influence is immeasurable. The propaganda organs of the United States and Chiang Kai-shek hoped to sweep away the Red Army’s political influence with two atom bombs. But it can’t be swept away; that isn’t so easy. Can atom bombs decide wars? No, they can’t. Atom bombs could not make Japan surrender. Without the struggles waged by the people, atom bombs by themselves would be of no avail. If atom bombs could decide war, then why was it necessary to ask the Soviet Union to send its troops? Why didn’t Japan surrender when the two atom bombs were dropped on her and why did she surrender as soon as the Soviet Union sent troops? Some of our comrades, too, believe that the atom bomb is all-powerful [liaobuqi]; that is a big mistake. These comrades show even less judgement than a British peer. There is a certain British peer called Lord Mountbatten. He said the worst possible mistake is to think that the atom bomb can decide the war. These comrades are more backward than Mountbatten. What influence has made these comrades look upon the atom bomb as something miraculous? Bourgeois influence. Where does it come from? From their education in bourgeois schools, from the bourgeois press and news agencies. There are two world outlooks and two methodologies, the proletarian world outlook and methodology and the bourgeois world outlook and methodology. These comrades often cling to the bourgeois world outlook and methodology and often forget the proletarian world outlook and methodology. The theory that “weapons decide everything,” the purely military viewpoint, a bureaucratic style of work divorced form the masses, individualist thinking, and the like—all these are bourgeois influences in our ranks. We must constantly sweep these bourgeois things out of our ranks just as we sweep out dust.⁴

Mao’s attack here on the “purely military viewpoint” (danchun junshi guandian) and the theory that weapons alone decide the outcome of war (wei wuqi lun) would often be repeated in the years to come. Aside from this disparagement of nuclear weapons, these comments also prefigure two other aspects of the evolution of Chinese nuclear weapons policy. The first would become rather obvious, but the second somewhat less so. The first is Mao Zedong’s predominant influence over CCP and PRC policies bearing on nuclear matters, as a subset of his predominance over PRC foreign policy as a whole.⁵ The second, as indicated by Mao’s references to the initial reaction to nuclear weapons on the part of “some of our comrades,” is the fact that despite surface uniformity in nuclear weapons policy, and genuine general unanimity concerning many aspects of that policy, from the very onset of the nuclear age in 1945 there were also dissenting, or at least disparate, voices in the CCP over how to handle nuclear matters. This dissent, with some exceptions such as the “military debate” of the middle 1950s, remained below the surface and is not easily or precisely identifiable. Tracing this historical line of dissent is important, however, especially when it comes to analysis of various “post-Mao” shifts of nuclear policy and strategy.

Mao’s disparagement of the nuclear weapon seems to have been based in part on a genuine disregard for its military decisiveness, or even usefulness, and in part on the psychological need to offset fear of the weapon among elements of the CCP and PLA. In 1967 Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), in the course of an attack on Liu Shaoqi (Liu Shao-ch’i), mentioned that “at the time of the Japanese surrender and the appearance of the atom bomb . . . many were frightened by the atom bomb. At that time even Stalin was mentally shocked, and was worried about the outbreak of World War III.”⁶

CCP concern over the possibility of American use of nuclear weapons naturally continued and perhaps intensified with the mid-1946 breakdown of George C. Marshall’s mediation efforts and the outbreak of full-scale civil war between the CCP and the U.S.-supported Nationalist government. During the civil war, the question of the likelihood of American use of nuclear weapons was very likely closely entwined with the larger question of the probability of an outbreak of a U.S.-USSR world war, although direct evidence bearing on this point is meager. It is believed by some that Stalin and Mao differed on this question, in that Stalin estimated world war to be more likely than Mao did. In a speech written in April 1946 but not published until December 1947, Mao told the CCP Central Committee (CCP CC) that “if everyone makes strenuous efforts, we, together with all the democratic forces of the world, can surely defeat the imperialist plan of enslavement, prevent the outbreak of a third world war, overthrow all reactionary regimes, and win a lasting peace for mankind.” Although the Guomindang (in Wade-Giles, Kuomintang; hereafter KMT) was relying “not merely on their own superior military strength but mainly on the U.S. imperialists with their atom bombs, whom they regarded as ‘exceptionally powerful’ and ‘matchless in the world,’” Mao nevertheless criticized those in party ranks who “overestimated the strength of the enemy” and indulged in “impotent thinking.” It was not yet time for a revolutionary central government but negotiations should now be rejected and every effort should be made to carry the war forward to “complete victory.”⁷

