"a battleground for bigger powers"

"Wang's analogy of us as human fertilizer revived thoughts I had been thinking for a long time.  True enough, as Chinese, we genuinely felt that our lives were misused here, but as I have observed earlier, no matter how abysmal our situation was there were always others who had it worse.  By now I understood why occasionally some Korean civilians were hostile to us.  To them we had come here only to protect China's interests -- by so doing, we couldn't help but ruin their homes, fields, and livelihoods.  From their standpoint, if the Chinse army hadn't crossed the Yalu, millions of lives, both civilian and military, would have been saved.  Of course, the United States would then have occupied all of Korea, forcing China to build defenses in Manchuria, which would have been much more costly than sending troops to fight in our neighboring country.  As it was, the Koreans had taken the brunt of the destruction of this war, whereas we Chinese were here mainly to keep its flames away from our border.  Or, as most of the POW's believed, perhaps rightly, we had served as cannon fodder for the Russians.  It was true that the Koreans had started the war themselves, but a small country like theirs could only end up being a battleground for bigger powers.  Whoever won this war, Korean would be a loser."

-- Ha Jin, War Trash