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China and the DPRK: With friends like these....

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In Brief

China’s posture toward the DPRK is under scrutiny.  Over recent years, a growing number of observers have concluded that, aside from the question of how much leverage China had over Pyongyang, stopping the DPRK’s nuclear program was not China’s first priority (as it was for the ROK, Japan and the US).

Beijing appeared to attach primary importance to preserving the status quo on the Korean peninsula, that is, an enduring DPRK. Beijing’s eventual tolerance of the DPRK’s nuclear tests, its continued experiments with long-range ballistic missiles, and its nuclear and missile export activities with Iran and Syria constituted the primary evidence for this conclusion.

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Attempts to account for Beijing’s policy priorities typically focused on a potentially significant influx of refugees from the DPRK, the DPRK’s value as a buffer between China and the US/ROK alliance, and the legacy of being a fellow socialists and brothers-in-arms during the Korean war.

The recent dramatic escalation in Pyongyang’s belligerency and China’s steadfast protection of its tiny neighbour has made it impossible to continue to paper over the fact that China is not on the same page as the US, Japan and the ROK in respect of the DPRK’s nuclear program, and never has been.

One of the Wikileaks cables attracted attention because it seemed to suggest the opposite, namely, that China recognised that the DPRK’s durability looked doubtful and that China would have relatively modest interests in an ROK-led process of reunification (essentially that US forces in Korea not be deployed north of the DMZ). These views may well have been expressed but there is no trace of them in the policy settings that Beijing has pursued toward the DPRK.

I don’t find the considerations summarised above particularly persuasive as an explanation for these policy settings. In thinking about what else Beijing might be after, one is drawn to where the Korean peninsula will be positioned in the Northeast Asian geo-political mosaic over the medium and longer-term future. A reunified Korea indisputably inside China’s strategic footprint, that is, with the US and Japan thoroughly marginalised, undoubtedly looms in Beijing as very attractive and quite possibly as a high priority strategic goal. Put the other way around, a Korean peninsula that continues to have strong political, economic and security ties to the US and Japan through and beyond reunification may well be seen in Beijing as a critical vulnerability that would seriously diminish the regional dominance that it now knows is within reach. Beijing is rapidly assembling the raw power to enable its preferred outcome and the longer any change to the status quo on the peninsula can be deferred the more confident Beijing will be that it will be able to shape reunification to its advantage.

Apart from surging ‘comprehensive national power’, Beijing has a strong comparative advantage over the other major powers in its capacity to pursue priority goals patiently and methodically over long time horizons. Pyongyang’s exceptionally provocative behaviour in 2010 has forced Beijing to expose its policy priorities on the Korean peninsula. The reactions from the ROK, the US and Japan – to intensify their security links and to signal that their tolerance of DPRK provocations is wearing thin – directly undermine Beijing’s strategy to perpetuate the status quo until such time as its capacity to shape the long-term future of the Korean peninsula is unassailable.

Beijing’s steadfast protection of North Korea is based on two obvious conditions. First, that Pyongyang runs its internal affairs sufficiently sensibly to preclude regime implosion and, second, that it not provoke war with the South and its ally, the United States.  It seems unlikely that there is an overt or tacit understanding between Beijing and Pyongyang to this effect.  This relationship is not easy and Beijing has probably had to rely on a calculated gamble that Pyongyang’s survival instincts coupled with judicious support from China could preclude these extreme outcomes.

Beijing has had more than two decades to convince the DPRK that China’s support is sufficiently reliable to render unnecessary the extreme measure of nuclear weapons that Pyongyang began to work toward in the late 1980s.  Beijing may have calculated, at least for a time, that the risks of being dragged into a war by its unpredictable neighbour were too great.  It is equally possible that Beijing judged that any endeavour to revitalise the security assurances that prevailed in the Cold War days would be rejected by Pyongyang and involve a massive loss of face for Beijing.  It is even possible that Beijing did go down this path and was rejected, and that we simply do not know about it.

The evidence available to us indicates that China made no attempt to test the option of security assurances as a means of diverting Pyongyang’s nuclear program.  It opted instead to do its best to keep the DPRK away from the extremes of war and internal implosion while doing enough, particularly through the 6-Party process, to preserve its credentials as a strong and responsible supporter of the nuclear non-proliferation regime.  In the absence of effective alternative policies, the other players acquiesced in China’s somewhat detached involvement in the 6-Party process and its contention that it had to preserve positive relations with the DPRK to give it the confidence to participate in these processes.  This acquiescence eroded to breaking point over the course of 2010 with the US eventually signalling its assessment that China has ‘enabled’ Pyongyang in bringing the peninsula closer to renewed conflict than it has been for decades. Neither Japan nor the ROK have indicated that their position is different from that of the United States.

The key players in the Korean drama have for a number of years accepted one another’s policy settings toward the DPRK as sufficiently compatible to view the 6-Party process as the path most likely to contain and eventually resolve the nuclear issue on the peninsula. This set of understandings, assessments and expectations appears to have been fractured. The next big question, therefore, is what may (or should) emerge to replace it.

Ron Huisken is a senior fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, at the Australian National University in Canberra.

2 responses to “China and the DPRK: With friends like these….”

  1. Ron Huisten’s blame of China for the current situations of the Korean peninsula simply ignores the fact that China has had no troops in the Peninsula since the truce, while the US has had a strong presence in South Korea. He also ignores the fact South Korea is much stronger than the North economically and in terms of larger population.

    So how balanced or convincing is Ron Huisken’s analysis, or perhaps, more accurately, speculation?

    Let’s look at one example from his post: At least the revelation from the Wikileaks was based on more certain factors than Ron Huisken’s pure speculation on what China might have done. For example, ‘It is even possible that Beijing did go down this path (‘to revitalise the security assurances that prevailed in the Cold War days would be rejected by Pyongyang and involve a massive loss of face for Beijing’) and was rejected, and that we simply do not know about it.’

    How could an analyst engage in such pure speculation with no fact whatsoever?

    Further, Ron Huisten states, ‘The evidence available to us indicates that China made no attempt to test the option of security assurances as a means of diverting Pyongyang’s nuclear program.’

    Let’s leave aside this assertion for the time being. However, what security assurance is he talking about, given that the US and the coalition of the willing has invaded Iraq out of false security information of the so called WMD?

    In such an environment, few can be sure China’s security given that the US bombed it embassy in Serbia and killed its diplomatic personnel, the US spying planes flew at the Chinese border and its intimidation of Chinese cargoes at open seas and its encircling of China, how could China be able to convince the North Korea that its security can be guaranteed?

    If the following statement by Ron Huisten is true, then it directly contradicts the point Ron Huisten argued in his post, namely, ‘Beijing may have calculated, at least for a time, that the risks of being dragged into a war by its unpredictable neighbour were too great.’

    This is an interesting but also very flawed piece, I am afraid to say.

  2. A new process, be it 6-Party, 3-Party, bilaterals, assurances or anything else will ultimately falter. Structural change of the North Korean economy is the only means by which more permanent stability can be achieved – and nobody, particularly North Korea, seems willing or able to push this.

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