Chinese Foreign Ministry, Why China Intervened in Korea, November 11, 1950.

Early in 1950, the Truman administration had anticipated a takeover of the island of Formosa by the Chinese communists. The invasion of South Korea by North Korean forces opened up an opportunity for the United States to defend the island. Shortly thereafter, the United States reversed its former policies and sided with Chiang Kai-shek in the dispute over Formosa. After the United States crossed the 38^thparallel in September 1950, the Chinese finally responded, by asking for a peaceful settlement of the conflict, then by threatening more forceful actions. Finally, on October 16, Chinese soldiers entered North Korea. The Chinese justified their participation in the war on the grounds of previous American actions, including the defense of Formosa, a problem that Mao and the Chinese communist leadership viewed as an internal affair. They cited the violation of their territorial integrity by U.S. air forces, and called U.S. intervention in the region an attack on their independence. In short, they argued, the United States had encroached upon the rights of the Korean people to determine their own fate.

Chinese Foreign Ministry: Why China Intervened in Korea (November 11 1950)

SOURCE. United Nations Document S/ 1902 November 15, 1950, pp. 2-4.

. . . Immediately after the beginning of its aggressive war in Korea, the United States sent its fleet into the waters of Taiwan (Formosa), which belongs to China. It then sent its air forces to invade the air space of north-east China and carried out bombings. The United Nations took under consideration a charge brought by the Chinese Government that the United States fleet had invaded the waters of Taiwan and is ready to discuss this charge. In the last three months numerous cases have been noted of United States aircraft violating the air borders of China, bombing Chinese territory, killing Chinese civilians and destroying Chinese property. The full tale of the crimes committed in north-east China by the United States air forces which have invaded Korea is given below. Recently the number of air attacks has been increasing daily. These crimes committed by the United States armed forces, which are violating the territorial sovereignty of China and threatening its security, have alarmed the whole Chinese people. Righteously indignant, many Chinese citizens are expressing a desire to help the Korean people and resist American aggression. Facts have shown that the aim of United States aggression in Korea is not only Korea itself but also the extension of aggression to China. The question of the independent existence or the downfall of Korea has always been closely linked with the security of China. To help Korea and repel United States aggression means to protect our own homes and our own country. It is, therefore, completely natural for the Chinese people to be ready to help Korea and offer resistance to United States aggression. This natural desire of the Chinese people to help Korea and offer resistance to United States aggression has a whole series of precedents in world history, a fact which no one can deny, Everyone knows that in the eighteenth century the progressive people of France, led and inspired by Lafayette, gave similar voluntary assistance to the American people in their War of Independence. Before the Second World War democrats from all countries of the world, including Britishers and Americans, also helped by similar volunteer action the Spanish people in its civil war against Franco. The whole world admitted that those acts were lawful.

The spontaneous assistance of the Chinese people in Korea and their resistance to United States aggression has a firm moral foundation. The Chinese people will never forget how the Korean people magnanimously gave the Chinese people voluntary assistance in its revolutionary struggle. The Korean people took part not only in the Chinese war of national liberation, but also in the northern march of the Chinese people in 1925 to 1927, in the war against Japan from 1937 to 1945. Throughout the four stages of the Chinese people's revolution the Korean people always fought shoulder to shoulder with the Chinese people to overthrow imperialism and feudalism. Now that the bloodthirsty United States aggressors are exterminating Koreans, the Chinese are sharing their sufferings and, as must be perfectly obvious, cannot remain indifferent....

The American aggressors have gone too far. After making a five-thousand-mile journey across the Pacific they invaded the territories of China and Korea. In the language of the American imperialists that is not aggression on their part, whereas the just struggle of the Chinese and Koreans in defence of their land and their people is aggression. The world knows who is right and who is wrong....

The United States Government itself provoked the civil war in Korea; the United States Government itself unleashed a war of aggression against Korea; the United States itself invaded Taiwan, which belongs to China, bombed Chinese territory and threatened the security of China. From the outset the Central People's Government of the Chinese People's Republic denounced the war of aggression in Korea waged by the United States Government and demanded a peaceful decision of the Korean question. At the present time it likewise resolutely denounces the war of aggression in Korea carried on by the United States Government and calls for a peaceful settlement of the Korean question.

In order to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Korean question it is essential, above all, to withdraw all foreign troops from Korea. The Korean question can be solved only by the people of North and South Korea themselves; this is the only way in which the Korean problem can be solved peacefully. The Chinese people ardently loves peace but it will not be afraid to take action against aggressors and no aggressors can intimidate it. [Then follows the account of recent American flights over Chinese territory.]