China-N Korea: Speak softly, carry a
small stick By Jaewoo Choo
SEOUL - The recent inconclusive talks in Beijing
on defusing North Korea's nuclear crisis demonstrate,
once again, North Korea's intransigence, but it also
highlight the limits of China's political and economic
leverage over its old communist ally. Once the two were
said to be "as close as lips and teeth", but at the end
of the talks, the six participating nations failed to
achieve a consensus, and China's foreign minister
declared: "The road is long and there will be a few
bumps in the road. But time is on our side and time is
on the side of peace.
"Differences, even serious
differences, still exist," Chinese Foreign Minister Li
Jaoxing said. "I do not think people will expect that
all problems will be completely solved through one or
two rounds of talks. Good things do not always happen
easily. But the will of the people is as heavy as a
mountain. There is a Chinese saying: If you work at it
hard enough, you can grind an iron rod into a needle."
It looks as though a lot of grinding will be
required among all parties - North and South Korea,
China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Can
China really bring North Korea in from the cold? The
world is watching, and China is walking softly, carrying
a small stick - and saying nothing harsh in public. At
this time, a look at China's limited leverage and why it
cannot simply drag North Korea in from the cold would be
instructive.
The very fact of the six-nation
talks in Beijing demonstrates that China did manage some
impressive, if limited, brokerage. The question
persists: Why can't China, which emerged from its own
self-destructive ideological isolation, press its
renegade socialist brethren in the Hermit Kingdom to
open up, shuck their counter-productive antique ideology
and join the rest of the world?
The answer
appears to be that China has modest leverage, though
more than most countries, and it is making quiet, steady
efforts, with results that are not particularly
impressive. Like all other parties to the talks except
North Korea itself, China seeks stability on the Korean
Peninsula and takes the long, historical view. It
provides economic aid, though Pyongyang is hurting most
from the cutoff of US and other aid, especially in the
form of oil for heating. Still, North Korea, freezing
and hungry this winter partly due to economic sanctions,
won't come in from the cold.
China supplies
oil, coal and grain Official statistics on
China-DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)
economic aid are not disclosed, but available research
indicates that between 1996 and 2000, China annually
supplied about 1.1 million tons of crude oil, 2.5
million tons of coal and 500,000 tons of grain, mostly
corn. Half the grain was in barter, the other half at
reduced price. Economic experts believe that China still
provides at least the same, if not higher, levels of
aid.
And China is supplying something else that
may in time bear fruit - education in economics, finance
and reform - to talented young North Korean cadres,
Pyongyang's future leaders.
Years ago China
emerged from isolation after the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, renovated its rusted ideology,
joined the rest of the world and reaped the
extraordinary bounty of economic reform. Still North
Korea doesn't rush to emulate Chinese capitalists.
The question is not why China hasn't tried, but
rather why it hasn't been more effective and why the
DPRK has not been more receptive. Pyongyang does
maintain some modest special economic zones in a
toe-in-the-water approach to reform. But China has
conveyed and continues to convey its message: Change,
for survival may well depend upon it.
The
architect of China's opening and reform, the late leader
Deng Xiaoping, had raised the need for economic and
political openness and reform with then North Korean
leader Kim Il-sung in the 1980s.
As late as in
2001, when Kim Jong-il, the late Kim Il-sung's son and
successor, was making an official tour of Beijing and
Shanghai, former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji make similar
exhortations about the need to modernize and renovate
the old-style thinking. He showed Kim Shanghai's
skyscrapers, its booming economy, its energy and the
evident benefits to vast segments of the population. Kim
was recalcitrant and resorted to the same old tactics of
threat, in hopes of getting more economic sessions from
China, Japan, Russia and South Korea - among others. But
it backfired.
Bush ends oil supplies after N
Korea's nuke confession US President George W
Bush ended US supplies of fuel oil to North Korea a few
months after Pyongyang "confessed" in October 2002 to a
nuclear program that could lead to fabrication of a
nuclear device. Japan, which saw a threat from North
Korean missiles, also stopped talking to the DPRK until
the nuclear problems and other Japanese interests -
North Korea's abduction of Japanese nationals - were
resolved. Recently Japan's Diet (parliament) has allowed
Tokyo to impose crushing economic sanctions on Pyongyang
if deemed necessary because of a security risk. No
sanctions have been imposed.
While Chinese
sources make clear the government's frustration with
Pyongyang, Chinese media and government documents make
no explicit mention of the need for North Korea to
reform. China, however, does praise any moves by
Pyongyang that would lead to opening up, such as
establishing diplomatic contacts with the European Union
and European nations in 2002. Beijing also views the
six-party nuclear talks as a way for North Korea to
emerge from isolation, especially if sanctions are
lifted and it receives security guarantees that the
United States will not launch an unprovoked attack.
China also opposes more crippling sanctions
imposed on an already crippled nation - the existing
economic and trade embargoes by the US and other
countries are already causing grievous hardship and
personal suffering in a tottering nation in which many
go hungry. In February 2002, for example, China vetoed a
United Nations Security Council resolution that would
have imposed more sanctions on Pyongyang because of its
violations of agreed nuclear safeguards required by the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
China
doesn't want want to push North Korea too hard because
it understands Pyongyang's predicament of political
isolation and economic desperation. Chinese experts on
North Korea know what the nation is going through - and
Pyongyang hasn't even made the fundamental decision yet
to undertake far-reaching economic and political
reforms.
