MONTEREY, California - Hu Jintao, Chinese
president and Communist Party general secretary,
will visit North Korea for a three-day visit
starting on Friday, his first official visit since
assuming office in 2002 and more than four years
since Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, made his call
on the Hermit Kingdom.
Hu's visit comes at
a critical juncture as the fifth round of the
ongoing six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear
program is due to take place in early November.
Pyongyang has indicated that it will participate,
but negotiations over the implementation of the
September 19 joint statement, issued at the
conclusion of the fourth round of talks in
Beijing, are bound to be contentious.
In
the September 19 agreement by the six
participating countries (the United States, North
Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia) North
Korea committed to end efforts to produce nuclear
weapons, give up its "existing
nuclear weapons", rejoin "at an early date" the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and resubmit to
International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards,
including readmission of international inspectors
to its nuclear facilities.
The US affirmed
explicitly that it has no intention to attack or
invade North Korea with either nuclear or
conventional weapons and had no nuclear weapons
deployed in Korea. South Korea also affirmed the
absence of nuclear weapons on its territory and
recommitted itself to the 1992 joint declaration
on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
The North Korean nuclear crisis has become
a serious problem that tests China's patience and
diplomacy. Beijing has been playing an
increasingly active role since Pyongyang's
self-proclaimed nuclear weapons state status in
February. With a combination of shuttle diplomacy,
subtle pressure and occasional enticement of
rewards, Beijing was finally able to get the joint
statement in September. But the problem is far
from resolved.
Indeed, despite the
last-minute "breakthrough" in the September talks,
Pyongyang has since demanded that it be provided
with a light-water nuclear reactor simultaneously
- not after - as it begins its nuclear
dismantlement. The US, for understandable reasons,
argues otherwise.
Hu is expected to
reiterate China's stand on the nuclear issue -
that Beijing prefers a denuclearized peninsula and
that Pyongyang should follow through with its
September pledges. For this purpose, China could
dangle potential rewards, as well as exert
pressure on Kim Jong-il, but it will tread a
delicate diplomatic line. (South Korea has already
offered the North electricity as a reward for its
cooperation.)
That Beijing wants to see
continued progress rather than any serious setback
in the six-party talks is largely driven by its
concern over the potential impact of a nuclear
crisis on regional stability, in particular the
specter of nuclear chain reactions in East Asia.
China also has great stakes in maintaining its
projected image of great-power status and
displaying good offices in tackling an important
regional issue.
While the nuclear issue
will be on top of the Hu-Kim agenda, the Chinese
leader's visit will also reaffirm the special bond
between the two socialist countries, if only in
rhetorical terms. However, while the Hu visit may
carry much symbolic significance, the
Beijing-Pyongyang relationship is no longer a
lip-and-teeth friendship sealed in blood. China
and North Korea have different agendas and their
policy priorities also differ.
For
Pyongyang, Beijing is one of the few capitals that
it can turn to for assistance, and as a window
through which it can reach out to the outside
world. China has recently helped build the Da'an
Friendship Glass Factory for North Korea, and
remains one of the largest providers of food and
energy supplies.
For Beijing, the
stability of the Kim regime and its ability to
introduce modest changes to the reclusive society
serves Chinese strategic interests. Economic
disasters and regime collapse would deprive China
of a buffer along its northern boundary against a
more proactive and much-changed US-Japan security
alliance and the American military presence in
South Korea.
But Beijing does not want to
pay any price to prop up North Korea's regime. Hu
is expected to encourage Kim to adopt policies of
economic reform and opening up to its southern
brothers. Improvement in economic performance
would be critical to the stability of the regime,
an important consideration in Beijing's regional
strategic planning. On this issue, China has much
to offer, in its experience, but not in hand-outs.
Whether Pyongyang will take the advice is entirely
a different matter.
Beijing faces a
dilemma of some sort in balancing its various -
and at times competing - policy goals and
priorities: its interests in a denuclearized
peninsula, if for no other reasons than to prevent
a potential nuclear domino in Northeast Asia, with
Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan going the
nuclear path; its concerns over a potential North
Korean collapse and resulting massive refugee
flight to China; and its short-term goals of
maintaining stability in the region and promoting
gradual reform in North Korea and a smoother
process of Korean unification that does not
threaten China's vital security interests,
including the prevention of an extension of the US
military presence to the entire peninsula.
This is no small feat for China's newly
minted leader. Hu's visit should demonstrate that
he is up to the task of managing this increasingly
complex relationship and capable of advancing
Chinese security interests in the region.
Dr Jing-dong Yuan is director of
research of the East Asia Non-Proliferation
Program at the Center for Non-Proliferation,
Monterey Institute of International Studies, where
he is also an associate professor of international
policy studies.
(Copyright 2005 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing
.)
