China and North Korea: A Tangled Partnership
By Rodger Baker
Vice President of East Asia Analysis / Posted in Townhall Daily
China appears to be growing frustrated with North Korea's behavior, perhaps to the point of changing its
long-standing support for Pyongyang.
As North Korea's largest economic sponsor, Beijing has provided the
North Korean regime with crucial aid for years and offered it diplomatic
protection against the United States and other powers. To outsiders,
China's alliance with North Korea seems like a Cold War relic with
little reason for persisting into the 21st century. However, Beijing's
continued support for Pyongyang is not rooted in shared ideology or past
cooperation nearly as much as in China's own security calculations.
Perhaps nothing sums up the modern relationship more effectively than
the oft repeated comment that the two countries are "as close as lips
and teeth." Far from a statement of intense friendship, the completion
of that Chinese aphorism -- "When the lips are gone, the teeth will be
cold" -- highlights China's interest in propping up the North Korean
regime. North Korea serves as a buffer state for China's northeast, and
though Pyongyang can exploit that need, the North Korean leadership
harbors no illusion that China is truly interested in the survival of
any particular North Korean regime so long as Beijing can keep its
buffer.
Whether China is seriously considering a change in relations with North Korea, ties between the two countries are
shaped as much by geography and history
as they are by choice. The Korean Peninsula abuts China's northeast,
along Manchuria. The Yalu River separates North Korea from China, and
the area on the western edge of the border functions as a gateway
between the two countries along an otherwise largely mountainous border.
The geography of the Korean Peninsula, as seen several times in the
past, offers little resistance to rapid military maneuvers from north to
south or vice versa.
At times, this border area was a troublesome spot for Chinese empires,
which had to contend with various invaders and growing Korean military
strength. At other times, the peninsula served as a conduit for Chinese
culture to Japan -- and intermittently as the main highway for military
confrontation between China and Japan. During the 19th century and the
expansion of European and American activity in Asia, if foreign
countries had dominated Korea, it would have further undermined China's
already faltering national security. And during the Cold War, North
Korea provided a strategic buffer against U.S. forces in Japan and South
Korea, a role it still plays today.
A History of Antagonism
China and North Korea draw heavily from history in assessing each
other's strategic positions, as well as their own. China sees North
Korea as a useful buffer but one that can draw China into wars and
potentially weaken or at least delay China's attempts at achieving its
own strategic imperatives. North Korea sees China as a necessary
partner, one that through careful manipulation will continue to fund and
protect North Korea, but always with the risk of North Korea losing
control of its own fate to the Chinese. These are not new ideas -- they
draw from centuries of interactions, and both countries take different
lessons from that history.
The North Koreans trace their lineage and in part their national
philosophy to the Koguryo Kingdom, which lasted from 37 B.C. to 668
A.D., was centered in what is now North Korea and stretched well into
modern-day China's northeast. During the seventh century, one Chinese
dynasty wore itself out trying to expand into Koguryo, and that
dynasty's successor was successful only after briefly allying with the
dominant kingdom in what is now South Korea. The Chinese dynasties'
moves against the Koguryo Kingdom reflected their concerns about having a
strong power on China's frontier, a concern that continues to this day.
China and both Koreas still have brief academic spats over the
historical affinity of Koguryo, with China claiming it was a Chinese
dynasty, in part to justify Beijing's continued oversight of North Korea
but also to challenge any potential reunified Korea's claims to the
ethnic Korean population that still resides on the Chinese side of the
Yalu River.
The Korean Peninsula was also used as an invasion route between China
and Japan. During the 13th century, after more than two decades of
conflict, the Yuan Dynasty finally beat the ruling Korean kingdom into
submission and used Korean shipbuilders, soldiers and supplies to launch
two assaults against Japan, both of which ultimately failed. The
Japanese, following unification under Toyotomi Hideyoshi some three
centuries later, launched a large-scale invasion of Korea on their way
to Ming China. The six-year war highlighted one of the weaknesses of
Korea's defense -- the Japanese moved rapidly up the peninsula, quickly
taking Seoul, Kaesong and Pyongyang. Ming forces rushed troops into
Korea to block the rapidly advancing Japanese, who had all but brushed
aside the unprepared Korean forces.
