China puppet-play a plus for
Koreas By Andrei Lankov
It will take decades before the relevant
papers will become de-classified, but it seems
likely that at some point in 2002 or 2003 the
Chinese leadership had an important discussion of
the North Korean situation. We can even surmise
which decisions were made on that discussion or
soon afterwards, even though the exact wording
will be known, perhaps, only to our grandchildren.
It seems that around 2002 Chinese diplomats and
politicians concluded that the collapse of the
North Korean state would not serve China’s
interests and thus should be prevented or
controlled.
Indeed, from around 2002
Chinese investment in the North, as well as
Chinese trade with that small and secluded state,
began to grow with remarkable speed. In recent
years, China has
become the largest trade
partner of North Korea, controlling about a half
of its entire trade volume.
While small
Chinese merchants, obviously driven by their own
initiative, sell consumption goods to the North
Korean market operators, big Chinese companies,
probably backed by the government, are busily
establishing control over the mining industry and
making inroads into infrastructure developments.
The countr's largest iron ore mine, in
Musan, as well as its largest copper mine, in
Hyesan, are operated by joint ventures controlled
by Chinese capital. Talks about rights to use
Korean sea ports are advancing as well, albeit not
without delays. And, last but not least, Chinese
publications stress that the ancient kingdom of
Koryo which in the early centuries of the
Christian era controlled what is now North Korea
(as well as large parts of the present day
northeast China) was, essentially, an "ancient
Chinese minority state" - implying that the Korean
north has long been an area where China played a
special role.
In early January, the
US-based Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) published a report on relations
between North Korea and China. According to this
report, unnamed "Chinese experts" admitted that if
the demise of Kim Jong Il and/or his regime leads
to social disruption and chaos, the Chinese will
try to obtain the UN peace-keeping mandate to
restore order in the northern part of the Korean
peninsula. The present author was not much
surprised by this publication: for the past two or
three years during frank conversations with
Chinese colleagues, he has heard very similar
remarks.
Indeed, if Kim Jong Il dies
suddenly, or without an heir, or with an unpopular
and weak heir, the situation could easily
disintegrate into danger and havoc. Nobody wants
that, of course, and the Chinese might move in
with or without UN approval. They will probably
secure the situation, but the likely outcome will
be the emergence of a pro-Chinese government in
Pyongyang.
The Chinese might even
undertake a pre-emptive operation, without waiting
for disaster to strike. The North Korean elite is
deadly afraid of unification with the South,
assuming that after such a unification they will
be held responsible for their old deeds, purged
and perhaps even killed (this is unlikely to
happen, but being in the habit of killing their
own opponents, these people have some trouble in
realizing that political defeat does not
necessarily lead to a slaughter).
A
pro-Chinese government would keep Kim's officials
in place - alive and well they would enjoy an
increasingly affluent lifestyle. So, joining hands
with the Chinese against the supposed brethren in
the South seems to be a logical decision - at
least if things get seriously unstable. This makes
a pro-Chinese coup in Pyongyang a distinct
possibility.
The simmering specter of
Chinese occupation is widely discussed in Seoul
nowadays. It is seen as an ultimate disaster by
nationalists, who believe that such a turn of
events will make the division of Korea permanent.
Such a probability exists, to be sure.
However, one should remember that no formal
occupation of North Korea is likely to happen.
Times have changed, it is not 1910 anymore, and
since 1945 not a single internationally recognized
state has been forcefully absorbed into another
(Saddam attempted this in Kuwait, and paid dearly
for it). References to Tibet are not relevant:
when in 1951 the Chinese took it over, the Dalai
Lama's state was not recognized internationally.
If the Chinese decide to take over the North, they
will have to resort to indirect control, similar
to what the Soviets did in East Europe in the
1960s and 1970s.
These days everybody who
thinks about the fate of North Korean has to
consider the Chinese takeover as a possibility to
be taken seriously. In most cases it is seen as a
disaster, but is it really that bad?
