When Chinese Commissar Met Jim Crow
An Untold History of Racial Struggle in the Korean War Prisoners of War Camps
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12790923 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Wu Qu (0009-0000-2535-5594, American University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 178-193 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Chinese Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1547-402X • E-ISSN: 2048-7827 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1547402x.2023.2268846 |
| OpenAlex | W4389738590 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
During the Korean War, it has been claimed that the Chinese People's Volunteer (CPV) army “brainwashed” the American prisoners of war (POWs) into automatons. Recently declassified Chinese documents shed new light on a racial perspective in this story. Although the CPV activated an ambitious communist indoctrination program for the POWs in early 1951, the anticipated ideological struggle did not take place. By June 1951, the Chinese commissars overseeing American POWs discovered that these Americans were not the “proletariat brothers” deceived by the Wall Street financial capitalists. Rather, many of them rallied around Ku Klux Klan organizations to disrupt camp order and to resist the Chinese indoctrination. After mid-1951, the CPV essentially abandoned the goal of ideological conversion and prioritized controlling the POWs through none ideological means of alienation, self-punishment, and self-policing
Alienation · Chinese americans · Communism · Criminology · Economic history · Ethnic group · Ideology · Indoctrination · Political science · Politics · Proletariat · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Vietnam War · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
| Highly cited | No |
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