The combination of Chinese cannon and mobile troops from southern
China, plus the ability of the Korean navy to cut Japanese supply lines,
turned the tide, but throughout the intervention, the Chinese and
Koreans found little to agree upon. Korea's ruling Chosun Kingdom saw
itself as defending Ming China from the Japanese aggressors and demanded
the utter defeat of the Japanese and if possible their subjugation. The
Koreans further feared China would use the opportunity to leave its
forces on the peninsula permanently. The Chinese were willing to settle
for the retention of a buffer Korean state and considered accepting
Japanese occupation of southern Korea, calling frequent cease-fires
during the war that the Koreans saw as too beneficial to Japanese and
Chinese interests but not to their own. The intervention during the
Japanese invasion, like the
later intervention during the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, was not based on the interests of the Koreans but very much on the interests of the Chinese.
Despite Korea's concerns about possible Chinese domination, since the
seventh century the various Korean kingdoms managed to largely retain
their independence by nominally acceding to China's imperial vision and
accepting a special relationship with the Chinese dynasties. This
allowed China to remain confident in Korea's loyalty on the border and
gave Korea a relative assurance that China would not invade it. For
both, it was a combination of convenience and necessity that drove
relations.
The pattern continued with only a few interruptions into the 19th
century, even as China was being worn down by European colonial powers.
China vigorously defended Korea's right to remain isolated from the rest
of the world. Beijing was not strong enough to use military power to
ensure Korea's continued role as a strategic buffer but rather exploited
its special relationship with Korea diplomatically. Beijing would
alternate between claiming a suzerainty relationship with Korea, making
it the only path to dialogue with the Hermit Kingdom, and claiming that
despite the special relationship the Koreans set their own foreign
policy and China was not responsible for their actions. China's main
objective here was to keep Korea out of the hands of foreigners.
Ultimately, China failed. Amid the complex maneuvering between the
Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Koreans and others in the early 20th
century, Japan took control of the Korean Peninsula. Holding Korea
effectively ensured that there was little chance that China or another
power could use the territory to stage an invasion of Japan. Possession
of Korea also
helped the Japanese to seize more of Manchuria, reinforcing to China just how important Korea is to China's national security interests.
Korea as a Strategic Asset
At the end of World War II, China was focused on its internal civil war
and was not yet prepared to re-establish a special relationship with
Korea. But by 1949, the Chinese Communists had largely emerged
victorious at home and the Soviet occupying forces in North Korea had
left. North Korea's new Communist government, formed after the Japanese
withdrawal and the peninsula's division in 1945, consulted with or
perhaps manipulated Moscow and Beijing into offering their political and
military backing for an invasion of the South.
At the same time that Pyongyang was preparing its invasion into South Korea, China was preparing a
cross-strait invasion of Taiwan.
But China's plans had to be shelved. Only days after hostilities broke
out between North and South Korea in June 1950, the United States
deployed ships to the Taiwan Strait to protect the Nationalist
government in Taipei. When the North's forces were halted and pushed
back to the Yalu months later, China had no choice but to shift its
attention away from Taiwan and enter the Korean War to deal with the
much more pressing threat along its border.
The Soviets, concerned that a successful move by Beijing to defeat the
Nationalists in Taiwan would then free Beijing to make political
overtures to the United States, gained in the Korean War continued
animosity between the United States and China. North Korea's actions,
while they could have been beneficial for China had they succeeded,
instead undermined Beijing's reconquest of Taiwan, locked Communist
China into two more decades of contentious relations with the United
States and ultimately left China responsible for supporting a faltering
state on a critical border. The North Koreans were grateful for Chinese
intervention but recognized that, as in past interventions, the Chinese
were once again willing to settle for a divided Korea, so long as they
could retain their buffer.
