| bibo:abstract |
Prospects of North Korea-China Relations:
Inter-Korean Summit and Thereafter
Park Doo-bok
Professor, IFANS
Foreword
The 15 June North-South summit is expected to serve as a momentum for increasing greatly the fluidity of the situation on the Korean peninsula, which had theretofore been suppressed by the soundness of the Cold War structure. Such an increase in the fluidity of the Korean peninsula situation, in turn, is being reciprocated by great changes in the policy of the four neighboring major powers toward North Korea-the sole bastion of power vacuum in Northeast Asia since the 1990s. This can be said to be a result of a criss-cross of self-interests-the proactive policy of the major powers which are essaying to prevent any loss of their status or influence on the ever-changing Korean peninsula intersecting North Korea's strategic considerations to strengthen its position in the eyes of these neighboring states.
Amidst the swirl of changes, China's proactive policy toward North Korea stands out by far. A case in point is the top secret visit North Korea's General Secretary Kim Jong-il paid to China shortly before the North-South summit at the invitation of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC), which aroused keen interest from the rest of the world. In this light, this paper will seek to analyze the basic positions of both China and North Korea on improving their bilateral relationship with a focus on China's policy toward North Korea since the inter-Korean summit, and forecast the direction of development in Sino-North Korea relations.
I. Chinese and North Korean Policy Toward Normalization of Relations
China's relationship with North Korea had been a special one of military alliance based on ideological solidarity and the past revolution. Since the 1980s, however, furtherance of China’s reform and open door policy had induced China to put more weight on national interests and reciprocity in its relations with Pyongyang, and the 1992 establishment of diplomatic relations between the ROK and PRC marked a watershed which further expedited such characteristic changes already omnipresent in the two countries' relationship. Notwithstanding the ups and downs in Sino-North Korea relations, however, China-for which North Korea holds both traditional and geopolitical interests-pushed aside the characteristic changes that had been taking between the two countries, and placed policy priority on restoring the Beijing-Pyongyang relationship-already undermined by the establishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Seoul-and retaining its influence on North Korea.
China has pursued a policy of seeking its role in and build its influence on the Korean peninsula through the implementation of balanced policy toward the two Koreas. In order to reach its objectives, reinstatement of the relationship with North Korea was an absolute must. Therefore, China has taken a proactive and aggressive approach in restoring and normalizing relations with North Korea (restoring their previous normal state-to-state relationship), which were undermined by the normalization of diplomatic relations between Seoul and Beijing.
Such a proactive attitude of China to restore ties with Pyongyang is well reflected in the former's establishment of a grand memorial hall and monument to commemorate "the war to resist US aggression and aid Korea" in July 1993; the dispatch of Hu Jintao, the core figure of China's next-generation group of leaders, to the "anniversary of the Korean people's victory in the great Fatherland Liberation War"; Chinese authorities' prudent stance on the return of patriotic martyrs' corpses to South Korea; and China's attitude toward the UN Security Council's sanctions against North Korea for nuclear development.
On the economic front, China has consistently been North Korea's number one trading partner. China's trade with North Korea consisted of over 30 percent of the latter's total trade volume in 1999. Beijing has supplied gratuitously or on credit over 150,000 tons of food, 1 million tons of crude oil, and 1.5 million tons of coking coal annually to Pyongyang under its ninth five-year program (FY 1996-2000). It seems China's economic aid to North Korea will continue under its 10th five-year program, which starts in 2001. China's economic aid to North Korea amounts to over one-third of China's total aid overseas.
On the other hand, it can be said that North Korea, to which the establishment of ROK-PRC diplomatic relations was detrimental, has adhered to a rather passive and defensive position on restoring and normalizing bilateral relations with China.
