BEIJING - China is on the spot. Whenever North Korea creates a problem, Beijing
is implicated. That's the pattern. The latest incident of North Korea's
shelling of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong and the ensuing tension on
the Korean Peninsula is not an exception. The finger was quickly pointed at
China, which is widely seen as turning a blind eye to North Korean provocation.
On Sunday, during a meeting with a senior Chinese envoy sent by President Hu
Jintao, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak pressed China to take "a more
objective, responsible" stance in handling inter-Korean affairs and warned
further North Korean provocation would not be tolerated with the usual
restraint from the Seoul side - a message he reiterated on Monday as he vowed
retaliation over last week's "inhumane" attacks.
The US has also repeatedly complained that China, Pyongyang's
long-time enabler, is not doing enough to contain North Korean aggression.
Senator John McCain weighed in over the weekend, "China is not behaving as a
responsible world power," in an interview with CNN's State of the Union.
In the court of international public opinion, China is in the same basket as
North Korea, seen as propping up the Kim Jong-il regime as its major
ideological ally and economic benefactor. Whenever North Korea creates a
problem, it becomes China's responsibility. When North Korea is criticized,
China can expect the international community to hold China to account, calling
for it to act with a responsibly commensurate with its rising global status,
and to stop backing North Korean aggression.
This picture is too simplistic, according to Chinese scholars who say the
international media's angle on North Korea in general and the Yeonpyeong
incident in particular does not adequately reflect both sides of the story.
"This may sound advocating North Korea, but the incident should be seen in
context. It didn't happen out of the blue," said Jin Jingyi, a North Korea
expert at Peking University in Beijing.
To Jin, the overlooked context is the fact that since the conservative Lee
Myung-bak administration took power in 2008, inter-Korean relations have been
tiptoeing on ice, with frequent shootings across the land border and also along
the disputed sea border, culminating with the sinking of the Cheonan in
March in which 46 South Korean sailors died.
Since the Cheonan incident, joint South Korean-US military drills,
including near the disputed sea border, have provoked an angry reaction from
North Korea. The Yeonpyeong artillery shelling took place as South Korea was
carrying out drills in the region.
Shen Dingli, a security expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, was more direct
in laying the blame on Seoul. "South Korea provoked the Yeonpyeong conflict
first," he said. "The area where this incident happened is South Korean
territory from a 'South Korean perspective'. But it is a disputed area from the
'North Korean perspective'. North Korea warned South Korea to stop the drills,
but South Korea went ahead. And then the incident happened.
"It's South Korean provocation and North Korean over-reaction. South Korea's
artillery killed fish. North Korean artillery killed civilians. If China should
blame the party at fault, it should criticize both Koreas," Shen said.
The inter-Korean maritime border was drawn at the close of the Korean War in
1953 by United Nations forces, led by the US, which demarcated the sea waters
of inter-Korean territory around Yeonpyeong Island, 80 kilometers from the
South Korean port of Incheon but just 11 kilometers from the North Korean
mainland. North Korea has all along challenged the decision.
Shen argues for inter-Korean dialogue to agree on the sea border and set up
hotlines to prevent similar incidents to last week's shelling. "There is the
demilitarized zone [DMZ] on land between the two Koreas. There should be one in
the sea as well," Shen said.
He also argued that South Korea should refrain from engineering a "tripwire"
situation that is bound to lure the irascible North to react. "The Diaoyu
[Senkaku in Japanese] Island is a good example. It's a disputed territory
between China and Japan. Although it is under the effective control of Japan,
Japanese navy boats choose not to enter; they instead go around. When Chinese
fishing boats enter, the Japanese side arrests them and releases them. South
Korea needs to show this kind of self-restraint. It doesn't need to give North
Korea a chance for provocation, including not conducting a military drill near
the disputed sea border," Shen said.
Jin at Peking University agreed. "The two Koreas have been playing a ‘Who is
the uncle?' game so far. South Korea has clearly won the game, economically and
diplomatically. The winner should be able to show leniency toward the loser.
But President Lee Myung-bak has been tit-for-tatting with North Korea in almost
all aspects."
Chinese scholars have a South Korean audience as well. Cheong Seong-chang, a
senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, a think-tank in Seoul, who is currently
in Paris for a French government-sponsored lecture series on North Korea, said,
"The sea border issue is complex. But so far international discourse on the
matter has been in favor of the South Korean side. The US and South Korea are
unwilling to move the sea line. This unilateralism by Seoul and Washington
partly contributed to the Yeonpyeong incident in the big scheme of things,"
Cheong said.
Brian Myers, an American professor of international studies at Dongseo
University in the South Korean city of Busan, said that China was contributing
to the crisis with its vain hope of propping up North Korea indefinitely and by
fundamentally misreading the Pyongyang regime.
"What China doesn't understand is that North Korea is going to keep behaving
like this [acting aggressively],'' Myers said. ''North Korea is ideologically
programmed to continue to escalate tensions. It doesn't matter whether South
Korea or the US is taking a soft-line policy toward North Korea or a hardline
policy toward North Korea. Pyongyang constantly needs to score military
successes in order to keep public support at home."
Shen in Shanghai believes that China's problem lies in not adequately
explaining its stance to the international audience. "It has drawn some
misunderstanding from the international community, which is worried about the
'Rising China'. This time, China is also not explaining why it is not
criticizing North Korea. I think it should."
In a show of solidarity of the Seoul-Washington alliance, the US has decided to
include the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington in a
joint military drill in the West Sea that started on Sunday, the largest-ever
such exercise between the allies. North Korea has warned of a "dear price" for
the move. Its state television warned that North Korea would retaliate "not in
words, but in actions".
Experts have different views on the prospects of introducing the powerful navy
asset into the Yellow Sea. "It's a symbolic gesture. As long as the aircraft
carrier stays away from the disputed sea border, I don't' anticipate any clash.
Of course, China doesn't welcome the move, but understands that the US is
obligated to do so as an ally to South Korea," said Shen.
Jin differed. "Is it a necessary move? The goal is to cower North Korea and to
prevent future North Korean provocations. But there is no guarantee for that.
It rather escalates the regional tension."
Some see similarities between the tension on the Korean Peninsula and the
period in 1949 when frequent inter-border arms conflicts led to full-scale war
the following year.
"At that time, no country intervened to play the role of a mediator. The US has
the ability to mediate. But it doesn't. That leaves something to think about,"
said Jin. "The role of a responsible country is to have the two disputing sides
sit down and mediate, not escalate the tension."
The Sejong Institute's Cheong worries that the tension is likely to escalate,
while Myers also anticipates a conflict in the Korean Peninsula, yet urges
China to take the "right" side now as a responsible stakeholder in global
affairs.
"There is going to be a conflict [between North Korea] with South Korea and the
US, I would say, in the near future,'' said Myers. ''And North Korea is going
to lose and collapse. China is going to have a unified Korea on its border
anyway. China needs to realize the fact and needs to allow North Korea to
collapse sooner, rather than later. Because the later North Korea collapses the
greater the conflict is going to be, the greater the damage is going to be in
the entire region. So, China really needs to be turning off the aid to North
Korea."
Sunny Lee (sleethenational@gmail.com) is a Seoul-born columnist
and journalist; he has degrees from the US and China.
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