Return to China or “Return to Taiwan”: Conflicts and Survival in the “Voluntary Repatriation” of Chinese POWs in the Korean War

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CEAS COLLOQUIUM

David Cheng Chang CEAS Postdoctoral Fellow in Chinese Studies, 2011-12, Stanford University

At the end of the Korean War, only one third of the approximately 21,000 Chinese prisoners of war were repatriated to Communist China; the remaining two thirds, more than 14,300 prisoners, went to Nationalist Taiwan in a propaganda coup. These Chinese POWs were at the center of contention in the second half of the war. Utilizing previously untapped archival sources and oral history interviews in the U.S., Taiwan, and China, this study examines who these prisoners were, and how they, individually and collectively, made divergent decisions in the controversial and contentious process of “voluntary repatriation.”