at that time, a newly red china was quite frail, and america was considered the strongest, even lin biao didn't want to fight them.there's lots of doubts among ccp leaders whether to get involved, thus the name of "volunteer army".

but mao relied on stalin, and kim basically only listened to stalin.

no look back history, the korean war was essentially unavoidable, even if kim was not crazy,lee of south korea wouldn't have just stayed quiet.

and once war started, it's always difficult to control. ameircans wouldn't stop at 38 parallel, nor would ccp.

the korean war was very unfortunate, esp for china. just after a bloody civil war, nothing was more important to china than peace.