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Authors: Odd Arne Westad

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viet leadership was not prepared to change the status quo in East Asia, including the future of Outer Mongolia.
But by January 2, 1950, the Soviet position evidently had undergone a critical change. When Mao met Molotov and Mikoyan, the Chinese leader began by proposing three alternatives for the Soviet Union: (1) sign a new treaty; (2) through each country's news agencies, issue a brief statement announcing that the two countries had reached agreement on important questions; and (3) issue a common statement outlining the important points in the relations between the two countries. According to the cable Mao sent to Beijing after the conversation, Molotov had immediately stated that the first alternative was the best and suggested inviting Zhou Enlai to visit Moscow.

105
After the talk, accordingly, Mao ordered Zhou to the Soviet capital. But the chairman still had reservations about whether the Soviets would accept a new treaty, believing that Stalin would only agree to make some changes regarding the status of Lüshun and Dalian.
106

On January 20 Zhou Enlai arrived in Moscow. Within two days Mao, Zhou, and Stalin had decided on the basic content of a new treaty. Then negotiations turned to specific issues. In a January 22 meeting, Mao emphasized that the new treaty should include both an alliance in times of war and a close coordination on all international issues in times of peace. He also stressed how important economic cooperation within the socialist camp was for the future of world revolution. Stalin seconded Mao's emphasis on the strategic nature of the alliance and acknowledged that it would fundamentally transform the balance of power in East Asia. In this light, the two leaders agreed notwithstanding whatever private misgivings Mao must have had that the Soviet Union would retain the rights granted to it in northeast China by the GMD in 1945.
107
Although the documents and recollections currently available to historians are not adequate to reveal the entire negotiating process, we may be reasonably sure that both sides, and especially the Chinese, felt that much had been achieved by the time the treaty was concluded. Both China and the Soviet Union made concessions on some key issues in the treaty, such as on the China Eastern Railway, Lüshun, and Dalian.
108
None of the leaders can have been fully satisfied with the final treaties. But they did manage to come up with agreements that regulated most aspects of the alliance.
On February 14, 1950, the Chinese and Soviet leaders signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance, and Mutual Assistance. To the Chinese Communists, the alliance was both a goal of their revolution and the only realistic choice they could make in a world of fierce snuggle between socialist and capitalist camps. The Soviet choice also reflected both ideological and realist considerations. Stalin did not decide to ally with China merely out of pure practical interest. Although ideology may have played the lesser role, it was not unim-

 

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portant. On both sides the Sino-Soviet alliance was formed in a process of mutual coordination of immediate purposes and long-term goals.
To both Soviet and Chinese leaders, the Korean War confirmed these fundamentals of the alliance. Although Mao and Stalin did not discuss Korea in detail, the CCP leadership's willingness to conform to Soviet and North Korean plans for reunification became crucial in the relationship between Beijing and Moscow. As these plans progressed in the spring of 1950, Mao was ready to allow China to serve as a supply zone for the operation, even though he regretted the timing of the attack on the South.

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Based on the evidence we now have, there are no indications of any joint Sino-Soviet planning of military operations before the war began.

Although the timing of the outbreak of the Korean War conflicted with some of the CCP leaders' priorities at home, because of their worldview, they could not refuse aid to their Korean comrades. During the Chinese civil war, the Communist army in northeastern China had received vital assistance from North Korea. Up to 1950, some core units in the People's Liberation Army in Manchuria consisted of ethnic Koreans. These Korean units, transferred to Kim II Sung's command, would be in the forefront of the attack on the South in June 1950.
Close friends within the military in the North Korean capital Pyongyang almost certainly kept the new Chinese government informed as to Kim's and Moscow's plans for the summer of 1950. But compared to that of Moscow, Beijing's ability to influence North Korean decisions was very limited. The long period of Soviet military occupation of Korea north of the thirty-eighth parallel had secured Moscow's preeminence at all levels of the Pyongyang government. Even had it urgently desired to do so, the CCP could in no way match Moscow's influence. Before the disastrous North Korean defeats in the fall, the Chinese leaders were quite happy to take the backseat on the Korean operations.
That the CCP Politburo in spite of much doubt and hesitation ultimately was willing to take China into war against the United States on behalf of the common cause in Korea was final proof that the alliance between Moscow and Beijing worked. As the signing of the Sino-Soviet alliance showed, the victory of the Chinese Revolution had changed both the perceptual and strategic maps of East Asia. The war to reunite Korea followed naturally from these changes and, in turn, helped cement them for almost a decade.
Notes
1. Among the more systematic works are Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai,
Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao and the Korean War
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993); Odd Arne Westad,
Cold War and Revolution: So-

 

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viet-American Rivalry and the Origins of the Chinese Civil War
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Niu Jun,
Cong Yanan zouxiang shijie: Zhongguo gongchandang dui wai guanxi qiyuan (1935-1949)
[From Yan'an to the world: Origins of the foreign relations of the Chinese Communist Party, 1935-1949] (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin, 1992).
2. At that time, the Comintern found the political line of the CCP Central Committee unsatisfactory and believed it "necessary to send new faces who are familiar with the international situation to help the CCP Central Committee." It was against this background that Wang Ming was sent to Yan'an. See "Jimiteluofu zai Gongchan Guoji zhiweihui mishuchu huiyi shang jiu Zhongguo wenti de fayan" [Dimitrov's talk on the China question in a meeting of the Comintern Executive Secretariat], August 10, 1937, Department of CCP History, Zhongguo renmin daxue, comp.,
Gongchan guoji he Zhonggguo geming jiaoxue cankao ziliao
[Teaching reference material on Comintern and the Chinese Revolution] (Beijing: Renmin daxue, 1986), vol. 2, 680.
3. "Zhou Enlai guanyu Jiang Jieshi yaoqiu Huabei wojun peihe zuozhan deng wenti xiang zhongyang de qingshi" [Zhou Enlai's report to the Central Committee on Jiang Jieshi's request for our military support in Huabei], May 10, 1941; "Zhou Enlai guanyu yu Jiang Jieshi tanpan qingkuang xiang zhongyang de baogao" [Zhou Enlai's report to the Central Committee on the progress of the negotiations with Jiang Jieshi], May 11, 1941; "Guanyu Huabei wojun peihe Guomingdang duiRi zuozhan deng wenti de zhishi" [Instructions on our military support to the GMD against Japan in Huabei], May 14, 1941, all in Zhongyang dangan'guan, comp.,
Zhonggong Zhongyang wenjian xuanbian
[Collection of CCP Central Committee Documents] (Beijing: Zhongyang dangxiao, 1992), vol. 13, 103, 105, 107-8.
4. "Jimiteluofu zai Gongchan Guoji zhiweihui mishuchu huiyi shang jiu Zhongguo wenti de fayan," 680.
5. Wa Cuikefu [I. V. Chuikov],
Zai Hua shiming: yige junshi guwen de riji
[China mission: Notebook of a military adviser] (Beijing: Xinhua, 1980), 34.
6. As late as August 1944, in a report to the CCP CC, the CCP Southern Bureau still doubted whether the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan and even expressed the belief that Soviet participation was "not necessary." "Nanfang ju tongzhi dui waijiao de yijian ji dui Zhongyang de jianyi" [Views of the comrades of the Southern Bureau about diplomacy and their suggestions to the Central Committee], August 16, 1944, in Nanfangju dangshi ziliao zhengjizu, comp.,
Nanfangju dangshi ziliao
[Southern Bureau party history materials] (Chongqing: Chongqing, 1990), vol. 3, 110-17. Mao personally

 

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