One
should not welcome such a turn of events, of
course. However, Chinese intervention, while not
being the best available solution, might still
open ways for hope - at least in comparison with
the present-day gloomy and explosive situation. To
start with, the world probably will be unable
and/or willing to do much anyway. If a pro-Chinese
coup is staged in Pyongyang, the world will face a
fait accompli, so all protests will be useless
(and easily deniable).
If a chaos erupts
in North Korea, the outside world might indeed
welcome (and even actively encourage) Chinese
involvement. North Korea probably has five to 10
crude nuclear devices, plus a large stockpile of
weapons-grade plutonium and a substantial amount
of chemical weapons. Internal chaos might produce
a refugee crisis on a scale East Asia has not seen
since the 1940s. Both are good reasons why
dangerous chaos would have be stopped, by force if
necessary, but neither US nor South Korea seem
well-prepared for this task.
Americans
might worry about proliferation threats and feel
sorry about sufferings of North Koreans. Yet they
are not very likely to dispatch troops to a
chaotic and violent country whose population has
been taught for three generations that Americans
are evil incarnate, natural born torturers and
killers, to be resisted at all costs. Chaos in
North Korea, if it happens, cannot be stopped by
the use of hi-tech weapons, and Americans are not
eager to mire themselves in local intrigues,
fights and hatreds. This is not what they like nor
what they know how to handle well.
South
Koreans are not necessarily different.
State-sponsored nationalism is an important
feature of the South Korean ideological landscape
and lip service to unification as the nation’s
supreme goal is made by all political forces in
Seoul. However, South Koreans have demonstrated
throughout the last decade that they are not too
eager to risk their hard-won affluence for the
sake of unification. South Korea is a democracy,
and parents will not be too happy to send their
only sons to the dangerous North, to get involved
in necessarily dirty and immoral work there - and
probably get killed in the process.
So, if
everything else fails, the Chinese move across the
Yalu will be tacitly (or openly) welcomed. Beijing
is not overwhelmed with worries about excessive
losses, has good local knowledge and intelligence
and, like any authoritarian government, does not
care too much about losses of the opposite force.
So, it can do this work with brutal efficiency.
And then what? It would be naive to expect
China just to leave after it sorts out the
problems in its neighbor. It is probable it will
maintain a presence for long time while supporting
a friendly (or, better to say, semi-puppet)
government. Such a government will not continue
with the old policies of the Kim family's regime,
since these are remarkably inefficient and China,
while willing to provide some aid, will not pump
large amounts of aid into the North indefinitely.
The new dependency will have to be made
self-sustainable, and the only way to do this is
to encourage reforms in accordance with the tested
Chinese-Vietnamese model.
However, for a
cold-minded (or cynical, if you prefer) observer
it means that the Chinese and their puppets will
assume a heavy responsibility. Post-communist
reforms are always difficult and dirty to bring
about. They solve many old problems - and create a
lot of new ones. That is why the South now sees a
German-style instant unification as a nightmare:
it would mean that Seoul assume the total
responsibility for transforming the North, and
everybody understands that this will be a costly
and unthankful task.
The economic gap
between North and South is so large that it cannot
be bridged in less than two or three decades, and
its existence alone is bound to produce mutual
resentment and tensions. The transformation means
that nearly all adult North Koreans will find
themselves at the bottom of the new social ladder
and remain there for the rest of their lives, even
though their absolute living standards will
improve considerably.
The resulting
discontent will be strong and lasting, as
experience of former Soviet states testifies. The
hagiographic biographies of Generalissimo Stalin
constitute a large part of the best-sellers in the
Russian book market these days. Most people who
admire these stories and feel nostalgic about the
grandeur of the Soviet era actually live
remarkably better-off lives than they had under
the communist regime, and far better then their
grandparents, the subjects of Stalin, could even
dream about living.
Nonetheless, they take
the current material benefits (and right to read
uncensored books) for granted while feeling sorry
about the loss of established order, collapse of
their beliefs and deep wounds inflicted on
Russia’s national pride. It is not incidental that
in the past decade the word "democracy" has become
a popular term of abuse in Russian parlance: it is
associated with real or perceived national
humiliation, social disruption, corruption and
instability.
