Peter Foster moved to Beijing in March 2009. He was formerly the Daily Telegraph’s South Asia Correspondent based New Delhi from 2004-2008. He is married with three children.
Last updated: December 1st, 2010
A crew member of the USS George Washington yesterday (Photo: AFP/Getty)
So, the USS George Washington is steaming back towards Japan after four days of joint exercises in the Yellow Sea, and here we still are. However, while the immediate danger of further conflagration may have passed, the situation on the Korean peninsula remains perilous.
Seoul has already announced further exercises for next week (it was a live fire drill that Pyongyang used as a pretext for last week’s bombardment) and is talking about stationing short-range missiles on the island that was attacked. This might be posturing on the part of the Lee government – which is under serious pressure at home not to “turn the other cheek” if the North attacks again – but it will certainly keep that disputed sea border on a hair-trigger for the forseeable future.
Equally worrying is the diplomatic deadlock which has put China flatly at odds with America (and South Korea and Japan) over how to handle Pyongyang. The divisions were made abundantly clear from the fact that the US, Japan and South Korea are planning talks in Washington (not Beijing) next week, while China has blocked all attempts to get a censure of North Korea at the UN in New York.
There has been much talk, following the WikiLeaks “revelations” this week, that China is ready to “abandon” North Korea, but you only have to look at China’s reaction to the events of the past week to see that that is a fanciful notion. (I don’t want to dissect WikiLeaks in detail as my colleague Richard Spencer has already done with great elegance and common sense here.)
The point is that right from the word go, the Chinese have acted as a virtual spokesman for the North Korean position. The houses were still burning when the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman was at his rostrum calling for an “immediate return to the Six Party talks”.
This is exactly what Pyongyang wants. Kim Jong-il couldn’t have put it any better if it he’d scripted the remarks himself. This doesn’t mean China is happy with North Korea’s belligerence, but rather that from a self-interested perspective it sees that talks are the only way to put a lid on the Korean situation before it gets out of control and something really nasty happens.
Washington, Seoul and Tokyo are talking tough for now, but with war not an option, they don’t honestly have a better proposal. Their refusal to talk really comes down to a matter of timing – ie talks, yes, but not now, otherwise it would look like Pyongyang was shelling and torpedoing its way to the table.
But talk they must, however unpalatable that might be, and the longer the Korean hiatus continues, the greater the chance that an “accident will happen”. The Chinese are right about that.
And there is, of course, one final nuclear elephant in the room here. The Obama and Lee administrations want North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons in return for handsome aid packages. That was the deal that was almost struck a few years ago when the Six Party talks were on, but it fell apart when it became clear that Pyongyang wasn’t honouring its side of the bargain.
Trouble is, I haven’t spoken to a single North Korean expert or analyst – Chinese or American – who seriously believes that North Korea’s hyper-militarist regime would give up its strongest bargaining counter, viz. its nuclear ace. If you were Kim (Snr or Jnr) would you?
Which means the entire concept of an “aid for nukes” deal is built on a premise that all sides know to be false: hence the deadlock and the diplomatic vacuum which North Korea is increasingly filling with fire. It really is a game of high-stakes poker, with both sides – Pyongyang and Washington/Seoul – in their own ways trying to tough it out, in the hope that the other side will blink first.
Viewed from that perspective, China’s position of talks, based on realpolitik and throwing the dog a bone (instead of threatening to club him on the head) starts to look rather more sensible.
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By David Pilling
Published: December 1 2010 20:36 | Last updated: December 1 2010 20:36
You can imagine the scene in the Oval Office. “Mr President,” says Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for east Asia. “I thought you should see this dispatch from Kathleen Stephens – you know, our ambassador to Seoul, Sir. She says that a guy named Chun Yung-woo, South Korea’s vice-foreign minister, was speaking to a Chinese official who said that, get this Sir, North Korea has ‘little value to China as a buffer state’.” Mr Campbell pauses to let the significance of the fourth-hand statement sink in.
