Why China may worry about North Korea just as much as America does

"SUCH reports have been heard before and smack of wishful thinking. But there are more reasons than usual to believe China’s promises that it is trying to rein in its unruly, pugnacious little ally, North Korea. South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, has said that China has promised not to side with North Korea if it stages further provocations towards the South. That would be a big shift. Last year China failed to condemn either the sinking by North Korea of a South Korean naval vessel in March, or the shelling in November of a South Korean island. Now Chinese scholars and officials do indeed seem to be sending strong signals to North Korea that enough is enough.

In June Liang Guanglie, China’s defence minister, told a regional-security forum in Singapore that China had done much more in communicating with North Korea “than you can imagine”. At another conference, in Kuala Lumpur, Zhu Feng, a professor at Peking University, contradicted a North Korean participant who argued that the security issue on the Korean peninsula was one of reunification and a legacy of the cold war. It was also a result, Mr Zhu said, of the unchanged nature of the North Korean regime and its behaviour. North Korea, he argued, “risks biting the Chinese hand that feeds it.”

China has been exasperated with North Korea before, not least in 2006, after its first test of a nuclear weapon. Mutual suspicion and animosity go back much further. In a recent paper*, You Ji, a former Chinese foreign-ministry official now at the University of New South Wales, reports that Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s dictator, never forgave China for its disapproval of the hereditary succession in which he took over from his father, Kim Il Sung. Sulking, he did not visit China once from 1983 to 2000." Read More