8
BETWEEN THE BOMB AND THE UNITED STATES
China Faces the Nuclear North Korea
A MAJOR DEVELOPMENT in world affairs today, especially the East Asian international relations, is the rise of Chinese power. With the world’s largest population and foreign currency reserve and the second largest economy and military budget, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is now advocating a grand “China Dream” that openly calls for a rejuvenation of China’s past power and glory.1 While the prospects of China’s rise and its future actions are both still profoundly uncertain, the PRC is becoming ever more active, with an ambitious foreign policy typically befitting a rising regional superpower with global aspirations.2 As indicated by several important developments, China is increasingly willing and able on the world stage, promising more Chinese demands—China’s new “international security activism”—down the road.3 Few other countries feel the rising Chinese power more acutely than China’s immediate neighbors in Northeast Asia, a region that has historically shaped today’s China and is currently crucial to China’s security and economy.4 China (and its ally North Korea) has accumulated significant “deficit of trust” in the region, according to Chinese analysts.5 Some have speculated that, in the long run especially, China’s imperialist tradition in the region is likely to remanifest itself.6 Some have already observed that Beijing is pursuing its own version of the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Pacific.7 In profound ways, how China deals with its neighboring nations shows well the intent and style of its rising power.
On the ground, China now directly encounters and mightily struggles with the powerfully confining East Asian security structure that was born during the Cold War many decades ago. The treaty alliances that anchor this structure deeply involve the “outsider” of the United States, the main ideological and political adversary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Beijing. Eternally worrying about regime survival, the PRC has thus pursued a top foreign policy objective of resisting and reducing the presence and influence of the United States in its neighborhood, even at the expenses of China’s national and people’s interest. A manifestation of this has been China’s policy toward North Korea and especially the North Korean bomb—it has become a litmus test of the nature and limitation of Chinese power for the world to see.
Beijing’s failure, reflecting its unwillingness more than its inability, to stop Pyongyang’s nuclear ambition has epitomized an irony that, with its ever-rising power, China’s national security environment and freedom of action in East Asia are both stagnant, if not deteriorating, as now there are four nuclear states on its border—the only country in the world with that kind of deadly confinement. Left alone, the North Korean bomb undercuts China’s power and prestige everyday as it poisons China–South Korea relations and undermines the Chinese leadership in the region and beyond, with more and graver uncertainties and chain reactions. To apply its substantial but likely one-shot power to force a denuclearization of the the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), China would risk losing its only treaty ally and ideological comrade and thus strengthen the hands of the United States—a dreadful blow to the CCP regime. The catch-22 predicament Beijing faces in dealing with the nuclear North Korea, therefore, illustrates the politicized, suboptimal nature of PRC foreign policy, which may serve the CCP regime well but at the heavy expense of China’s national interest. In light of that nuanced understanding of what is behind China’s policy toward the North Korean bomb, however, there seems to be still some peculiar opportunities for a continued peace and stability in Northeast Asia.
Three Alliances in East Asia and China’s Three-Rs Strategy
Like other powers, China is not pursuing its foreign policy in a vacuum with total freedom. The development and action of the many partners, rivals, especially neighbors critically define and shape the Chinese foreign policy. The long-lasting Cold War–era power structure in East Asia remains both the given environment that confines the PRC and the natural target for the increasingly revisionist projection of Chinese power. Three alliances still constitute the bulk of East Asian international relations: the US-Korea alliance, the US-Japan alliance, and the PRC-DPRK alliance.8 Furthermore, the Chinese foreign policy is peculiarly driven by two sets of interests that sometimes overlap and are identical but often in serious conflict and competition: the national interest of China as a sovereign and growing “normal” unit of the Westphalian international system and the political interest of the CCP regime as an autocratic and ideologically lonely government. To be sure, all states make and implement their foreign policies with the imprint of the regimes’ wishes and desires, and regime security is often part of national interests. But the foreign policy of the nondemocratic one-party regime of the CCP is particularly and rigidly politicized to serve the regime’s survival and security first and foremost. The gap, even divorce, between China’s national interests and the CCP’s political interests therefore has been profound and consistent.9 The anchoring rivalry and animosity between Beijing and Washington/Tokyo stem mostly from the pursuit of CCP’s political interest instead of China’s national interest, as the latter does not justify the kind of fanned hostility with the United States or Japan.
