In this context, it is worth paying attention to the fervent congratulations made by Xi Jinping to Kim Jong-un in connection with his accession to the position of the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). According to the Chinese President, China is ready to promote the traditionally friendly and cooperative bilateral relations, striving for the development of the general welfare among the people of China and the DPRK.
We should mention here the fact that there is a demonstrative deportation of South Korean activists from organizations to assist North Korean refugees operating near the China-North Korea border. Based on the information provided by the South Korean mass media, such organizations have been operating in China from between several months and several years. They assisted the refugees, providing them with physical protection and financial support, as well as the opportunity to move to the South.
South Koreans believe that in response to such actions, the PRC pushed the corresponding request from Pyongyang or Beijing’s desire to stop the wave of group escapes in the South Korea of employees of the North Korean restaurants in China. However, until a certain time, requests from the DPRK have been postponed indefinitely, and the ‘wave of escapes’ was in fact only 2-3 very sophisticated cases (we have already dealt with the most notable story about the 12 waitresses). It is more likely that the patience of local state security has been exhausted. Up to a certain time, they were trying to resolve these issues privately, but the way South Korean organizations behave in China, especially Protestant sects, could be the subject of a separate article. Some of them are openly engaged in trafficking people under the guise of refugee assistance, selling North Korean women to Chinese or South-East Asian brothels. Others are actively engaged in illegal missionary activity and brainwashing of Chinese Koreans to believe their homeland is the ROK, and not the PRC.
Many experts expect that “South Korea will be punished for THAAD”, which punishment will most likely manifest itself in support of the North. As the Director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the South Korea’s Aju University, Kim Heung-Kyu, stated in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, “everything is going in the direction that will make it difficult for us to discuss with Beijing any matters related to the Korean Peninsula”.
I will not be surprised should, at some stage of the fight against THAAD, Chinese leadership target their medium-range missiles to the areas of THAAD deployment, hinting at a preemptive strike. It will be a no lesser pressure than the North Korean artillery aimed at Seoul, although it is likely that Beijing will do so within the framework of its bargaining strategy to bring it all to the “zero option.”
In case of disregarding the current moment, then the question of what to do with the North is being discussed very widely, especially at private meetings of analysts. This is due to two factors. Firstly, compared to Russia, the level of PRC involvement in the matter is significantly higher. China has a wider land border and a larger volume of connections. The crisis on the Korean Peninsula will hit Chinese interests more than Russian.
Secondly, it becomes clear that the perfunctory set of proposals does not work. The North has a strong desire to develop nuclear weapons to ensure its security, and the programme is growing rapidly: the Chinese experts confirm the capability of North Korean missiles to fly to Guam.
To everyone, talks about peace and stability are clearly doubletalk. The North Koreans are renouncing the revival of hexalateral relations. Postponing the problem for later times might not work. Denuclearization at a time after the North has declared itself a nuclear power and enshrined this in its Constitution is possible only through regime change.
Any security guarantees? In the current situation, no one will provide them or be willing to comply with such guarantees. “Taking North Korea under the Chinese nuclear umbrella” will not work. First, Juche implies independence. Secondly, China is not trusted. Thirdly, in China, this step will be perceived ambiguously: many will say they are not able to assume responsibility for such an odious regime.
What about the unification of the Republic of Korea on South Korean terms? Debates on this issue are also taking place. On behalf of the Chinese Party, Liu answered and said that this issue was being actively debated in China. Many people think that in case of unification, China-Korea economic cooperation would be increased, since it would be more convenient to deal with a unified Korea from the perspective of infrastructure. South Koreans are using this argument in order to push China to such a solution, and similar objectives were partly pursued by Park Geun-Hye’s concept of the Eurasian initiative. However, China would suffer more from unification than from the status quo.
Firstly, the Korean Diaspora would start having problems being manipulated much more from the outside, and filling domestic problems with nationalism will lead to open claims to “our Manchuria”, which have been already actively put forward by a number of historians.
Secondly, the U.S. troops are likely not going anywhere, and China would become more vulnerable without the buffer zone that the DPRK is currently fulfilling.
Thirdly, as long as North Korea exists, it serves to fulfil the role of the main human rights violator, the aggressor, etc. in the region. As soon as the DPRK collapses, the U.S. and its allies will start making China the number one ‘bad guy’.
That is why China is taking a stand in favour of the unification of Korea only if it is peaceful and profitable. Unified Korea should take Chinese interests into account and not be a military ally of the United States. In this case, the Chinese understand the “price” of the promises about the “non-expansion of NATO to the East.”
In the meantime, the U.S. is constantly putting its pressure on China. This includes advice on how to behave in case of a North Korean collapse, although the questions by Americans like, “What will you do if the regime falls?”, are likely required to be understood as “What will you do if we collapse it, and would you interfere?” There are also the statements like the one that was made by the U.S. Vice-President, Joe Biden, who on June 20 spoke on the U.S. TV-channel PBS with regards to the topic of the U.S.-China relations and emphasized that if continued, the North Korean nuclear programme could push Japan to nuclear weapons, thus creating a threat for China, which will become much more serious than the THAAD deployment. And since everything is still concerning the DPRK, it would be better for China to get rid of this threat, cutting all sorts of ties with the country.
We believe that no choice can be considered good in this situation. Therefore, Chinese authorities must be ready to make difficult decisions, choosing the better one of the two bad decisions. Perhaps, together with Russia, Beijing will start increasingly putting pressure on South Korea. Unlike Japan and the U.S., there are some levers of influence over Seoul, where there are enough people who feel a threat to their security in connection with THAAD.
As for the relations with the North, Beijing believes that although Chinese influence on Kim Jong-un and the related elite is decreasing, the dependence of the DPRK on China is gradually increasing for objective reasons. In 2015, China accounted for 91.3% of the DPRK’s total foreign trade budget. According to the report prepared by the Hyundai Research Institute published on June 21, the trade volume amounted to USD 5.71 billion. In comparison, in 2000, this value amounted to USD 488 million, and the level of Pyongyang’s dependence from trade with China was 24.8%. Thus, over a period of 16 years, the volume of trade has increased 12 times, and the dependence level of North Korean trade with China increased three times. Therefore, there is a widespread feeling that after some time, Kim Jong-un himself will come to pay homage, and everything will be OK.
As a result, taking into account not only the regional, but also East-Asian events in general (especially the decision of the Hague Tribunal), it is possible to make a prediction that the warmer the U.S.-China relations, the more calm and pragmatic the attitude will be with the North, and the more neutral and cooling the attitude with the South. It is unlikely that Xi Jinping’s administration will take sudden action in the near future, but perhaps the phrase by Chinese scientist Shen Dingli that “we have to learn to live with a nuclear North Korea” will have more supporters.
Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D. in History, Chief Research Fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