There are few doubts that
reforms in a Chinese-controlled North Korea will
produce a fast and remarkable improvement in the
living standards - much as has happened in Vietnam
and China itself. However, if those reforms are
undertaken without unification with the South, the
North Koreans will not compare their state and
their consumption level with those of rich South,
but rather with their own sorry past, and as a
result they will have less psychological reason
for discontent.
As an added benefit, the
discontent when it arises will be channeled not
against a democratically elected national
government but against a regime that will be
clearly a dictatorship, forcefully imposed by a
foreign power, and largely consisting of Kim Jong
Il’s ex-officials - that is, people responsible
for earlier abuses and economic disasters. These
opportunistic puppets will make convenient
scapegoats, and this will mean that ideas of
liberal democracy will not become seriously
discredited. Meanwhile, the South will be seen as
a land of prosperity, beacon of democracy and a
truly national polity.
Beside, under such
a regime there will be many more opportunities for
starting a genuine pro-democracy movement inside
North Korea. China might be an authoritarian
state, but it is far cry from present-day North
Korea, arguably still the least free society on
the face of Earth.
A measure of political
liberalization is unavoidable if one wants to
reform a Stalinist system: a functioning market
economy cannot exist in a society where for a trip
outside the country one has first to apply for
police permission and then wait for days (or even
weeks) until such permission is issued, as is
still technically the case in North Korea.
Greater freedoms means that dissenters
will be at least able to gather information,
publish or read some hitherto undergound material,
or even stage occasional strikes and pickets -
like the situation in the USSR and East Europe in
the Brezhnev era of the 1970s. Nowadays in North
Korea every potential dissenter just goes to
prison, sometimes accompanied by his or her entire
family, well before he or she undertakes any kind
of meaningful action. Chinese dissenters gather
press conferences in their kitchens - North
Koreans disappear without trace.
Therefore, the emergence of a pro-Chinese
regime will bring not only much better life for
the masses but create greater freedom and more
opportunities for pro-democracy activities. In the
long run, such activities are likely to lead to
the regime’s collapse and democratic revolution.
Similar things happened in East Europe
where the pro-Soviet puppet governments, being
quite soft and permissive by the earlier Stalinist
standards, were eventually overthrown by the local
opposition when the changes in the USSR made open
intervention in its neighbors unlikely. This is
not impossible in the North Korea we now talk
about. We might even feel a bit sorry for the
regime that will have to do all the dirty work of
reforms while getting rather bad publicity, but
perhaps we should not worry too much: the Chinese
will help themselves to the natural resources,
while their North Korean collaborators enrich
themselves remarkably as well. The author does
not want to be misunderstood: the above-mentioned
Chinese scenario is definitely not the best
possible. The author still believes that a full
unification with the South, perhaps managed
through some kind of provisional confederation,
would be the best solution: even though it will
bring a lot of suffering and contradiction in the
short term, in the long term it will mean that all
problems will be solved faster and with greater
efficiency.
However, to reach such a
unification a lot of determination and political
will is needed from the South, and none is present
so far. The policy of the South Korean government
over the past 10 years has been deliberately aimed
at postponing unification, seen as a source of
great troubles, and it remains to be seen whether
South Korea will be able and willing to assume
responsibilities and risks in case of a major
crisis. If this happens, South Korea should be
supported, since the speedy solution of the North
Korean problem is in everybody’s interest.
However, if the South evades that
responsibility, Chinese involvement is not the
worst option. A civil war in a nuclear state is
far worse, and the indefinite continuation of the
current impoverished lives of the North Koreans is
hardly better.
Andrei Lankov is
an associate professor in Kookmin University,
Seoul, and adjunct research fellow at the Research
School of Pacifica and Asian Studies, Australian
National University. He graduated from Leningrad
State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history
and China, with emphasis on Korea. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North
Asia.
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