A rchive Date
[ 10-01-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ China ]
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[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35293-2003Jan9.html
China Treads Carefully Around North Korea
Delicate Relations Make Beijing Wary of Pressuring Unpredictable Neighbor on Nuclear Program
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 10, 2003; Page A14
BEIJING, Jan. 9 -- Two days after Christmas, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan paid a visit to the sprawling, snow-covered compound of the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, ostensibly to attend a New Year's celebration. In a routine statement, the Foreign Ministry said Tang and the ambassador congratulated each other on the past year's achievements and "exchanged views on issues of common concern."
But the visit was anything but routine. Tang had never attended New Year's events at the embassy before. He went to this one to quietly convey Beijing's concerns about North Korea's nuclear program, according to Chinese specialists who advise the government on Korean affairs.
Two days later, North Korea issued a statement in Pyongyang that said, in part: If "other countries" are worried about its nuclear activities, they should urge the United States to open a dialogue and guarantee North Korea's security. If they do not intend to do that, "it is better for them just to sit idle."
The exchange illustrated the delicate relations between China and North Korea. Neighbors and Communist allies that fought alongside each other in the Korean War half a century ago, the two countries now view each other with suspicion and, sometimes, resentment. This raises questions about Beijing's ability and willingness to break a dangerous North Asian impasse by pressuring the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, into abandoning plans to develop nuclear weapons -- as the Bush administration has repeatedly urged it to do.
Although North Korea's apparent response to minister Tang's message seemed like a brushoff, Chinese analysts detected a subtle concession. For the first time, North Korea was indicating a third party could help resolve its standoff with the United States. In the past, the analysts said, North Korea had always told China and others to butt out.
As North Korea's principal trading partner and a major source of food and fuel aid, China exerts more leverage over the "hermit kingdom" than any other nation. But in the weeks since Pyongyang alarmed the world by expelling U.N. inspectors and threatening to restart a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, the Chinese government has been conspicuously quiet, allowing South Korea and Russia to take the lead in diplomacy.
Chinese officials have told foreign diplomats that they have expressed their displeasure to North Korea, but they insist they must tread carefully around their unpredictable neighbor. Relations are already strained, and the Chinese say they are worried about provoking North Korea by pushing it into a corner.
"China's role is to make sure North Korea doesn't lose all hope, not to threaten or pressure it," said Qi Baoliang, an analyst on Korean affairs at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, a research institute for China's intelligence services. "If everybody puts pressure on North Korea, it will despair. And if it doesn't see a way out, it will go ahead and develop nuclear weapons. That's not good for anybody."
Worried about the long-term stability of a dictatorship that has allowed its people to starve by the hundreds of thousands, Chinese leaders do not want to see North Korea armed with nuclear missiles. For one thing, the missiles could be aimed at Beijing. For another, North Korea's actions could trigger a regional arms race, with Japan and perhaps even South Korea and Taiwan developing their own nuclear weapons, or at least missile defense systems.
But China is unwilling to support sanctions against North Korea that could send a flood of refugees across the border into its economically troubled northeast, where as many as 200,000 Korean migrants are already hiding. If North Korea collapsed, moreover, China would face the unwelcome prospect of sharing a border with a unified Korea that would be a U.S. ally and a host to U.S. troops.
"They're walking a tightrope," said an Asian diplomat who has discussed the issue with the Chinese. "They don't want a nuclear North Korea, but they have to be careful about how they apply pressure. They don't want to antagonize the North Koreans too much, but at the same time, they need to get them to change their position."
Some former Clinton administration officials have argued that China played an important role in persuading North Korea to freeze its nuclear program during a similar crisis in 1994. A pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong suggested then that the Chinese government threatened to restrict oil shipments to North Korea if it did not back down.
Complicating the situation this time, though, is China's leadership transition, said one Chinese security analyst. President Jiang Zemin has handed the Communist Party's top post to Hu Jintao, but Jiang will remain president until March and could stay on as head of the military even longer. That has raised questions about who should take the lead in dealing with Kim Jong Il, the analyst said.
"The transition makes it harder for any Chinese leader to handle the issue," he said. "No one wants to risk taking the blame right now if it doesn't go well, and it's possible Kim knows that."
Relations between Beijing and Pyongyang have never been entirely steady. North Korea's founder and its current leader's father, Kim Il Sung, often sought to play China off the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1992, China angered North Korea by establishing diplomatic relations with South Korea.
But the collapse of the Soviet Union left China as North Korea's only major source of aid. Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, estimates based on trade statistics that China provides as much as $470 million in aid annually to North Korea, which amounts to more than a third of its outside financial assistance. China accounts for 70 percent to 90 percent of North Korea's fuel imports and about a third of all grain imports.
Today, China sees North Korea as much as an economic burden and potential troublemaker as a valued friend, and Pyongyang has resisted pressure from Beijing to adopt Chinese-style market reforms. Relations improved as Kim Jong Il visited China in 2000 and 2001, but friction was evident again last year when Beijing arrested a Chinese-born businessman picked by Kim to run a special economic zone on the border.
The fragile state of relations leaves China with no good options in the current crisis, said a Chinese expert on Korean affairs who has served as an intermediary with North Korea.
"If Kim tells Jiang he is going to test a nuclear weapon unless Jiang gives him more aid, what do we do? We give him more aid. We don't have a choice," he said. "We have some influence, but we don't have the kind of relationship where we can tell Kim what to do. If we tell him to do something, he doesn't listen. If we threaten him, he listens even less. If Jiang called him, he might hang up."
The intermediary said North Korea is unhappy with China's increasingly closer ties with the United States and feels threatened by the Bush administration's characterization of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil." China's best course of action, he said, is to reassure Kim it will not abandon him, and to persuade the Bush administration to find a way to back down and offer Kim the security assurances he wants.
The argument, repeated by Chinese officials in conversations with foreign diplomats, assumes that North Korea's goal is not to build nuclear weapons, but to wrest concessions from the West. Chinese leaders appear unmoved by the U.S. position that North Korea can no longer be trusted to stop its nuclear activities and may already have produced two weapons.
It is unclear how Chinese leaders would react if they are proved wrong and North Korea defies them by testing a nuclear weapon. "That's the big question," said one Western diplomat involved in talks with China on the subject. "I'm not sure if even the Chinese know what they would do."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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