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.
“China and North Korea: A Tangled Partnership is republished with permission of Stratfor.”
