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China's worsening North Korean
headache
By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - The problem of China's intractable
neighbor North Korea developing nuclear weapons
could grow even worse for Beijing if the United
States seeks United Nations Security Council
sanctions against Pyongyang. Then what will China
do? How will it vote? Will its problem with its
old Korean ally become a Sino-US problem - or even
crisis?
A Chinese diplomat close to the
talks, speaking on condition of anonymity, showed
this correspondent four four-character Chinese
idioms commonly used in North Asia and
specifically used these days to describe North
Korea's duplicity, especially with China. An
example: Speaking pleasing words but ready to stab
you in the back.
On Friday, Reuters quoted
diplomatic sources as saying China has proposed
working-level talks to prepare for a fourth round
of six-party talks. Three rounds have been held
since August 2003. A fourth round had been
scheduled for last September, but North Korea
refused to attend, saying it would wait and see
how US policy developed.
With US President
George W Bush extolling freedom and tough,
military-backed diplomacy in his second inaugural
speech in Washington, China is falling further
into a Catch-22 situation over the North Korean
nuclear standoff. Beijing, host of the six-party
talks, is faced with the problem of how to keep
the negotiations from collapsing; it is lobbying
Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table soon,
and to respond to pressures from and requests by
other parties, especially the United States, to
denuclearize the Korean Peninsula for regional
stability.
Chinese intellectuals suggest
that North Korea is increasingly becoming a
downright troublesome ally for China in its
strategic and political relations. The more
Pyongyang delays nuclear talks, the more Beijing
loses face in the eyes of the international
community as host nation, especially when China
strives to promote proactive diplomacy in Asia and
elsewhere as a rising economic and political
power. The six parties are North and South Korea,
China, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The true test of China's status as a
responsible great power in international politics
would surely come, possibly in the second half of
this year, if and when the North Korean nuclear
issue were finally taken to the Security Council,
after Pyongyang's stubborn refusal to dismantle
its estimated six to eight nuclear weapons and its
nuclear-development program. Should the Security
Council vote to impose economic sanctions upon
North Korea, what stance would Beijing take? Would
China abandon its longtime ally by at least not
voting against economic sanctions? Or would China
veto sanction efforts in order to protect the
Hermit Kingdom? Or would it just abstain at the
last minute?
US seeks regime
change
Now it is becoming clear that the
evangelical Christian soldiers of the Bush
administration are marching onward to a
regime-change strategy against Pyongyang. Bush
said in his inaugural address, "It is the policy
of the United States to seek and support the
growth of democratic movements and institutions in
every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal
of ending tyranny in our world ... We will defend
ourselves and our friends by force of arms when
necessary." The US North Korean Human Rights Act
of 2004 is another example of this regime-change
strategy, as is the recent testimony by new
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Rice
said in her Senate confirmation hearings last week
that the US "stands with the oppressed people on
every continent" and identified six "outposts of
tyranny": North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar, Iran,
Belarus and Zimbabwe (to understand Rice's
political views, see Campaign 2000: Promoting the
National Interest, published by the
independent Council on Foreign Relations).
The appointment of Georgetown University
Associate Professor Victor D Cha, a fast-rising
star scholar on Korean Peninsula issues, to the
post of director for Asian affairs at the National
Security Council of the White House also reflects
the Bush administration's strong commitment to a
regime-change strategy. Cha, a second-generation
Korean-American, is among experts who believe
Pyongyang will not give up its nuclear deterrent
because once it does, the regime will be weakened,
or even come apart - it will be vulnerable without
the big nuclear card (for Cha's views on the
Korean nuclear issue, click here).
The
US delegation that recently visited Pyongyang, led
by Representative Tom Lantos, a California
Democrat, appeared to be just gesture politics.
The Bush administration and US officials
apparently never have been open to genuinely
negotiating with North Korea. Pyongyang is simply
unacceptable as a negotiating partner. Bush's
comments that he "loathes" North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il and calling him a "pygmy" do not bode well
for statesmanlike negotiations, or any
negotiations.
From the very beginning,
some Asian experts say, Washington has not
seriously wanted to make the six-party talks a
success. Instead, Washington just seems to have
been attempting to use the talks to consolidate
political support from the other four parties for
its own ends in the near future. In particular, by
engaging and spurring China into the talks, the US
appears to have been straining to isolate Beijing
from its longtime ally North Korea for possible
future economic sanctions against Pyongyang; major
economic sanctions over time might lead to a
regime change in the Hermit Kingdom, while causing
enormous human suffering. Washington's moves
appear to reflect the Bush administration's
evil-state strangulation strategy based on the
hardline Bush doctrine of neo-conservative
fundamentalism.
Troublesome old
ally
"For China, North Korea is becoming
troublesome," a Chinese diplomat who has engaged
in the past six-party talks told Asia Times Online
recently, speaking on condition of anonymity.
