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North Korea, China firm up
alliance
By Jaewoo Choo
SEOUL
- On October 29, China launched another shuttle. This
time, it was to Pyongyang, not outer space. This time, a
much higher figure in Chinese political standing was
aboard. His name was Wu Bangguo, chairman of the
Standing Committee of the National People's Congress
(NPC) and No 2 man in China's political hierarchy.
From the world outside of the bilateral
relationship, foreign experts and pundits have tended to
share a similar view on the goal of Wu's mission: to
brief Pyongyang's leaders on the summit meetings
recently concluded in Bali (ASEAN+3 in September) and in
Bangkok (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in October),
as well as to secure a positive response from North
Korea on the second round of the six-party talks. The
shuttle was not a special envoy for the six-party talks,
however. It was a regular bilateral meeting between
Pyongyang and a top representative of the new Chinese
leadership led by President Hu Jintao that was
formalized in March. Thus, Wu's mission included much
more than mere persuasion of the North to participate in
the second round of the talks.
According to many
headlines in foreign newspapers after the conclusion of
Wu's meeting with Kim Jong-il on October 30, China once
again seemed to have succeeded in drawing an agreement
from North Korea to participate in the second six-party
talks. Neither Wu's statement nor that of Wang Yi, Vice
Minister of Foreign Affairs, who himself delivered an
assessment of the meeting between Wu and Kim, however,
said whether the acceptance entailed such prerequisites
as the guarantee of North Korea's security offered by US
President George W Bush prior to the meeting. In other
words, both men avoided comment on anything regarding
the US offer of written multilateral security assurance,
a consensus reached among the leaders of the six-party
talks while they were in Bangkok for the APEC summit.
From this perspective, the world and the participatory
member states of the six-party talks may keep their
hopes high on the prospects of the next round of the
talks after three months of stalemate.
However,
what we should not overlook is the true purpose of Wu's
visit to North Korea. There were many other agendas at
the meeting. This can be inferred from the composition
of Wu's delegation, and from the statement he made at
the conclusion of his meeting with Kim. The delegation
comprised no fewer than seven vice-ministerial officials
ranging from political and foreign affairs to economic
and defense ministers.
Wu himself said his visit
had two purposes, one being to return the courtesy of
the two visits Kim has made to China recently. The other
purpose can be found in Wu's expounding of former
president Jiang Zemin's famous 16-character guideline to
bilateral relations iterated during his last visit to
Pyongyang three years ago, that is, jicheng
chuantong, mianxian weilai, mulin youhao, and
jiaqiang hezuo (inheriting traditions, facing the
future, good-neighborliness, and strengthening
cooperation). Under the Chinese tradition of reiterating
a paramount leader's rhetoric or philosophy (if we are
allowed to describe Jiang as a paramount leader), Wu
thereby once again tried to confirm China's strategic
relations with Korea.
Unlike the old corporeal
metaphors such as "bloodshed brethren" or "lips to
teeth" as a consequence of their comrade experience from
the Korean War in the early 1950s, the relationship
North Korea and China have come to a consensus on sounds
rather realistic and to a certain extent subtle and
abstract, providing enough reason for some to be
skeptical about the closeness of their relationship.
However, what the skeptics tend to overlook is the fact
that the two nations have undergone an adjustment in
their strategic relationship. There is general agreement
among scholars and experts on Korean Peninsula affairs
that China was the first to make such an adjustment with
respect to its policy toward North Korea as well as to
the peninsula as a whole when it formally recognized
South Korea in 1992. However, the strategic adjustment
in fact came much earlier. Already in 1991, when the
world was in its first year of the post-Cold War era,
China and North Korea adopted substantial changes in
their policy regarding each other and South Korea.
There are a few benchmarks regarding such
changes. First was Chinese approval and North Korea's
acceptance of the joint membership of the North and
South in the United Nations in September 1991. The
second event was the signing of the Agreement on
Reconciliation, Non-Aggression and Exchanges and
Cooperation between the South and the North in December
1991 and the Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization
of the Korean Peninsula in January 1992. Did North Korea
act on its own? It is not clear. However, considering
how intimate the relationship between China and North
Korea was, and how much Pyongyang's decision entailed
strategic significance to itself as well as Beijing, it
is difficult to believe North Korea made the decision on
its own. This is particularly so if we consider how much
China's relationship with the United States at the time
had deteriorated over the Tiananmen incident in 1989.
China wholeheartedly supported these three
inter-Korean events, the first time it had done so in
40-some years. Not only, therefore, was this a prelude
to subsequent significant changes that Chinese policy
toward both Koreas would undergo, but it was also an
opportunity for China to gain much more room to maneuver
regarding its position on Korean Peninsula affairs.
Thus it is very misleading to describe China's
recent action in organizing the six-party talks as a
change in its policy toward North Korea. The change was
already made in the early 1990s. Rather, China is only
making a shift in its strategies and tactics in handling
peace and stability issues regarding the Korean
Peninsula.
It is because of this shift in
strategy and tactics that the world began to raise
questions about the possibility of China intervening
against any attack on North Korea, as stipulated in the
Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and
Mutual Assistance of 1961. It is on this point that Wu's
meeting with Kim was also significant. China will
support North Korea all the way to protect it from
externally imposed "regime change", guaranteeing its
national security with other means than military ones.
According to the second point of Wang's
statement on Wu's meeting with Kim, Wu gave another
briefing session to the leadership in Pyongyang about
the road China had traveled since the adoption of the
open-door policy and reform in 1978, and the basic
lessons it had obtained along the way. As a result of
this briefing, according to Wang, "both agreed to, while
developing political relations, vigorously promote
reciprocal cooperation in such fields as trade and
economy, encourage trade exchanges between enterprises
and explore new forms of cooperation. China would
continue to offer [North Korea] assistance within its
capacity, and support [its] good practice of
revitalizing its domestic economy and solving existing
problems."
Not since the early 1960s, when the
North had to rely very much on China for economic
assistance and aid, has there been such positive
reaction from North Korea on the economic directions and
guidelines provided by China. Not even since 1978, when
China began to pursue its reform and open-door policy,
has North Korea ever made its position on China's advice
known to the public. Kim Jong-il, like his late father
Kim Il-sung, has never gone beyond appraising China's
economic achievement in public. Thus it is clear that
regarding North Korea, China will retain its status as
"lips and teeth", but in a different context.
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.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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