One direct factor in North Korea's passive and defensive attitude to the restoration of ties with China was the deepening and development of ROK-PRC relations, which was a corollary of the establishment of diplomatic relations and normal exchanges between the ROK and China. Another important element was the domestic political situation in North Korea, such as Kim Il-sung's demise and the postponement of an official declaration of Kim Jong-il as his successor. Most important of all, however, it can be said that North Korea's negative perception of, or strategic concerns about restoring ties with China played the most important role in prompting its adherence to a defensive stance on the improvement of relations. In other words, North Korea harbored concerns and negative perceptions that the restoration of North Korea-China relations, such as the recovery of normal diplomacy with China, would lead to an expansion of China's influence over North Korea.
Pyongyang, in particular, had strategic concerns that an increase in China's role in the process of the Four-Party Talks-held to establish a peace system on the Korean peninsula and resolve nuclear and missile issues-would end up restricting its sphere of action, which is why it has been checking the expansion of China's influence on North Korea.
The new diplomatic and security environment North Korea encountered and swift progress on the Korean peninsula, such as its agreement to hold the North-South summit, all took place after the Kosovo situation and the visit to Pyongyang by William Perry, the United States' North Korea policy coordinator. Under these circumstance, it became impossible for North Korea to defer the improvement of relations with China any longer. The Kosovo situation filled Pyongyang with a sense of crisis that it, too, can become a second Yugoslavia, and this prompted North Korea to feel the need to restore and strengthen cooperation with Beijing. Against this backdrop, North Korea took the attitude of proactively standing by China's cause-from the Kosovo situation to the Cox Report to putting the brakes on the United States' establishment of a US-led unipolar world order. The method of a comprehensive ROK-US-Japan approach toward North Korea, proposed during Perry's visit to Pyongyang, put North Korea in a more defensive position. Under these circumstances, Pyongyang could no longer put off the restoration of its cooperative relationship with China in the diplomatic realm for the sake of more proactively responding to and taking actions on its potential threats.
Pyongyang's change of attitude toward the improvement of ties with Beijing became full-fledged near the visit to China by Kim Young-nam, president of North Korea’s Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, in June of last year. Kim Jong-il, who had refused to meet with China's ambassador to North Korea since the normalization of diplomatic relations between the ROK and China, visited the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang twice-immediately before Kim Young-nam's visit to China and on 5 March 2000. That Kim Jong-il awarded the highest medal to China's outgoing envoy, Wan Yongxiang, can be viewed as a symbolic measure carefully calculated and carried out by Pyongyang for a restoration of ties with Beijing. The visit to China by Kim Young-nam, North Korea's titular head of state to the outside world, can be taken as an official expression of North Korea's will to restitute external relations of the two countries via restoration of high-level exchanges, which were severed by the establishment of diplomatic relations between Seoul and Beijing. It also reflects that a change had already taken place in North Korea's passive and defensive attitude to restituting the North Korea-China bilateral relationship.
II. Kim Jong-il's Visit to China and Sino-North Korea Relations
General Secretary Kim Jong-il of the Workers Party of Korea visited Beijing in top secrecy on 29 May at the invitation of Jiang Zemin, general secretary of the CCP. However, Kim Jong-il's attitude of categorical negativeness toward China's reform and open door policy did not make his visit to Beijing a simple matter. His visit to China sans any official change in his attitude toward China's reform line could pose a serious burden on North Korea’s domestic politics, and it can be said that this was the very reason his visit took place in absolute secrecy.
Secret visits and diplomacy are typical of the special relationship that has persisted between China and North Korea. However, such a characteristic can negatively impact China's relationship with South Korea, which is already moving toward as far as a cooperative partnership. It can also undermine gravely the credibility of China's new diplomatic policy, which has heretofore accentuated openness and transparency. It can be said that China's decision to push ahead with Kim Jong-il' secret visit, which it knew would entail diplomatic side-effects, stemmed from China's assessment of the situation in and out of the Korean peninsula: swift changes were taking place in and around the two Koreas, but creating the environment within the North Korea's domestic political arena for allowing Kim Jong-il's official visit to China would have to require a considerable amount of time. In other words, it is possible that the demand for the normalization of China's relationship with North Korea-desperately needed for Beijing to seize the opportunity to play an active role and secure influence on the Korean peninsula-was an important factor in Beijing’s final decision to accept Kim's secret visit despite much diplomatic aftermath that was to be expected.