To explain Beijing's current relations
with Pyongyang, the diplomat showed this
correspondent several Yonjijukugo or
four-Chinese-character idioms that are commonly
used in Northeast Asia, such as in China and
Japan. These idioms revealed how much Beijing
distrusts Pyongyang and views it as a
troublemaker:
Mian cong fu bei, literally
meaning "One obeys someone on the surface, but not
from one's heart." Pyongyang has just been
listening superficially to Beijing's advice,
namely that economic reforms must come first ahead
of military-first politics and that the US has no
intention of attacking North Korea for the
foreseeable future. Beijing emphasizes this - the
US doesn't intend to attack - to soothe North
Korea's security anxieties. But although Pyongyang
does not seem to have taken the advice to heart,
it has still received rewards from Beijing in food
and energy supplies.
Kou mi fu jian, meaning one says
pleasant words to you, but actually is wicked and
dishonest enough to knife you in the back.
Pyongyang speaks the words Beijing wants to hear
in order to get food and oil aid, but Beijing
thinks Pyongyang is actually sly and not
straightforward.
Liang mian san dao, literally
meaning one sword usually has two edges, but some
swords have three edges. This suggests Beijing
believes Pyongyang is tricky and dishonest enough
to hide something - a third sword edge.
Chun wang chi han literally
means that without your lips, your teeth will
become cold. This means if North Korea has
troubles, China also suffers from them. The
diplomat interviewed pointed out China's
geographical and geopolitical closeness to North
Korea, particularity referring to recent mass
movements of refugees from North Korea - more than
460 last July. Many are so desperate to leave the
worker's paradise that they even climb the walls
of various embassies and schools in Beijing and
elsewhere in China, to Beijing's great
embarrassment.
Old iron-clad reliance
melting rapidly
In the past, North Korea
and China were often called "as close as lips to
teeth", and North Korea was seen as China's little
brother. This is because during the Cold War,
North Korea had been seen as China's first line of
defense and strategic buffer zone vis-a-vis the
camp of capitalism, led by the US. In other words,
China had held North Korea, like a sword, to the
throat of the free world. About a million Chinese
are said to have been killed, wounded or missing
during the 1950-53 Korean War. During the war,
Beijing even risked the danger that it could be
the target of a US atomic attack on northern
China. Mao Zedong himself even lost his eldest son
in the war.
But the biggest change in the
post-Korean War history of Sino-Korean relations
came in 1992 when the Chinese government, after a
decade of increasing contact with South Korea,
decided to change its de facto policy of two
Koreas to a de jure policy by normalizing
relations with Seoul, as Columbia University
Professor Samuel S Kim points out in his article
in the book, The Making of China's Korea
Policy in the Era of Reform. China is South
Korea's largest trading partner, while South Korea
is China's third-largest trading partner after
Japan and the United States. Most recently,
China's trade volume with South Korea shot up more
than 50% in the first half of 2004 compared with
the previous year, propelled by significant
two-way trade in computer components and
electrical machinery. For China, this all leads to
the growing geopolitical importance of South
Korea, reducing its strategic and geopolitical
interests in North Korea
Besides its diplomats, Chinese
academicians also express their fear that China
could face a terrible predicament unless North
Korea actually does give up its nuclear programs
and weapons. Most recently, Zhang Liangui, a
professor at the central Party School of the
Chinese Communist Party and a well-known
commentator on Korean Peninsula issues, forcefully
argued in a recent World Affairs magazine that
if the current North Korean nuclear stalemate is
not settled by July, the issue could be brought to
the UN Security Council by October. Then, Zhang
said, within the following month the council could
decide to impose economic sanctions against North
Korea, including a naval blockade by UN-authorized
coalition forces.
As one of the five permanent
Security Council members with veto power (along
with the United Kingdom, France, Russia and the
United States), China would have to make three
crucial decisions:
Whether to vote for or against taking this
issue to the UN Security Council.
Whether to veto economic sanctions against
North Korea, it still Beijing's security ally.
How to respond to economic-sanction activities
if those sanctions are imposed. Moreover, Zhang
said, if China opposed such sanctions, Beijing
would be isolated from and criticized by the
international community, and then the North
Korea-US problem could turn into a Sino-US
problem.
North Korea's continuing nuclear
crisis, coupled with the 1993 firing of a Nodong
missile and the 1998 firing of a Daepodong
missile, as well as spy-ship incidents, has
disturbed the regional waters, prompting changes
in Japan's traditional pacifist military posture.
The US and Japan are accelerating joint research
on a theater missile defense (TMD) plan. Japan
also decided to introduce a multi-tiered and
layered ballistic missile defense (BMD) system in
December 2003 - to Beijing's great annoyance.
China cannot righteously accuse Japan of modifying
its self-defense posture if Tokyo cites North
Korea's very real threat as a major reason,
although the new Japan-US systems could target
China's missiles as well.
The six-party
talks will likely remain stalled unless either the
US or North Korea makes major concessions (this is
highly unlikely), or unless North Korea takes
provocative actions, such as secret sales of its
nuclear weapons and materials, or carries out a
nuclear test or tests missiles capable of carrying
nuclear warheads.
Will China become the
victim of North Korea's nuclear blackmail,
indirectly fueled by a tougher stance by the Bush
administration? US-China-North Korea trilateral
relations are giving off a lot of heat in the
unsettled state of affairs of Northeast Asia these
days.
Kosuke Takahashi is a
former staff writer at the Asahi Shimbun and is
currently a freelance correspondent based in
Tokyo. He can be contacted at kosuke_everonward@ybb.ne.jp.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.)
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