A rising power such as China “naturally” develops revisionist demands. For any revisionist foreign policy objectives to successfully serve and promote Chinese national interests in the region and beyond, China must reckon with the three alliances and may or may not seek to alter them in significant ways. The United States, the main force behind the restraining East Asian security structure, is also the chief ideological and political adversary to the CCP in Beijing. While the US-anchored East Asian security framework may be somewhat inconvenient but not necessarily obstruct-ing—much less detrimental—to China’s national security and economic prosperity, the US presence and leadership embodied through this framework always represents a sharp contrast, a stark challenge, and an implied mortal threat to the CCP/PRC political system. Therefore, China’s rise is heavily shadowed and tilted by the CCP’s political interest.
Essentially, the rising Chinese power is therefore shaped and confined in East Asia by the complex relationship between the PRC and the United States, the world’s two largest and closely linked economies that have drastically different and fundamentally competing political systems. Various speculations are already abundant about the future of that relationship, ranging from the so-called Beijing-Washington G-2 idea or a “Chinamerica” new world order, to a new Chinese rule of the world, to a fierce geopolitical struggle between the United States and the PRC first in the Western Pacific, to a coming realization of the decades-old prophecies of global clashes between the Western and the Eastern civilizations.10 In East Asia, however, the linchpin of the consequential PRC-US relationship is the Korean Peninsula, on which two of the three alliances have faced each other since the Korean War over six decades ago and where Beijing and Washington share some rare common interests, as well as confront profound differences and conflicts.
The epic enormity, uncertain dynamics, and ever-changing factors of the rise of China demand extensive yet nuanced analyses to ascertain the future of China-US relations. Central to that effort is the need to understand the strategic visions, values and norms, and policy preferences that guide the two great powers. While the American strategic preferences and value system are relatively stable and transparent, the most common aphorism used to describe Chinese strategic intentions has remained, for many years now, the word “uncertainty.”11 Contrary to some of the conventional wisdom and despite the notoriously arcane and opaque nature of Chinese politics, however, Beijing’s basic strategy toward the United States is in fact rather unambiguous: Essentially, China eyes the top position of global power and leadership currently occupied by the United States with a great amount of complex feelings of antipathy, dread, and envy. The deeply rooted ideational path and the historical logic of Chinese polity determine that, without a sea change of sociopolitical institutions and values at home, the PRC is destined to be a lasting rival of and challenger to the United States, and Beijing is trying everything to resist, reduce, and replace American power and leadership so as to reorder first the neighborhood and then wherever and whenever possible, even if doing so directly opposes China’s national interest.12 As one senior US official commented in 2015, China and the United States are in “different beds with different dreams.”13
To China’s neighbors and the world at large, Beijing’s “three-Rs” strategy of resisting, reducing, and replacing is likely to significantly constrain international cooperation.14 It will increasingly force the nations, especially in Asia, to choose sides voluntarily or involuntarily and to settle past scores and current and future issues with growing deference to Chinese demands and preferences. This three-Rs strategy is deeply rooted in the peculiar Chinese traditional and ideational foundation for the making of Chinese foreign policy. It is also necessitated by the current Chinese politics: The rising PRC needs to counter the American power so as to safeguard Beijing’s core interest of political survival and regime security.15
China Faces North Korea
Fundamentally conditioned by the China-US relationship from the very beginning, Chinese foreign policy toward the Korean Peninsula in general and toward North Korea in particular has been complex, dynamic yet understandable. With a history filled with discords, disputes, and conflicts ever since the early days of the Korean War, North Korea has not been a reliable ally to the PRC, let alone a true friend.16 As earlier works have demonstrated, Beijing has continuously pursued a highly pragmatic, even schizophrenically realist policy since the 1990s to gain economic benefits and earn external peace while sticking to its clear objective of dealing with the United States for political interests.17 Barring any major changes in the China-US relationship and any fundamental changes inside the PRC, Beijing is expected to prefer the continued survival of the DPRK regime for its political and strategic needs while developing ever-closer relations with the Republic of Korea (ROK) for important economic interests and considerations of cultivating counterweight to Japan and the United States. Nominally supporting Korean unification, the PRC seeks to maintain the political status quo and a denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, precisely in that