China's secret diplomatic weapon -
economic education China has been offering the
DPRK a different kind of helping hand in an unobtrusive
and, it hopes, ultimately effective way - education that
will mold the thinking of young potential leaders about
the market economy and economic reforms. The focus is on
how it works, how it benefits nations and how the
benefits extend to the population as a whole, especially
as the nation interacts economically with the rest of
the world.
Chinese experts liken the North
Korean experience to China's own Great Cultural
Revolution period, 1966-76. During that period in China
and today in North Korea, the people were and are
insulated from the rest of the world and its ideas by a
dictator - Mao Zedong then, Kim Jong-il now. "When
people are living in their own world," one Chinese
expert explained, "everything around them is so dark
that they simply cannot see anything, they have no sense
of direction." In other words, the North Korean people
are virtually blindfolded and they can only feel their
immediate surroundings, without any sense of what lies
beyond, of context, history and possibilities. They know
they are a little bit cold, a little bit thirsty and
hungry. They don't know where their nation is headed,
neither do they understand where their nation stands in
the world's economic hierarchy, but this doesn't matter
very much to people who are hungry and struggling for a
livelihood.
However, once they witness a
beckoning light in the darkness - no matter how far away
that light might be - they will naturally head toward
the light. "Deng Xiaoping provided this light in China,"
said the Chinese analyst on North Korea, asking that he
not be identified by name. Until there is a similar
leadership light in the murk of North Korea, the expert
continued, it would be difficult to imagine any reform
or opening to the rest of the world in the foreseeable
future.
Nonetheless, the expert continued that
foreign experience - like the overseas experience of
early Chinese leaders such as Deng Xiaoping and Zhou
Enlai - is essential for North Korea's movement into the
sun. Older North Korean leaders, including Kim Jong-il,
have lived abroad and have absorbed an international
perspective - whether or not they choose to implement
it. The exposure to foreign countries, economies,
cultures and ideas gives leaders a sense of
possibilities and would help them sustain their nations,
keeping them from imploding from ideological overload
and lack of input - at least that's the idea.
Korean leaders sans international
experience are scary "The scary part is, what
would happen when these leaders are gone, replaced by a
younger generation of leaders without international
experience and perspective to help them run the nation?"
the same expert said.
In the case of China, Mao
and Zhou both died in 1976, at the official close of the
Cultural Revolution. They were survived, however, by
another group of the revolutionary comrades such as
Deng, who had studied abroad. As Deng consolidated his
power, he realized the US-Soviet split would be to
China's advantage, and that to counter-balance the
Soviet Union, the US needed China. To Deng, the United
States was an important factor in his thinking about
reform and opening the nation. North Korea, perhaps
because of its lack of international sophistication,
does not seem capable of grasping and exploiting
geostrategic possibilities at this time, such as Sino-US
rivalry in Asia and the role of Russia.
It was
beginning in 1979 that US and Japanese contacts,
assistance, business, and exchanges - including student
exchanges with China - increased dramatically. In the
case of North Korea, China realized that Pyongyang's
younger generation needed to be exposed to the outside
world, learning about international possibilities and
what they could not study at home. So, in addition to
quiet diplomatic conversations about reform, China is
also educating a younger generation of North Koreans -
in a small but significant way - in hopes that when they
are leaders, they will finally be able to see the light.
Since 2001 Pyongyang has dispatched a few
students, usually 10-15, to China, Vietnam, Thailand,
Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States
with support from the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP), the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN
Industry Development Organization (UNIDO), and others.
The objective: to learn and experience the economy of
the outside world. In 2001, 503 North Korean students
went abroad - a dramatic increase from 91 in 1998 and
109 in 1999.
China's government think-tanks have
offered new six-month economics programs to 20-30
students. The programs cover economics, finance,
accounting, real estate, management, and other topics -
"practically all the subjects needed to understand
market economy", according to one Chinese professor.
All courses are conducted in English, and the
North Korean students all have a strong command of the
language. Occasionally, a few students who do not speak
English, but who are fluent in another European
language, are included. All are described as fast
learners, quickly adapting to what China calls "Western
learning".
Chinese professors and experts,
remembering their own experiences abroad, have been
thoughtful mentors, not confronting their North Korean
students with politically sensitive issues. The teachers
recall their own sometimes uncomfortable experiences
studying abroad after almost four decades of isolation.
And the students sent by Pyongyang appear to be grateful
for their hosts' sensitivity.
"When teaching
them, there is a sense of mutual understanding, mutual
consensus not to engage ourselves in talk about
politically sensitive things," one professor said. He
added, however, "Toward the end of their course, we can
carefully share our thoughts and opinions with respect
to North Korea."
There's a Chinese saying that
might have implications for future bilateral ties
between Beijing and Pyongyang: "Tradition was once a
reality, and reality is the future of tradition." Both
have emphasized the importance of tradition. Perhaps
reflecting on the interplay and evolution between
tradition and reality will improve the understanding of
the core bilateral relationship. Realistic help provided
by China to the DPRK will allow the two nations to
continue to build their relationship with traditional
but evolving value.
Jaewoo Choo is a
former research fellow at the Trade Research Institute,
Korea International Trade Association, and currently
assistant professor at the School of International
Relations and Area Studies, Kyung Hee University, South
Korea.
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