I saw someone say on Facebook that he received a commemorative medal from the CPC Central Committee, the State Council, and the Central Military Commission for the “70th Anniversary of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army’s Resistance Against America and Aid to the DPRK in Fighting Abroad”. I wasn’t born when you fought the U.S.,” he said.
Giving a medal for the 70th anniversary of the war to a man in his 50s is not a mistake, but a political theater of the absurd. How many of the soldiers who fought in the Korean War 70 years ago are still alive? How is it that for the past 70 years medals have not been issued to those who “went abroad to fight”, but now they are?
The answer is to be found in politics. Because we are now facing a confrontation with the U.S., in order to mobilize the nation against the U.S., we need to make some big dragons and phoenixes. Orwell said, “Whoever controls the past controls the future; and whoever controls the present controls the past. There is no real history under totalitarianism; all history is rewritten to serve those who are actually in power.
Is this funny? Not funny. It reflects the readiness of the Chinese Communist Party for war, and the fact that anything absurd can happen under totalitarian politics. The recent spate of absurd governance in Hong Kong has been well documented, hasn’t it?
In his speech, Xi said, “This great war resisted imperialist aggression and expansion, defeated opponents armed to the teeth, broke the myth of U.S. military invincibility, and forced the invincible invaders, on July 27, 1953, to fight against the U.S. and the DPRK. Sign the Armistice Agreement.”
Was the Korean War the beginning of “imperialist aggression and expansion”? It is well documented that after the war, North Korea suddenly attacked South Korea on June 25, 1950, when the North drew a line of demarcation between North and South Korea, captured Seoul in a few days, and occupied most of the South for more than a month. Only then did the United States hastily pass a resolution at the United Nations to enter the war as a UN force, and troops under MacArthur’s command landed at Inchon, the waist of the Korean peninsula, reversing the defeat and occupying Pyongyang in October. The Chinese Communist Party then sent troops across the border to fight in the name of volunteers. If there had been “imperialist aggression and expansion” first, would the imperialist army have been defeated at the first engagement without prior preparation?
The Korean War was not a war in which China “defeated an opponent armed to the teeth,” nor was it a war in which China won and the United States lost. After the Chinese sent troops, MacArthur proposed to President Truman to open a second front in the Far East, including the bombing of Chinese military industries and facilities, to “fight Communism to the death,” but Truman vetoed the proposal and removed MacArthur from office. In the Korean War, the Truman administration adopted the strategy of “limited war,” holding the original demarcation line and then calling off the war. The U.S. Democratic government had a track record of appeasement and concessions to the Chinese Communist Party.
I was a high school student in a leftist school during the Korean War, and was greatly influenced by the patriotic literature of “Anti-Americanism and Aid to the DPRK”. I still remember Yang Shuo’s “Three Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains” and Wei Wei’s “Who is the Loveliest Man”, and the nickname “the loveliest man” was also used by the leftists as a nickname for the volunteers. Yang Shuo was criticized and tortured during the Cultural Revolution and committed suicide by poison in 1968; Wei Wei was called “the most abominable person” for criticizing Jiang Zemin in 2001, and was imprisoned for a time. As for those who fought on the front lines, the volunteers who returned to the U.S. went through political campaigns. The worst offenders were those who were repatriated after being captured. At that time, the United States put forward the principle of “voluntary repatriation”, the Chinese prisoners of war “screening”, prison camps constantly erupted within the pro-communist and anti-communist brutal fights, after two years of screening, finally more than 14,000 refused to repatriate to mainland China, choosing to go to Taiwan; insisted on returning to China! There were more than 7,000 of them on the mainland. More than 7,000 of these “most patriotic” Chinese POWs were severely punished upon their return to China and persecuted in various political campaigns. Yu Jin, a Chinese military writer, has published a 500-page book in Hong Kong about the experiences of these returning POWs called “Bad Luck”. Patriotism is bad luck, and the most patriotic “loveliest people” suffer the most miserable misfortune.
The historical significance of anti-American aid to Korea is reflected in the absurdist drama of the medallion and the tragic song of bad luck.
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