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History awaits China's Korea move
By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING -
In 1950 Mao Zedong made a historic decision for his
country and for the world. He decided that it was more
important to fight the Americans in Korea than trying to
recover Taiwan, held by runaway Kuomintang (KMT) troops.
This decision and the direct clash between US and
Chinese troops in Korea started the Cold War. For
decades many Chinese were puzzled by the decision: Why
defend North Korea, a foreign country, and not fulfill
the patriotic goal of reunifying the country by taking
over Taiwan?
There were many reasons for the
decision. There was the technical difficulty of a
landing in Taiwan, defended by the United States. There
was the issue of the geographic proximity - it was more
dangerous to have the US next door, divided only by a
few meters of the Yalu River, if the Americans were to
beat North Korea, than to have them in Taiwan, separated
from the mainland by miles of sea (see Ni Lexiong, "Why
China does not need one Korea", in Heartland
1-2001, The Korean Gambit
).
There was also the bigger
issue that by 1950 it was clear that the United States
did not believe in Mao; it lumped him in with the rest
of the communist lot, and the reciprocal overtures of
the 1940s were a distant memory. So Mao had to go along
with Moscow, with which he had a history of difficult
relations. Mao had to prove himself to Moscow, and to do
this he had to fight in Korea. It was a momentous step
that cast China in the communist bloc and set the tone
of the confrontation between East and West for the next
half-century. This situation was only partially reversed
in 1972 when US president Richard Nixon visited Beijing
and in effect allied the United States with China
against the Soviet Union.
As North Korea set
China and the United States apart 50 years ago, now it
brings them together. Both Washington and Beijing are
extremely concerned about North Korea's recent threats,
though both dread the possibility of North Korea's
collapse. Without the support of China and the Soviet
Union, North Korea is no longer a geopolitical threat
(see North Korea: Such a nuisance,
January 3). However, the real threat to regional
stability is not so much the nuisance of the
saber-rattling about atomic bombs and missiles, which
may never see reality, but the more concrete possibility
of a collapse of North Korea. This could impose immense
strain on South Korea, forced to reunify with the North
and provide for its 22 million desperately poor people,
but also on China and Japan, as neighbors, and on the US
as a concerned party, with some 40,000 troops in Korea.
Nobody is willing to foot this bill, which would strain
the regional economy more than the costs imposed on West
Germany, and the whole of Western Europe, by its
reunification with East Germany.
Similarly,
having to feed and clothe 22 million North Koreans could
very well cause a drop in the global economy, which is
already not faring too well.
In this predicament
any hasty move could be counterproductive, as could be
war. This would have only costs and no real benefits.
North Korea is not sitting on strategic reserves, like
Iraq, which could impact the whole of the global
economy, neither is it like Afghanistan financing and
organizing terrorists who threaten the life of the
Western world. There is no oil to conquer, neither is
there a radical guerrilla force to crack. The North
Korean threat does not go beyond the boundaries, and it
is more like the blackmail we see in the movies, where a
mad scientist demands US$1 billion or else he'll blow up
Tokyo. The goal of the scientist is clearly to get his
$1 dollars, not to blow up Tokyo, whereas al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan would use $1 billion to blow up Tokyo or New
York.
There is at the moment, with no weapons
armed, no real urgency to start a war, and nobody would
like a war that would end up with the disintegration of
North Korea and the huge cost of reunification.
However, something must be done about Pyongyang,
and despite its possibly waning influence (see Beijing's influence on North Korea
overstated, January 11) Beijing has a few pressure
points it can use with North Korea.
China is still one of the
largest, if not the largest, aid donor to North Korea;
moreover, most of the aid coming from other countries
comes via Beijing. China could stop this aid, totally or
in part.
China hosts between 100,000 and
300,000 North Korean refugees. It could allow more North
Koreans to run to embassies in Beijing, thus further
embarrassing the North, or it could even open up its
border to North Korean refugees, and thus bleed North
Korea white of its people and hasten its collapse.
