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North Korea and the China-style Model of
Reform and Development
Park Doo-bok
Professor, IFANS
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Kim Jung-il's visit to Putung can be assessed as 'the event' that foretold a sea change in North Korean society. This does not seem to be a mere shift in North Korea's attitude to China's market opening and reform, but a symbolic measure North Korea has voluntarily taken to express its own desire for a policy shift toward opening and reform. Should North Korea actually implement this policy shift, it will (from a macroscopic perspective) take a deep interest in the China-style model of reform and development, under which China has minimized changes in its political system while achieving high economic growth through far-reaching reforms in the economic realm.
The reforms North Korea may pursue in the future will take the form of 'reform and change from the top' rather than 'reform and change from the bottom', as was the case with China. As Deng Xiaoping revised Maoism to fit the Chinese reformer's concepts of 'development'―through Mao's epistemological methodology and authority―one cannot leave out the possibility that Kim Jung-il, too (albeit in different ways) will mold the Juche idea to fit his reform policy in the name of 'development.'
From a more narrow perspective, however, the clear disparities between China's and North Korea's situations and conditions will limit North Korea's acceptance of the China model in its original form. Therefore, North Korea will have to seek a development model that is a combination of the China model as well as a clear reflection of North Korea's current situation.
As North Korea has positively recognized China's reform line―at least the line proper―close Sino-North Korea cooperation on North Korea's opening and reform has become possible. Therefore, South Korea must cooperate with China to induce the latter to pursue a more proactive policy in leading North Korea to shift its policy toward opening and reform.
I. Kim Jung-il’s Visit to Putung-Sign of Will for Reform?
What draws our attention most in regard to North Korea’s change is whether North Korea could accept the China-style model of reform and development which has been established over the past 20 years. This paper seeks to evaluate North Korea’s recently manifested will for opening and reform and examine the possibility of North Korea applying the China-style model of reform and development, should it indeed move in that direction.
North Korea originally exhibited a positive attitude toward China’s policy of opening and reform. This positive assessment from Pyongyang was reversed when China put forth the “theory on the primary stage of socialism”, and pursued reform in a rather radical direction. The establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea in 1992 further weakened North Korea’s confidence in China. In fact, North Korea has adamantly rejected the introduction of non-socialist elements, as shown in the 1 June 1999 Nodong Sinmun-Kulloja joint editorial that noted, “It is important to resolutely eradicate non-socialist elements at the embryonic stage.” Thus, North Korea has denied the “theory on the primary stage of socialism” and the “theory of socialist market economy”-the ideological framework the Chinese reformists put forth for the introduction of non-socialist elements, which were vital to promoting socialist production and enhancing socialist productivity.
Moreover, North Korea has heretofore defined “ideological liberation,”-which the Chinese reformers have emphasized is an escape from the previous Maoist system of ideas that posed serious hurdles to their market reforms-as non-socialist.
A serious change, however, may be said to have taken place with regard to North Korea’s negative stance on China’s policy of reform since Kim Jung-il’s visit to Beijing in May 2000. This can be clearly seen from Kim Jung-il’s positive evaluation of China’s reform policy before the Chinese leadership during his trip to Beijing and from the North Korean media’s coverage of this (along with Kim’s secret China visit) upon his return to Pyongyang.
It may be said that Kim Jung-il’s evaluation of China’s reform policy remained at a rudimentary and abstract level during his visit to Beijing in May 2000. However, his assessment of the same subject during his visit to Putung, Shanghai in January 2001 was more significant, in that it was rather comprehensive and represents a step forward to an “assessment of the line.”
The Putung development plan was launched in 1992. In a sense, the Putung development plan can be seen as the fruit of the socialist market economy system-that very system which was firmly set as the basic direction of China’s economic reform, but North Korea had so thoroughly and completely rejected. In this light, Kim Jung-il’s visit to Putung signifies a fundamental change in North Korea’s attitude toward China’s reform policies. At the same time, one can assess this visit as an “event of great importance” that connotes a significant change in North Korean society in the future.
Furthermore, North Korea has been emphasizing a new perspective on ideas and a “new way of thinking” since the beginning of 2001. This can be viewed as North Korea’s desire to escape from the pre-existing set of fixed ideas about opening and reform. The current call for a “new way of thinking” in North Korean society may be seen as a significant change from its former position of criticizing the “ideological liberation” advocated by China as being non-socialist. Thus, we may interpret Kim Jung-il’s Putung visit as measure symbolizing Pyongyang’s “new way of thinking”.
II. Possibilities of North Korea’s Application of the China Model
China’s reform and development model, that is the Deng Xiaoping line, can be summarized as “one center and two basic points.” Here, “one center” means the promotion of socialist production (i.e., economic development) as a national objective. The “two basic points,” which prop up the “one center” consist of adhering to both reform as well as the four cardinal principals--upholding the socialist line; Marxist-Leninism and Maoism; democratic dictatorship of the people; and the one-party system of leadership.
If we consider the two basic points alone, they seem to be mutually contradictory. In other words, all four cardinal principles-one of the two basic points-could be an impediment to the implementation of the other basic point-reform and market opening.
