How Korean war memories in China fuel desire to take Taiwan 70 years on

Elderly Chinese war veterans remain bitter Mao’s plan to take the island back was interrupted

The Chinese Communist Party used Taiwan issue as the main justification for taking part in the Korean war

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Wang Yushu was 18 when he was ordered to northeast China as part of efforts to aid Kim Il-sung’s troops. Photo: Handout

Published: 2:00pm, 17 Oct 2020Updated: 8:16pm, 17 Oct 2020

On a day in early October, 1950, when cool autumn winds had just began blowing over China’s southeastern Fujian province, then 18-year-old Wang Yushu, a soldier based in Quanzhou, was ordered to take his cotton-padded military coat and head to the chilly northeast immediately.

Wang was a member of the newly established Taiwan Art Troupe, part of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) political and cultural propaganda campaign for “Taiwan reunification” in early 1950.

Everybody in the troupe was a native speaker of Hokkien, a dialect shared by more than 70 per cent of the population in Taiwan, and their focus was on the mission to “liberate” Taiwan.

“My group was supposed to cross the Taiwan Strait … but the outbreak of the Korean war had halted the plan,” Wang said.

Seven decades later, the Korean war might be over but the plan to cross the strait remains unrealised, much to the bitterness of elderly veterans like Wang, Cold War specialists and historians say.

The Korean war took place less than a year after the PLA, led by Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang troops. Mao declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, prompting Chiang to move his Kuomintang regime to Taiwan.

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