Far Short of a “Glorious Victory”: Revisiting China’s Changing Strategies to Manage the Korean War

This article represents the author's effort, in light of newer Chinese and Russian sources, to revisit a series of questions that he discussed over two decades ago: What was China's position in the making of the Korean War? Why and how did Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist leadership make the decision to enter the war? How should the Chinese experience during the war, with insights gained from new sources, be narrated and explained?

By giving special attention to the 38th parallel as one of the war's most visible and long-lasting legacies, the article also serves as a historical reference for considering a critical part of origins of the Korean nuclear crisis that the world is facing today.