At least one of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's
sons lives in Beijing - he is some kind of pledge of
allegiance that Kim has given to China under the ancient
tradition of renzhi.
China certainly would never
use these pressure points, because they could very well
heighten the tension with proud North Korea (see Straight shooter and loss of face,
January 8). But the fact that China has these pressure
points makes it the only country able to exert some
influence over North Korea. China is thus the only
country that could work to prevent the mad scientist
from enacting his threat and guaranteeing that in the
end the dollars are paid, because, in the end, it is
more economical and stabilizing to pay the ransom, in
aid, than to wage a war. Furthermore, only China can
help find a way so that what amounts to ransom money
does not look so much like it.
China can
thus help solve the situation and save face. It is the
only country in the world that can do this. Here there
are also two aspects.
There is a deep agreement
between the United States and China about what should be
done with North Korea: Pyongyang has to solve its issues
by talking with Seoul. China now has a very good
relationship with South Korea. The US administration has
come to trust and support the policy of dialogue with
the North of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who
was rewarded in recent elections with the victory of his
candidate as the next president.
No other country can play a similar role vis-a-vis a
threat as China does with North Korea. Israel, in a way,
can guarantee for the United States the stability of the
Middle East, and thus be of use for the long-term
stability of the region. However, Israel does not do
this very satisfactorily, as it has not been able to
avoid war, first outside its borders and then within its
borders. Stability through war is precarious. China
could guarantee the stability of North Korea without any
war and without letting Pyongyang fire a missile.
Furthermore, it could be instrumental in the reform of
North Korea that could improve the living standards of
the people and pave the way for reunification.
Therefore in a way North Korea is forging a
long-term mutual interest in concrete cooperation by
bringing the United States and China together on a hot
issue. The problem of North Korea can be resolved only
over the long term, and for all this time the US has an
objective interest in cooperating with China. Just as 50
years ago the war in North Korea set the US and China
apart and started the Cold War, now the containment of
North Korea could well be the cooperation setting the
tune for the next half-century.
Already the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have pushed the
United States into a closer cooperation with China. As
Michael D Swaine argued in "The Turnaround in US-China
Relations and the Taiwan Issue" (published by Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, 2002): "Washington's
highly negative response to Chen Shui-bian's
controversial remarks of August 3, 2002 - in which he
spoke of the need to prepare the groundwork for a
national referendum on Taiwan's status and described the
cross-Strait relationship as being between two states -
provided a telling case-in-point of Washington's new
priorities."
First the war on terrorism and now
the long-term commitment for the containment of North
Korea have created a very strong geopolitical bond
between China and the United States. And geopolitics is
far stronger than ideology, as the Nixon visit to China
in 1972 proved. By keeping North Korea under control,
China will save South Korea and greatly help Japan,
whose economy is not doing wonderfully and would do
worse if panic-stricken by a belligerent North Korea. By
doing this China will also help the United States, whose
economy is linked with the fortunes of Japan and Asia.
China furthermore will also need the US to help contain
North Korea, as Pyongyang wishes to reach out to America
for its economic and political clout. The
destabilization of the region and the weakening of the
economies of neighboring countries would hit China
first.
This strategic bond between China and the
United States could last until the reunification of
Korea. In other words, China and the US will need each
other for next 30 years or so.
The existence of
this bond can cast some new light on the internal
developments of China. Under these conditions China
could do without political reforms and improvements of
human rights, easily shrugging off US demands on such
issues. But China's bond with North Korea will not
slacken the pace of political reforms in China, as they
do not depend on US pressure in any case. The Chinese
leadership believes these reforms are necessary and will
carry them out even if foreign pressure were to stop.
And in a way the fate of North Korea proves the
point for China. Leadership there is either in the hands
of a whimsical dictator or torn in a fierce power
struggle among different factions with different goals.
To the Chinese, this predicament proves once more the
dangers of the absolute, unrestrained power. China
definitely doesn't want to end up like North Korea.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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