Kim Jong-il's visit to China can be seen as a sign of restoration of normal diplomacy that was severed after the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea in 1992 and Kim Il-sung's death in 1994. It can also be viewed as having laid out a framework for a complete restoration of China-North Korea relations. Therefore, Kim's visit paved the road for enabling Chinese leadership to materialize their intent to visit North Korea, which had been their hope since Kim Jong-il's succession to his father became official. In this vein, State President Jiang Zemin's visit to Pyongyang is likely to take place in the near future, and China is likely to utilize the restitution of normal exchanges between itself and North Korea to improve the unbalance in its normal diplomacy vis-a-vis the two Koreas since the 1990s.
With the restoration of normal exchanges between North Korea and China, some of the channels which had been severed or not been operated since the demise of Kim Il-sung will be reinstated, and thus Beijing-Pyongyang policy coordination on pending issues is likely to become possible. What merits special attention about Kim Jong-il's visit to China is the channel through which it took place-it took place not through the Chinese Foreign Ministry but through the party. This reflects the restoration and operation of the party-to-party channel between the two countries. Also, the North Korean military's actual powers accompanied Kim Jong-il to China, and Minister of People's Armed Forces Kim Il-chol visited China on 17 June 2000, where he held a meeting with Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian and agreed to military exchanges and strengthening of cooperation. This signals the restoration of the military-to-military channel between the two countries.
Given a complete change of generations in both China and North Korea following Deng Xiaoping’s and Kim Il-song’s demise, as well as China's diplomatic policy keynotes of post-camp theory and post-ideologization, there will in fact be limits to a complete restoration of channels to their original state in the past. China will seek to play a proactive and constructive role in the overall Korean peninsula affairs via reinstating these channels and, to this end, is expected to proactively forward negotiations and policy coordination with North Korea.
Such restitution of China-North Korea relations does not, however, mean an automatic return to their previous relations before the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea, for China's policy vis-a-vis Seoul and Pyongyang is determined by the "principle of independence and self-reliance," which is based on the post-ideology and post-camp theory. Although normal diplomacy between the two countries was reinstated with Kim Jong-il's visit, it would be impossible to return China-North Korea relationship to the blood-forged, special ties of the past from China's point-of-view, as its relationship with South Korea is developing from a cooperative partnership to a full-scale relationship that includes the security realm as well. North Korea's change of attitude toward the improvement of relations with China may be understood as part of its process of adapting to and accepting what can be summarized as China's "post-ideology," "post-camp," and "emergence from the special relationship" policies toward the Korean peninsula. Therefore, any improvement or development of relations between China and North Korea in the future will serve as a momentum for re-establishing the two states' ties into a normal relationship based on national interests and reciprocity. Furthermore, the two countries are expected to gradually establish the status and principles of their relationship for long-term and stable development based on the normalization of their relations.
When China proposed the "primary stage of socialism," designed to introduce the desperately needed anti-socialist elements for developing social productivity, after the 13th Party Congress in October 1987, North Korea launched full-fledged criticisms against China's reform line. North Korea stepped up the criticisms as its trust in Beijing rapidly dropped to the ground following China's establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992. The two countries' confrontation and conflict over reform and opening have posed as a massive stumbling block in the road of improving relations.
However, Kim Jong-il during his visit to China actively engaged in assessments of the fruits of Deng Xiaoping's reform and open door policy. This, along with Kim Young-nam's statement during his visit to China that "North Korea wholeheartedly supports China's reform and open door program and respects the Chinese party and people's choice" signify an important turning point away from the negative and critical attitude North Korea had adhered to regarding China's reform and open door policy. Such a shift in attitude is an integral process for improving North Korea's relations with China. Moreover, this shift could develop into North Korea's basic perception of or yardstick for assessing Chinese society. Most importantly, it could even be suggesting the possibility that North Korea may shift its policy direction to that of reform and opening. That the North Korean media officially announced Kim Jong-il's visit to China, which they had pursued in utmost secrecy, immediately after his return home could be a telling event which allows us to get a glimpse of not only North Korea's change in attitude toward China's reform and open door policy, but also its intent to shift policy directions for reform and opening. North Korea's Nodong Sinmun's editorial on 3 June 2000 appraised China's reform and open door policy highly, noting, "China is achieving great results in constructing modernized socialism." It can be said that this reflects Kim Jong-il's active assessment of China's reform and open door policy during his visit to China gradually being established as North Korea's official attitude.
