For thousands of years the Chinese have thought of
themselves as inhabiting the very center of the civilized world.
Foreigners were barbarians. The Chinese were satisfied to live in
isolation from that inferior world, and only wanted the barbarians to leave
them alone. In order to keep peace in their neighborhood, Chinese emperors
would arrange tributary relations with neighboring states, who would
acknowledge their supremacy in return for their protection. To prevent
barbarian powers from ganging up on China, the Chinese would try to play off
one barbarian against another. In the nineteenth century, Chinese scholar Wei Yuan
referred to this long-standing balance-of-powers foreign policy as yiyizhiyi:
“using barbarians to control barbarians.”
China’s
‘barbarian’ neighbors
Today, China’s closest neighbors to the east are the two Koreas, neither
of which can be called a tributary state. The South Korean and Chinese
economies are mutually dependent. In 2014, 6.1 million Chinese traveled to
South Korea for shopping and entertainment, and 4 million Koreans chose China as
their favorite tourism destination. South Koreans admire the economic progress
Chinese have made and recognize their similar cultures, although they view
China warily, especially in regard to China’s territorial claims on the East
Sea. South Korean and Chinese leaders meet regularly.
North Korea, immediately bordering on China, has been a perennial
problem for the Chinese. The two countries share similar political systems,
although North Korea’s is dynastically inclined, and they were allies in the
Korean War. However, North Korea’s economy has become almost totally dependent
on China’s and the North Koreans are more suspicious than friendly toward the
Chinese. Since assuming power in 2011, North Korea’s leader has never had a
summit meeting with the Chinese leader. The Chinese are particularly upset that
the North Koreans keep provoking their neighbors, especially with weapons of
mass destruction, thus threatening the peace of the neighborhood.
For China, the only thing worse than having a trouble-making neighbor is
having an American neighbor. North Korea may be a nuisance to China, but the
United States is often seen as a threat. If North Korea collapses, unless China
intervenes (against South Korean objections) it will fall into the hands of
South Korea, an American ally. China entered the Korean War to keep Americans
away from their border, and today China tolerates North Korea for the same
reason.
Controlling
the barbarians
How is China to deal with North Korea’s provocations, especially its
nuclear provocations? China’s North Korea policy of verbal persuasion has not
succeeded in slowing Pyongyang’s buildup of weapons of mass destruction. Even
worse, after Pyongyang’s most recent nuclear and missile tests, South Korea has
decided to consider putting an American Thaad anti-missile battery on its soil,
a move that China considers to be a grave threat to its own security.
Rather than blaming North Korea for its provocations, China blames the
US for threatening North Korea; in other words, blaming one barbarian for the actions
of another. China’s proposed solution to the North Korea problem is for the US
and North Korea, along with South Korea, Japan, and even Russia, to peacefully
“negotiate” with North Korea.
Presumably, the idea would be that if the US agrees to sign a peace
treaty with North Korea, withdraw its military forces from the Korean
peninsula, and keep its nuclear weapons out of the Western Pacific (North
Korea’s demands), then North Korea would agree to at least curtail its nuclear
and missile programs. For China, an added benefit of such an agreement would be
that without a threatening North Korea, there would also be less need for a
US-South Korea-Japan military alliance, and less concern in Beijing about being
encircled by barbarians.
Moreover, China would presumably preside over negotiations at the
resumed Six Party Talks, thus gaining stature as a senior statesman who is
above all this neighborhood squabbling. With more attention focused on the
North Korea problem, less notice might be made of China’s moves into the East
China Sea.
So far, neither North Korea nor the US has been sufficiently motivated
to resume negotiations. The US is waiting for North Korea to make a substantial
commitment to end its nuclear weapons program, and North Korea insists that any
talks must be about mutual denuclearization. In the absence of movement
toward a solution, and with the international community angered by North
Korea’s latest moves, China has decided to put more pressure on North Korea by
voting for a fifth round of UN sanctions.
China’s
dilemma
These sanctions, severe as they may first appear, grant Beijing wide
discretion in how much pressure it wants to put on its neighbor. North Korea’s
front door to the world opens on the Chinese border. The US, South Korea, and
the rest of the international community will have to look to China for success
in reining in North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction. On this issue, China
is once again the center of the civilized world.
It is difficult to find anyone who believes that these latest sanctions
will persuade the North Korean regime to relinquish its nuclear weapons, or
even dissuade it from continuing to develop more weapons and long-range
missiles on which to place them. Until that regime is unseated, it will almost
certainly continue to pursue the “military-first” policy it adopted back in the
1960s under its founding Kim.
But if the third generation of the Kim family goes, North Korea may
quickly fall into chaos, inviting the kind of international intervention that
the Chinese fear. So how hard China should push its neighbor is a decision that
requires the most delicate judgment. Hardly surprising then that China wishes
the barbarians would solve this problem amongst themselves.
Dr. Kongdan Oh is a senior Asia specialist at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA).
Her most recent book is Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in
the Hermit Kingdom, second edition.
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