Red Chinese Battle Plan is a Cold War-era anti-Chinese propaganda film produced by the United States Department of Defense in 1967. Presented as a documentary film on Chinese history to military servicemen, the propaganda short describes the People's Republic of China as plotting to "conquer and enslave" the world. Produced five years before the beginning of the United States' rapprochement with Mao Zedong in 1972, Red Chinese Battle Plan was made during the Vietnam War under the Lyndon Johnson administration. Despite the widening rift between the China and the Soviet Union, both powers supported the Vietnamese communists, while the Western Bloc cultivated a myth of Chinese expansionism throughout the decade. Presented as a documentary on Chinese history, the film mixed Cold War-era anti-communist rhetoric with earlier Western Yellow Peril rhetoric into one, portraying China as seeking to gain control of Africa and Latin America before moving on to capture the United States. Red Chinese Battle Plan for World Domination | 1967 | American Propaganda Documentary Against China History of China Following a revolutionary military uprising against the the Qing court in 1911, the provisional government of the Republic of China was formed in 1912. Sun Yat-sen was declared President, but Sun was forced to turn power over to Yuan Shikai, who commanded the New Army. Yuan declared himself emperor in late 1915. Yuan’s death in 1916 left a power vacuum in China. This ushered in the warlord Era, during which China was ruled by provincial military leaders. In the 1920s, Sun Yat-sen established a revolutionary base in south China, and set out to unite the fragmented Chinese nation. With assistance from the Soviet Union, he entered into an alliance with the Communist Party of China. After Sun Yat-sen's death in 1925, one of his protégés, Chiang Kai-shek, seized control of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and succeeded in bringing most of south and central China under its rule. In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek turned on the Communist Party of China and relentlessly chased the communist armies from their bases in southern and eastern China. In 1934, driven from their mountain bases such as the Chinese Soviet Republic, the forces of the Communist Party of China embarked on the Long March across China to the northwest, where they established a guerrilla base. During the Long March, the communists reorganized under a new leader, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung). The bitter struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China continued through the 14-year long Japanese occupation of China (1931 - 1945). The two Chinese parties formed a united front to oppose the Japanese in 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), which became a part of World War II. Following the defeat of Japan in 1945, the war between the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong's communist forces resumed. The nationalists were defeated by the communist forces in 1949 and Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People's Republic of China. Three months after the People's Republic of China was established, Mao Zedong and his delegation traveled to Moscow and signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Friendship. The Soviet Union became the closest ally of the People's Republic of China. On June 25, 1950, Kim Il-sung's North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel, invaded into South Korea, and eventually advanced as far as the Pusan Perimeter in south-east Korea. United Nations forces entered the war on side of South Korea, and American General Douglas MacArthur, having forced a communist retreat, proposed to end the war by Christmas 1950. The Soviet Union and China saw a UN victory as a major political victory to the United States. After Pyongyang fell in October, the UN troops approached the strategically sensitive Yalu River, a river on the border between North Korea and the People's Republic of China. China responded by sending waves of troops south, in what became known as the People's Volunteers. By Christmas 1950, the People's Volunteer Army had forced the United Nations to retreat back to the 38th Parallel and the armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. The Korean War ended any possibility of normalized relations with the United States for years. Meanwhile, Chinese forces invaded and annexed Tibet in October 1950. Under Mao Zedong's direction, China would also go on to build its first atomic bomb in 1964, becoming the 5th country in the world at the time to have successfully conducted a nuclear test.

• published: 11 Mar 2016
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