In August 1946 in Yan’an, the American journalist Anna Louise Strong directly questioned Mao concerning the impact of the American bomb upon the civil war:

“There is also the atom bomb,” I said, “in the hands of the American military.”

Mao Tse-tung replied that he doubted whether the atom bomb would ever again be used in warfare. “It’s [sic] great bursting over Hiroshima destroyed it. The people of the whole world have turned against it.” Whether or not it was used, it would not give the final answer.

“The birth of the atom bomb,” he added after a moment, “was the beginning of the death of the American imperialists. For they began to count on the bomb and not on the people. In the end, the bomb will not destroy the people. The people will destroy the bomb.”⁸

Mao’s own version of this same interview is associated with his reaction to U.S. nuclear testing at Bikini atoll in 1946 and contains Mao’s first use of his “paper tiger” metaphor as applied to nuclear weapons:

The atom bomb is a paper tiger [yi zhi zhi laohu] with which the U.S. reactionaries try to terrify the people. It looks terrible but in fact is not. Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass destruction [da guimo tusha de wuqi], but the outcome of war is decided by the people, not by one or two new weapons.⁹

There is some indirect but uncorroborated evidence that Mao’s stance emerged in the context of an internal CCP debate regarding not only the dangers of a third world war and American use of nuclear weapons, but also regarding the impact of nuclear weapons on fundamental laws of war and history. According to Morton H. Halperin, who in the mid-1960s wrote extensively concerning Chinese nuclear weapons policy, “the bomb became the main topic of conversation and long debates took place” in Yan’an over the subject of nuclear weapons following Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

The question which provoked Mao and his colleagues was the simple but fundamental one of whether or not their strategy for revolution remained valid in a world in which the oppressors now had a major new military weapon. In short, they asked themselves whether the thought of Mao would remain valid. Could the weak continue to expect to triumph over the strong if the strong had this new and awesome force at its disposal?

. . . There appears to have been no doubt among the Yenan leadership that the atomic bomb represented a major change in the laws of warfare, if not in the laws of history. As far as we know, there was no counterpart to the doubts in the West that anything had changed, nor argument that this was simply an increase in destructive power which would have little or no effect on overall military operations or the nature of warfare, much less on the laws of history. Mao and his colleagues recognized the great destructive power of the bomb as they were to continue to do over the years, whatever the Soviets might say about their beliefs and whatever the Chinese themselves might say for propaganda or deterrence purposes. The issue of debate was the more fundamental question which few were to ask themselves in the West for some time: namely, did this development require a change in one’s overall view of history and the nature of political and economic development? Apparently, many in the Maoist leadership feared that it did. They were apprehensive that after all they would not be able to use their revolutionary strategy to capture power in China and to aid a world-wide revolution. They felt, therefore, that victory had been snatched from their grasp by a technological change. Some argued in short that the bomb had repealed the laws of class warfare.

It was this view of the atomic bomb, and not the assertion that it lacked destructive power and wasn’t a major advance in weapons technology, that Mao himself sought to counteract in his discussions with his colleagues and in his now famous interview with Anna Louise Strong. At that time Mao declare...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Prewar and Early Korean War
• Part II Korean Stalemate
• Part III Chinese Defenses and the Korean Armistice
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2A
• Appendix 2B
• Notes
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author