Deng Xiaoping, however, understood the relationship between “one center and two basic points” as a complementary dialectic relationship of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and other Chinese reformers share this understanding. In other words, because the reform sought by China is a process that is necessarily accompanied by a great shock-namely, the transformation from a planned economy to a market economy system-the reformers believe that the central government’s strong leadership and political and social stability are pivotal for a stable, orderly transformation. In turn, adherence to the four cardinal principles is the most crucial factor in maintaining political and social stability and strong leadership,
China’s line of reform based on “one center and two basic points,” however, is “politically leftist and economically rightist”: it pursues proactive and qualitative changes to overcome the structural factors of inefficiency and low efficiency in the economic realm while resisting any changes in the political sector. This is fundamentally different from the former USSR’s or Russia’s approach of simultaneously pursuing overall, omni-directional reform in both the political and economic fields.
As may be observed, the China-style model of reform and development has restrained (to the maximum) changes in the political arena and maintained and reinforced the socialist, one-party system of the Communist Party of China (CPC). At the same time, it has achieved high economic growth by overcoming structural factors of inefficiency in the economic realm through qualitative changes, such as the introduction of the market economy and other capitalist economic methods. This model has brought remarkable success to Beijing over the past 20 years, and such success is projected to continue for a considerable period of time into the future. It would be inevitable for North Korea, too, to launch a structural reform program to eradicate the inefficiencies innate in the North Korean economic system and revive the nearly bankrupt economy, while preserving the basis of the existing socialist, one-party system. Therefore, North Korea cannot but take a deep interest in the China-style model of reform and development.
There are, however, great disparities between North Korea’s current situation and that of China when it first launched its program of opening and reform. These disparities, as described below, are anticipated to place certain limits on Pyongyang in applying the China model in its intact form.
First, China’s line of reform is the product of a serious two-line struggle. Upon Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, there was a serious struggle between the conservative forces that insisted on continuing Mao’s line of thought and the reform forces that demanded a thorough reform. The victory of the reform forces and the resolution passed by the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1978 set the rationale for reform. The Cultural Revolution was the main driving force behind the reform forces’ victory in this two-line struggle and recognition of the rationale for reform. In other words, the Cultural Revolution planted the conviction in the minds of the Chinese that they must thoroughly do away with the Maoist line and its philosophy in order to make progress and solve the problems confronting China. Thus, the notion that China’s development was no longer possible under the radical social, economic and political philosophy of Maoism became universal, leading to the emergence of reform as a new trend in Chinese society. In this regard, North Korea, compared with China, lacks the driving force of reform equivalent to China’s Cultural Revolution.
Moreover, in China’s case, the elite who are leading the reform are victims of the Cultural Revolution and therefore suffered the most under Mao’s regime. This inspired them to push for reform with a strong sense of mission. Not only does North Korea lack an experience analogous to the Cultural Revolution, but also the senior-level elite of Pyongyang’s current regime are a class with vested interests; they have led fairly comfortable lives despite the economy’s near-bankruptcy. This class will very likely surface as a force opposed to dynamic reform.
China and North Korea also have a fundamental difference in the policy-making process for pursuing a policy of reform and opening. Whereas North Korea is a one-man system, China’s system was a collective leadership in which power was separated, with Deng Xiaoping in a balancing role. China’s policy-making process, therefore, did not reflect Deng Xiaoping’s arbitrary decisions but was a collective decision-making process which required compromises and time to work out the many conflicts, and confrontations. Although China may have faced difficult policy-making processes, this system’s forte was that it enabled the Chinese leadership to secure legality, reality, stability, and durability of policy. On the other hand, the advantages of the policy-making process in Kim Jung-il’s one-man system are that they are simple, easy, and swift. However, North Korean policies cannot but be less stable, legal, and realistic by comparison.
A second difference between these two countries is that North Korea’s Kim Jung-il commands the absolute right to the interpretation of the Juche idea, whereas in China, Deng Xiaoping was not able to secure the absolute right to interpret Maoism. Therefore, Deng Xiaoping had no choice but to take a very discrete, roundabout approach to the revision and adjustment of the former leadership’s ideas and policies. In other words, pursuing revision of pre-existing systems, ideas, and policies sans ideological mechanisms to back up the revisions always exposed Deng to the dangers of attack from the conservative forces. This led Deng to take a roundabout way of establishing an ideological system or framework that could legalize and justify revisions or adjustments (in the form of party resolutions) before they were actually made.
This indirect approach is best reflected in Deng’s establishment of his “theory on ideological development”-prior to revising Maoism-as well as his establishment of the “theory on the primary stage of socialism” and the “theory of socialist market economy”. All of this took place before the introduction of non-socialist (i.e., capitalist) elements so urgently needed for enhancing productivity.
Kim Jung-il, on the other hand, dominates the absolute right to the interpretation of the Juche idea. Therefore, it would be possible for North Korea to make revisions and adjustments to a leadership idea or policy line at any time, without having to follow the circuitous route undertaken in China.
