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December 19, 2011
China Moves to Ensure Stability in North Korea
By EDWARD WONG - New York Times
BEIJING — Following the death of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, China is moving quickly to deepen its influence over senior officials in North Korea and particularly with those in the military to try to ensure stability in the isolated nation, according to Chinese and foreign former government officials and analysts.
China is North Korea’s foremost ally, and leaders here had been hoping Mr. Kim would live for at least another two or three years to solidify the succession process that he had begun with his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, the former officials and analysts say. Uncertainty now looms over whether the younger Kim can consolidate his power in the face of competing elite factions and whether he and other leaders will continue initiatives begun by his father, including studying China as a model for possible economic reforms, the observers say. The elder Kim had made four trips to China in the last 18 months to look at a range of economic projects, and Chinese leaders had urged him to experiment with reforms.
The greatest concern for China is whether Mr. Kim’s death will lead to a rise in tensions on the divided Korean peninsula. That could happen if generals in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, try to reinforce their hold on power through aggression toward South Korea. Unlike China, where the Communist Party stands as the ultimate authority, the military is the final arbiter in North Korea.
Mr. Kim’s death “means that China will have to assume a heavier responsibility over the relationship in order to maintain peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” said Xu Wenji, a professor of Northeast Asian studies at Jilin University and a former Chinese envoy to South Korea.
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said, “The death significantly enhances uncertainty on the peninsula.” He added: “In my personal view, the succession is very hastily arranged and Kim Jong-un is very ill prepared to take over.”
“Frankly speaking, there is a substantial chance of political instability in North Korea,” he said. “This is based on the nature of the regime, the inadequate process of succession and economic hardships in the country.”
As anxieties bubbled to the surface in Beijing, so did signs of mourning. People brought bouquets of white flowers to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing and were allowed inside. Police officers surrounding the building kept all others at a distance. Asked about visas, a guard said, “Come back next year.” The flag atop the embassy roof was lowered to half-staff. One resident of Beijing with ties to North Korea said telephone operators in Pyongyang were crying when he got through to a call center there.
Evening newspapers in China ran front-page headlines above photographs of Mr. Kim. Xinhua, the state news agency, cited a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, giving the official position on Mr. Kim’s death. Mr. Kim was a “great leader,” Mr. Ma said, and “China and North Korea will strive together to continue making positive contributions.”
There were some irreverent takes. Netease, a popular Internet portal, ran a topics page with a headline saying: “Kim Jong-il’s Death Shows the Importance of Losing Weight.” The subtitle was even more subversive: “A government is just like a human body, in that neither can afford to be too fat.” As of Monday evening, the page was still online.
The strong ties between China and the two Kims were on display during a lavish military parade in Pyongyang in October 2010 that was used to signal to the world that the younger Kim would inherit power. There, Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee who oversees the public security apparatus, sat in the front row with the two Kims. Afterward, the elder Kim began gradually introducing his successor to various Chinese officials.
“At this moment, China might provide the best chance of stability,” said Bob Carlin, a former State Department official and a fellow at Stanford University who travels to North Korea.
“They want to be the best informed and have a modicum of influence and have people consulting with them at this moment,” he added. “The rest of us are deaf, dumb, blind and with our arms tied behind our backs.”
John Delury, a scholar of China and the two Koreas at Yonsei University in Seoul, said: “Chinese diplomats are the only ones who can pick up the phone and talk to North Korean counterparts about what is going on, what to expect. This reveals the fatal weakness in Washington and Seoul’s over-reliance on sanctions over the past three years.”
China wants North Korea to stand strong as a buffer state that keeps American troops in South Korea at a distance, but relations between the two Communist countries have had to endure complicated twists in recent years. Chinese officials were upset by North Korea’s sudden shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea in late 2010, and have lobbied North Korean leaders to refrain from further military actions, analysts say. Earlier in 2010, China was forced into an awkward position when South Korea and the United States accused North Korea of sinking the Cheonan, a South Korean warship, with a torpedo. The United States put pressure on China to agree with its allegation, which China refused to do.
Those events might have increased anxieties in China about North Korea, but they have also made North Korea more dependent on China for economic support. Two scholars of North Korea at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, estimated in a paper published this year that China and South Korea alone recently accounted for 55 percent to 80 percent of North Korea’s trade. After the Cheonan sinking, most trade with South Korea stopped, so China became an even bigger partner.
Exact trade figures are difficult to pinpoint. A paper published in December 2010 by the Congressional Research Service estimated that in 2009, exports from North Korea to China increased to $793 million, while Chinese exports to North slowed slightly to $1.9 billion. Chinese trade and investment undercut the economic sanctions that the United States and other nations imposed on North Korea to try to halt its nuclear program.
The trade can take many forms. Susan Shirk, a former State Department official and professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, said she spoke with a North Korean man in Pyongyang in September who was conducting state-to-state trade with China. She said the North Korean worked for the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and he was selling iron ore to China at the price that China pays to large trade partners like Australia; in return, he was buying corn from China at the price on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that day.
North Korean leaders are also trying to jump-start the languishing trade zone of Rason on the Chinese border and to get Chinese businesspeople to invest in tourism infrastructure that includes a creaking cruise ship running between Rason and the Mount Kumgang nature park.
After Mr. Kim’s death, the North Koreans “are still going have to rely on China to large degree,” said Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, an analyst based in Beijing for the International Crisis Group. “China and North Korea are locked in this dance of interdependency. China is going to have to continue to be a big benefactor and bankroll North Korea to a big extent.”
Michael Wines contributed reporting, and Li Bibo and Mia Lia contributed research.
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