As far as intelligence goes, this is pretty thin gruel. In fact, it is the very definition of Chinese whispers. This and similar snippets from WikiLeaks are by no means sufficient to conclude, as some have done, that there has been a significant change of heart in Beijing. Suddenly, we are led to believe, China has grown weary of its tantrum-prone North Korean ally and is prepared to prise lips from teeth – Mao Zedong’s favoured metaphor for the tight relationship – even at the cost of the North’s reunification with the South.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
More from David Pilling – Aug-30
Such a conclusion would be hasty indeed. Recent actions by China point to a different conclusion, although it is fair to say that attitudes to Pyongyang have hardened following its two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. Yet, significantly, the WikiLeaks cables dry up in February, a month before Pyongyang is thought to have torpedoed a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, with the loss of 46 lives. If there had really been a change of heart, Beijing would surely have condemned that attack. Instead, it refused to accept the conclusions of an international inquiry fingering Pyongyang, and even rewarded Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader, with an invitation to China.
Second, to interpret Mr Chun’s remarks as somehow representative of a broad consensus in Beijing is to misunderstand the fractured nature of China’s foreign policy. Michael Wesley, executive director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, says that, as China’s global economic and political interests grow more complex, “it is becoming impossible to talk about a grand Chinese position on anything.”
On the North Korean issue, specifically, Mr Wesley sees a split between security-focused elements of the leadership, including those close to the People’s Liberation Army, and less “hardline” foreign policy technocrats. There may also be a generational divide, he says, between those of President Hu Jintao’s age, who hold “as an article of faith that China can’t let its ally down”, and younger Chinese officials embarrassed by a North Korea that looks like a parody of pre-1978 China.
Third, if anything, China has been seeking to reduce US influence in the region. Beijing has expressed anger at what it regards as US interference, for example in the South China Sea. A Wednesday editorial in the Global Times, an official tabloid, said of Washington’s recent efforts at closer regional engagement: “Since the US declared its return to Asia, the frequency of clashes in the Korean Peninsula has accelerated. Instead of reflecting on this, South Korea became more obsessed with its military alliance with the US.” This view is difficult to square with a more relaxed attitude towards reunification.
Fourth, Beijing seems to be trying to prod North Korea towards the type of economic measures that have driven its own success. John Delury, of the Asia Society, says the one consistent message from Chinese officials is that western sanctions do not work. Encouraging economic reform is consistent with a policy of trying to preserve North Korea as a going concern, rather than preparing for its collapse. Similarly, Beijing’s apparent facilitation of North Korean weapons exports to Iran, also suggested by WikiLeaks cables, hardly points to a Chinese clampdown on Pyongyang.
Fifth, Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s president, does not seem to harbour any illusions about the likelihood of reunification. True, this year, he floated the idea of a tax to prepare South Korea’s citizens for the possibility of a united Korea. But when I asked him about this last month, he stressed that the tax was more symbolic than real and that reunification would not happen for a very long time.
Finally, as Mr Delury points out, there may be a “good deal of wishful thinking” in seeking out Chinese officials prepared to express theoretical support for reunification. If there is one thing that should be clear from reading WikiLeaks cables, it is that diplomats are prepared to say one thing to their foreign interlocutors – and quite another behind their back.
Where does this leave us? Brian Myers, an expert on North Korea at Dongseo university, says the most interesting WikiLeaks revelation is that senior North Korean officials may have been defecting. Mr Myers argues that North Korea may well be on the brink of collapse, not because of succession issues but because of the regime’s need to provide military “victories”, the only thing it has to offer its people in the absence of a functioning economy. “The regime is basically on a collision course with the outside world,” he says, arguing that it will be gone within a decade. If he is right, one precondition of reunification – regime collapse – may be closer than we think. But that is a very far cry from saying that China would welcome it.
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A Voice for the Laotian Who do not have Voice 