Learning and Problem Representation in Foreign Policy Decision-Making: China'S Decision to Enter the Korean War Revisited

Abstract

This article attempts to study the role of learning and problem representation in Chinese foreign policy decision-making as illustrated by the case of the Chinese decision to enter the Korean War. Drawing on cognitive theories of learning and problem representation, the authors argue that, in the past three decades prior to the outbreak of the Korean War, Chinese communist leaders learned through trial-and-error experimentation and through success and failure and developed their image of the United States as the biggest imperialist enemy and that this enemy image led to their representation of the Korean War problem as the American aggression into China which seriously constrained the generation of alternatives among which the Chinese policy-makers could choose. This article concludes with several theoretical and policy implications.