In the case of North Korea (because Kim Jung-il is the successor to the Juche idea), complete negation of Juche could lead to self-negation, and thus the possibilities of any revision or adjustment to the Juche idea would seem to be very limited. However, if the Juche idea conflicted with the policy of opening and reform Pyongyang sought to implement, or if it must revise Juche, one would not be able to exclude the possibility that Pyongyang will revise Juche idea in the name of “development”- just as China did.
A third dissimilarity is that China’s policy of reform and opening up has been driven by a thoroughly gradualist approach. One might say that due to China’s vast space-and perhaps as a result of the Cultural Revolution-the Chinese people’s ardent desire for political and social stability hampers any radical reform that could be followed by confusion. China’s policy of gradualism started with the opening up of selected areas (four special economic zones in 1980) and coastal areas (14 port cities along the east coast in 1984). It led to the opening up of the entire country: first, the coastal belt (eastern coastal areas covering 330,000 km2) in 1988, and then the cities along the major rivers in 1992 (opening and integrating coastal, border and inland areas).
Not only is North Korea a much smaller country, it also lacks the experience equivalent to China’s Cultural Revolution, and thus it will be limited in applying China’s gradualist approach in its complete form. In particular, it would be difficult for North Korea to find a proper location (such as China’s Shenzhen) that has favorable conditions for market reform and at the same time will enable the government to minimize the consequences to the political system. In this regard, Kim Jung-il has yet to take a step that requires more courage than was ever demanded of Deng Xiaoping.
China and North Korea maintain a wide gap in the working population ratio as well. China’s agricultural population consists of more than 70 percent of the country’s total labor force, whereas North Korea’s agricultural population is less than 30 percent of the total working population. In China, reform started with the agricultural economic system and progressed to the urban economic system. China’s agricultural economic development, which started with structural reform via the output responsibility system and led to agricultural industrialization, formed the basis of China’s economic development. It does not seem feasible that North Korea, with its comparatively low agricultural population, could follow this development model in its original form.
Lastly, North Korea’s current external environment for opening and reform is clearly different from that of China in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, Sino-US diplomatic relations were normalized, and China’s external environment was favorable for cooperation between itself and the West. Currently, North Korea has not normalized relations with the United States, and given the Bush administration’s hard-line policy toward Pyongyang one cannot overlook the possibility that US-North Korea relations could deteriorate further. Thus, the West’s (or international organizations’) support for North Korea’s reform and opening remains uncertain.
Moreover, Taiwan’s economic development and prosperity played a positive and catalytic role in China’s market opening and reform, especially in the development of China’s coastal areas. In spite of the obvious economic gap, China overshadowed Taiwan in overall national power-population, area, and military capability. Thus, the repercussions of exchanges with and opening up to Taiwan were limited and China lacked the sense of crisis stemming from unification through absorption. On the contrary, North Korea cannot avoid considering the possibility of reunification through absorption or other negative ramifications on the regime from abruptly increased exchanges between North and South Korea. The latter’s economic stagnation since the 1997 financial crisis will also hinder South Korean firms’ advances into North Korea.
III. Conclusions
Kim Jung-il’s visit to Putung can be assessed as “the event” that foretold a sea change in North Korean society. This does not seem to be a mere shift in North Korea’s attitude to China’s line of opening and reform, but a symbolic measure North Korea voluntarily took to express the desire for a shift in its own policies.
Should North Korea proceed toward market opening and reform, it will, from a macroscopic perspective, take an interest in the China-style model of reform and development through which China has minimized changes in the political system while achieving high economic growth. At the outset of China’s reform process, Deng Xiaoping underwent innumerable difficulties, conflicts, and trials and errors on the road to discovering the “China-style model”; North Korea could use the China-style model as somewhat of a guide or compass.
The reforms North Korea will pursue in the future will take the form of “reform and change from the top” rather than “reform and change from the bottom”, as was the case with China. As Deng Xiaoping revised Maoism to fit the Chinese reformers’ policies (in the name of “development”, and through Mao Zedong’s epistemological methodology and authority), one cannot leave out the possibility that Kim Jung-il, to (albeit in different ways) will mold the Juche idea to fit his new policy in the name of “development.”
From a more microscopic perspective, however, the clear disparities between China’s and North Korea’s situations and conditions will limit North Korea’s acceptance of the China model in its original form. Therefore, North Korea will have to seek a development model that is a combination of the China model and a clear reflection of North Korea’s current situation.
As a result of Kim Jung-il’s positive assessment of China’s reform during his visit to Putung, Shanghai was elevated to an “assessment of the line”; this is, in effect, a reflection of North Korea’s approval of China’s overall reform policy and the China-style model of reform. Previously, China did not have a role in North Korea’s opening and reform, as the latter had rejected Beijing’s new policies. Now that North Korea has positively recognized China’s reform line-at least the line proper-Beijing’s role in Pyongyang’s reform and opening is likely to increase.
The most pivotal factor in encouraging and securing North Korea’s forward-looking, proactive attitude in the resolution of the Korean peninsular issues is none other than change in the North Korean regime. Therefore, South Korea needs to cooperate closely with China in building the conditions necessary for North Korea’s reform and opening.
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