Should Pyongyang's official attitude toward China's reform and open door policy shift from a negative stance to a positive and active assessment of the policy, it will not only serve to lay the important foundation for an improvement of China-North Korea relations in the future; it will also bear an important significance on North Korea's process of reform and opening.
III. China's North Korea Policy Since Inter-Korean Summit and Prospects of China-North Korea Relations
Let us examine North Korea-China relations through the ROK-North Korea-China triangular relationship. If the inter-Korean summit were to serve as a momentum for the two Koreas to liquidate their hostile relations of the past and develop their ties into a cooperative relationship of peaceful co-existence-the other two sides of the triangle, that is, South Korea-China and China-North Korea relations, may also be transformed into a past relationship of zero-sum game to one of non-zero-sum game. Up until now, extreme hostility in North-South Korea relations brought about restrictions to China of having to choose only one of the two policies toward the Korean peninsula: maintain the existent friendly relations with North Korea, or develop a new relationship with South Korea. This fact is well reflected in the aftermath of the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and China: rapid progress in ROK-China bilateral relations just as soon aggravated China-North Korea relations to fall into an extremely abnormal stage. Therefore, if ROK-North Korea relations can indeed improve with the inter-Korean summit serving as the momentum, China will be able to develop its cooperative partnership with South Korea while reinstating its relations with North Korea, thus regaining its influence and special status over Pyongyang.
Should the improvement in North-South relations result in a domino effect on the other two sides of the triangle, China will be in a better position to conduct balanced policy toward the two Koreas. This could also create a leading position for China, which will bring about the result of its expansion of influence on the Korean peninsula.
China has long recognized that an unbalance on the Korean peninsula-the ROK’s establishment of diplomatic relations and development of ties with China and Russia while there are yet no breakthroughs in North Korea's establishment of diplomatic relations or development of ties with either the United States or Japan-was the source of North Korea's isolation, and that this is now the most important element of instability on the Korean peninsula. China, which has important self-interests in the stability of the Korean peninsula, has been showing interest in improving the unbalanced structure of the situation on the Korean peninsula by inducing the four major neighboring powers' cross recognition of North and South Korea. That China has shown a positive attitude to North Korea's policy of putting diplomatic policy priority on its relations with the United States and thereby actively pursuing the improvement of ties with Washington since the 1990s stems from China’s basic perception on the Korean peninsula.
However, China will not allow North Korea-United States relations to develop to such a degree or direction which could undermine its own special position over North Korea. North Korea's strategic value to China is based on the inherent limits of ROK-China relations-that the development of the ROK-China relationship will never be able to replace or transcend the ROK-US alliance. In other words, North Korea's strategic value is assessed based on the assumption that even if China does set out to develop its partnership with South Korea on full scale, it would be inherently impossible to replace the special status the United States holds over South Korea. In this light, China has come to have the basic perception that any undermining of its special status or loss of influence over North Korea will inevitably degrade its strategic status in Northeast Asia and on the Korean peninsula.
Therefore, it seems China will deepen its relationship with North Korea through the restoration of cooperative channels and normal diplomacy, which will be consummated upon Chinese leadership's return visit to North Korea. At the same time, China will pursue forward policies in order to restitute and maintain its special status over North Korea.
Should the June inter-Korean summit provide the opportunity for North Korea to start pursuing economic development and industrialization policies, China is expected to play an active role in providing its economic cooperation to Pyongyang via various forms of policies, thus rooting its influence on North Korea's economic development.
