What North Korea means for relations
between America and China
WHENEVER North Korea causes trouble, politicians in America
and elsewhere point fingers at its only ally, China. So on April 7th, amid a daily
torrent from Pyongyang of threats of war and nuclear annihilation, John McCain,
a Republican senator, told an American television programme that Chinese
behaviour was “very disappointing”. Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat,
agreed, saying it was about time the Chinese “stepped up to the plate and put a
little pressure on this North Korean regime.” Yet there is another school of
thought: that China, exasperated with North Korea’s lunatic provocations, is a
calming influence and is tacitly co-operating with America on easing tensions.
Certainly, China looks as if it is applying pressure. It
seems to hold the North’s jejune despot, Kim Jong Un, in even lower esteem than
it did his predecessor and father, Kim Jong Il. It signed up to UN Security
Council resolutions tightening sanctions on North Korea both in January, to
punish it for a rocket launch in December, and in February, after its third
test of a nuclear device. And, as North Korea in March declared the armistice
that ended the Korean war in 1953 nullified, China—also a signatory—reaffirmed
its own commitment to the armistice.
Some close to the American administration do detect a change
in China’s attitude. Kurt Campbell, who until February was the assistant
secretary of state for East Asia, said this month that the Chinese government
had realised it had to be much clearer with North Korea that what it is doing
is “undermining China’s security”, and that it was asking: “If this is a buffer
state, what’s it good for?” Moreover, China, which normally bristles at
manifestations of America’s “pivot” of its military might to Asia, has been
remarkably low-key in its reaction as America has moved warships, missile
defences and planes, including nuclear-capable bombers, to the region in
response to mounting tensions. Yet installing missile defences on Guam, for
example, also has an impact on the effectiveness of China’s own nuclear
deterrent.
Zhu Feng, a scholar at Peking University, has argued that
North Korea offers “a new platform for China and the United States to get
closer”. The notion of North Korea as a cockpit of Sino-American co-operation
seems rather far-fetched. But a succession of senior Americans is about to
visit Beijing. John Kerry, the secretary of state, arrives on April 12th. A
week later he will be followed by General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint
chiefs of staff, on a mission to improve communication between American and
Chinese armed forces. And next month Thomas Donilon, Barack Obama’s national
security adviser, is to visit. North Korea does seem one issue over which they
might find common ground with their hosts.
Both America and China accept that sooner or later they will
have to engage the North Korean regime in some sort of dialogue. So both have
an interest in talking North Korea down from the suicidal ledge on which its
blood-curdling propaganda has stranded it. North Korea may have to be allowed
to declare victory. This looks easy. Since, to its own people, it is a heroic
nation threatened by imminent American nuclear onslaught, it can win merely by
not being attacked. But North Korea has already spurned one chance to celebrate
a triumph, after America on April 6th announced that, in deference to North
Korean paranoia, it was postponing a routine missile test in California.
Instead, North Korea stepped up its warlike rants. America and China both hope
it will exhaust itself, perhaps with a final eruption, such as another banned
test, to mark the 101st birthday of the dead but “eternal” president, grandpa
Kim Il Sung, on April 15th.
Certainly, America and China seem closer over North Korea
than over the other two disputes most threatening East Asian stability. In China’s
stand-off with Japan over the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, America officially
takes no position on sovereignty over the uninhabited specks. But it sees them
as under Japanese administration and hence covered by its security treaty with
Japan. China resents this, arguing it encourages Japanese intransigence.
Similarly, it blames America for stirring up trouble in the South China Sea by
emboldening the Philippines and Vietnam to press territorial claims that
conflict with China’s. Here China shows no hint of flexibility. It has just
announced that it is to open the Paracel islands, from which it expelled
Vietnam in 1974, to tourists. Last month its navy sent a patrol to the
southernmost tip of the vast area claimed in the South China Sea where Brunei
and Malaysia also have claims.
A juvenile delinquent, but he’s our juvenile delinquent
In fact, on North Korea, too, China is offering few signs of
a fundamental shift in its stance. Short-term interests converge. Neither
America nor China wants a war. Both seem to regard Kim Jong Un as an unhinged
teenager who needs to be back on his meds. But in the long run, America worries
more about a nuclear-armed North Korea. China worries about the country’s
collapse. An article this month in Global Times, a Communist Party
newspaper, by Zhu Zhangping, an “independent observer”, noted the danger North
Korea’s nuclear tests—just over 100km (60 miles) from the Chinese border—pose
to China’s water supply and the safety of its food. But, he argued, “North
Korea still acts as a buffer.” Were it to collapse, American troops would be at
China’s frontiers, and hordes of refugees might flood across the border. China
has to “ensure the Kim regime’s survival.”
China’s leaders seem to agree. After Deng Yuwen, a deputy
editor of a Communist Party journal, took to the pages of the Financial
Times, part-owner of The Economist, to argue that “Beijing should
give up on Pyongyang”, he was suspended from his job. Those American senators
have a point: the power supply that keeps North Korea’s life-support machine
ticking is the fuel, food, trade, aid and diplomatic protection that China
provides. And China’s leaders do not want to pull the plug.
By Banyan for The Economist
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