sent some of its best units to join the war. Although the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had some initial success, losses (both on the battlefield as well as in material and casualties) exposed the PLA's weaknesses in firepower, air support, logistics, and communication. As a result, the PLA was given a new mandate to modernize and professionalize itself. This ran counter to the PLA's previous mandate that put dogma before expertise and modernization. The commander of the PLA's forces in Korea during the war, marshal Peng Dehuai, was made the government's first minister of defense to implement the changes and reforms such as modernization of weaponry, training and discipline, the rank system, and conscription. China successfully prevented the South Korean and U.S. militaries from establishing a presence on its Manchurian border. At that time, Manchuria, especially Liaoning – the Chinese province north of the Yalu River – was China's most important industrial center. Protecting the Manchurian industrial zone was one of the major reasons China entered the war. Furthermore, by supporting the North Korean state, China obtained more than 300 km of strategic buffer zone from the U.S. which would avoid the military spending necessary to protect its Korean border for the next fifty years. On the other hand, this meant China lost the opportunity to reunify Taiwan. Initially, the United States had abandoned the KMT and expected that Taiwan would fall to Beijing anyway, so the basic U.S. policy was to "wait and see" on the assumption that Taiwan's fall to Communist China was inevitable. However, the North Korean invasion of South Korea, in the context of the Cold War, meant U.S. President Truman intervened again and dispatched the Seventh Fleet to "neutralize" the Formosa (Taiwan) Strait. During the war, over an estimate number of 21,800 Chinese troops were taken prisoner by the Allies. After the war, they were given a chance to return to the People's Republic of China or to go to the Republic of China (Taiwan). Over two thirds of the entire group chose to go to Taiwan for the fears of government reprisal, consequently defecting to the Army of the Republic of China. The war also partly contributed to the decline of Sino-Soviet relations. Although the Chinese had their own reasons to enter the war, mentioned above, the view that the Soviets had used them as proxies was shared by the Western bloc. MacArthur was