First of all, if North Korea assesses and accepts Deng Xiaoping's reform line proactively and pursues reform to increase productivity, be it in a relatively limited scope, North Korea's interest in the Chinese reform and development model, which has resulted in rapid economic development, will then increase. China has successfully achieved economic reforms designed to inculcate economic proactiveness in the nation and eradicated inefficiency and low efficiency, at the same time controlling any changes in the political system to the maximum based on its one-party ruling system. Of course, it is most likely that North Korea, being spatially limited and its depth shallow, will seek its own style of reform model as it would be difficult to follow the Chinese reform and open door policy line in the original form. However, from a broader perspective, North Korea will be much influenced by China's reform line, through which China has achieved many qualitative changes in the economic realm, such as marketization reform, while at the same time restraining to the maximum reform of the political system in order to adhere to its socialist line. China, too, will actively graft its reform and development model in the reform and open door process pursued by North Korea, thereby gradually securing economic and social homogeneity with North Korea and at the same time pursuing the policy of building the fountainhead of influence on the North Korean economic system.
If North Korea’s promotion of economic development and industrialization policy follows full-fledged economic cooperation between the two Koreas, China is expected to solidify various types of support and cooperation extended to Pyongyang, including the introduction of capital to Pyongyang, in order to build its influence on North Korea's industrialization process. However, China's future cooperation will cast off the old costume of friendship trade or one-sided aid under its special relationship with North Korea, but will be in the form of investment and economic cooperation based on the principle of reciprocity. China will actively become involved in North Korea's industrialization process and pursue the policy of strengthening the horizontal connection between North Korea and China's northeastern economic zone and deepening their mutually complementary and interdependent relationship. The solidification of the horizontal connection between North Korea and China's northeastern economic zone will serve as a foundation for China to exercise a certain degree of influence on the economic integration process of the Korean peninsula.
IV. Conclusions
China now meets the conditions and has the power to play the most constructive role in the resolution of Korean peninsula issues or in the process of establishing a system of peaceful co-existence on the peninsula: it has upgraded its bilateral relationship with South Korea by establishing a cooperative partnership with the latter and expanding the scope of the relationship to a full-scale scope that includes the security realm; and with North Korea, it has restored normal diplomacy between the two countries and established various cooperative channels. Expectations of China’s role in the process of establishing a system of peaceful co-existence are especially high, as it has been building a strong base of consensus with the South Korean government on the latter's engagement policy toward Pyongyang and its approach to resolve various Korean peninsula issues. Therefore, various policies must be pursued in order to secure the functions that can only be unique to China in the process of establishing a system of peaceful co-existence on the Korean peninsula.
Although there have been palpable and realistic changes in the surrounding environment and in the interests among nations, one of which is the nullification of the "main enemy" concept that includes China, now one of our important cooperative partners, the ROK-US cooperation framework, which was formed under the Cold War system, is still intact. This is not only causing unnecessary misunderstandings and frictions between the ROK and the United States, the changes in South Korea's relations with its former enemies are directly being reflected on the ROK-US alliance system, thus bringing about many side effects to ROK-US cooperation. Therefore, a new cooperation framework must be laid out between the ROK and the US-a framework which will allow the two allies to adjust to the new surroundings-thereby building a mechanism that would enable South Korea’s cooperation with the former enemies, such as China, to be accepted more rationally and functionally within the framework. Through these means the ROK and China must secure space for their own cooperation.
The pivotal issue at hand in inspiring and securing North Korea's proactive attitude toward resolving various issues on the Korean peninsula, such as the establishment of a system of peaceful co-existence between the two Koreas, lies in a change in the North Korean regime. Therefore, it becomes necessary to pave the road for inducing North Korea's reform and opening with close cooperation from China. We may assess that North Korea’s proactive and forward attitude toward Deng Xiaoping’s reform and open door policy to some degree reflects North Korea’s intent to shift its own policy to that of reform and opening. We must gradually lead China-for whom close cooperation with North Korea is becoming possible-in the direction of pursuing a more proactive policy of engaging itself in North Korea’s policy shift to reform and opening.
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