Although the North Koreans were able to draw on the
emerging Sino-Soviet split
after the Korean War to gain economic concessions from the competing
Communist powers, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the
Cold War left the North Korean regime with a stark choice: risk losing
control over the country amid attempts at reform and opening (the
example of the Soviet Union and much of Eastern Europe did little to
encourage this path) or accept the risk of a single sponsor state in
China. Pyongyang sought another path; it would build a strong domestic
deterrent to any military action while also
threatening to use that deterrent
to try to extract economic concessions out of the Americans, Japanese,
South Koreans and anyone else concerned about peace and stability.
Pyongyang would also draw on China's continued fear of losing its
strategic buffer.
Although largely effective in the past, this policy is
beginning to see diminishing returns.
North Korea is now even more dependent upon China than before, but
China is as much a hostage to the relationship as North Korea is.
Beijing has used the various North Korean crises to its own advantage,
offering to mediate talks in return for political concessions from the
United States or South Korea, playing a very similar game as it did
during the colonial era by simultaneously asserting a special
relationship with North Korea and denying responsibility for North
Korean actions. For China's leaders, this once served as a very useful
way of managing regional relations and countering U.S. challenges to
Chinese policies, such as currency manipulation. But for China, too, the
policy is beginning to lose efficacy, and Washington is increasingly
calling on China to either assert itself in dealing with Pyongyang or be
sidelined. Washington may even be seeking to circumvent China,
turning to India and Mongolia as potential interlocutors.
For China, North Korea remains a necessary strategic buffer, and in a
unification scenario, the most China can tolerate is a neutral Korea
that leans toward Beijing. For North Korea, Beijing's need for a buffer
may ensure that China will defend the North against an attack, but it
doesn't guarantee that Beijing would preserve the North Korean regime.
Beijing may be just as well served by a more pliant North Korea as by
the current government. The Chinese have already intimated that in a
collapse or a war scenario, they may seize Pyongyang and hold the
northern portion of Korea, effectively taking on responsibility for the
management of the buffer zone, even if this is not the optimal solution.
North Korea's continued use of a threatening posture, if it fails to
gain concessions and shows China's inability to influence its smaller
neighbor, may ultimately be seen by China as detrimental to its own
interests. This is the message China is now spreading via its academics
and others, both in the domestic media and abroad. In return, North
Korea, in commentaries in its state media, has suggested that small
powers cannot trust the promises of big powers to defend them, and thus
must build their own strong deterrent.
At the rhetorical level, a rift is emerging between Beijing and
Pyongyang. Since both countries have new leadership, it is not
surprising that they are uncomfortable with one another at this time.
Both use North Korea's continued crises for their own advantage, and
both see that that approach is not working as well as it used to. During
his recent visit to China, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sought
Beijing's help in understanding the behavior of North Korea and in
reining in Pyongyang's threatening statements and actions. Beijing
countered that Washington needs to engage Pyongyang in dialogue but that
China itself has not established a close relationship with the new
North Korean leadership. The subtext, even before the Kerry visit, was
that Beijing itself is growing exasperated with Pyongyang's actions,
which are outside the realm of what China considers acceptable, and that
Chinese academics, if not the leadership, are now openly discussing a
possible break with North Korea and China's near unlimited support of
its belligerent neighbor.
This may be another feint. The Chinese once again may be seeking to
trade their assistance with North Korea for political concessions
elsewhere. And with North Korea less predictable given its new leader,
these concessions may have to be higher than in the past. Washington
appears to have already anticipated the Chinese counter and has
suggested it could reverse some of its recent deployments of missile
defense systems to the region if China intervenes with the North. There
is some irony in the United States using the North Korean playbook in
dealing with China -- Washington essentially escalated the military
situation with the missile defense deployment and is now offering to
return to only slightly above the pre-crisis status quo in return for
political concessions, namely calming North Korea.
North Korea's actions are beginning to invite responses that threaten
China's strategic interests, from expanded U.S. missile defense to
accelerating Japanese remilitarization
to the increased potential for closer Japanese-South Korean military
cooperation. If anything makes China begin to question which country has
the upper hand in its relationship with North Korea, this may be it.