order.18 In the spring of 2016, PRC leader Xi Jinping reaffirmed that for his China Dream and Asia Dream, “China would absolutely not allow chaos on the Korean Peninsula.”19 However, the uncertainties and complications of China-US relations and the growing China-Japan discord will likely develop further to profoundly affect and reshape China’s strategic calculation about the Korean Peninsula. Beijing has already appeared to accept the nuclear North Korea. It may also be willing to entertain a Seoul-dominated united Korea if—a big if indeed—it is certain that the united Korea would be firmly on Beijing’s side in the growing China-US rivalry in the region.20 Overall, looking through various lenses, Chinese analysts today seem to have complex and somewhat diverse views about North Korea, especially as a nuclear state, but largely still carefully tread the CCP’s party lines rather than focus on China’s national interests.21 The new anger and loud displeasure displayed by Beijing in the aftermath of Pyongyang’s defiant test of a “hydrogen bomb” in January 2016 and a ballistic missile in March 2016 have prompted Beijing to support more United Nations (UN) Security Council sanctions against North Korea but have not moved China any closer to abandoning the DPRK regime.22 After the North Koreans defiantly tested more ballistic missiles in the spring and summer of 2016, Beijing seemed to still refuse to do the “outsourced” work for the United States to compel Pyongyang, other than by issuing yet more angry statements.23 Beijing seems to have continued the same policy after North Korea’s fifth nuclear test on September 9, 2016.
The PRC has been rewarded for its pragmatic Korea policies with great strategic maneuverability in its interaction with the United States over how to address the provocative moves of the DPRK; considerable international prestige for Beijing’s hosting of the multilateral talks about Korean issues, however unfruitful those talks may have been so far; and enormous economic benefits through its deepening and booming trade and investment deals with South Korea to form a great East Asian chain of production that has enabled China’s lucrative exports to the United States. Beijing’s acrobatic, multidimensional Korea policy, while certainly designed to serve China’s own interests, has indeed contributed to the maintenance of the status quo on the Korean Peninsula, including the Korean division, for the time being.
But Beijing’s recognition of the ROK in 1993 and its rapidly expanding friendship and business ties with the South Koreans ever since, as well as its policy of quietly opposing Korean unification, have had their backlashes. Necessarily squeezed and naturally feeling shortchanged and even let down by its Chinese comrades, the DPRK embarked in the mid-1990s on a daring road to provocatively yet cleverly acquire nuclear weapons for its regime security and bargaining position. The North Korean nuclearization has threatened to break the international regime of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), destabilized Northeast Asia through opening up the uncertainties about the Japanese and ROK reactions, and alarmed and agitated the United States. It has inevitably weakened and harmed the power and national interests of the PRC, which is now still the only “legitimate” nuclear power in East Asia, and put both the Chinese reputation of peaceful rising and the Sino-DPRK alliance to test. In addition to its nuclear ambition, the DPRK has also engaged in numerous actions of provocation, such as testing ballistic missiles and shelling South Korea, to make noisy demands. All of those are arguably rational for the security and survival of Pyongyang’s dynastic regime, but none of them appears to be in good coordination with PRC foreign policy, let alone serving Beijing’s strategic interests in the region.
In response, Beijing has addressed the development and seized upon the opportunity, however, to cultivate a rare but real common strategic interest with the United States of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula to strengthen its hands in relations with Washington, especially in the difficult years prior to the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Since then, the distracted United States further allowed and assisted the Chinese to recoup and extract more prestige by gracing the many rounds of the Beijing-hosted Six-Party Talks, involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States.24 North Korea’s desperate and daring defiance has thus provided a major stage for the Chinese government to score multilateral diplomacy points, earn international responsibility and leadership credits, and manage its relationship with the United States.25 Nevertheless, despite great fanfare and high hopes, those talks have largely come up empty-handed and now are practically defunct because the United States has refused to grant what Pyongyang wants without genuine denuclearization moves and China has refused to truly pressure Pyongyang to give up its bomb, even after the 2016 North Korean tests.
Politically valuable accomplishment of diplomacy in Northeast Asia notwithstanding, China as a nation has endured significant costs for the CCP on this: The PRC has been providing massive economic aid to sustain the failed North Korean economy, “even as it tightens sanctions on North Korean nuclear programs.”26 The largely one-way flow of Chinese resources and, lately, the growing commercial deals have had only limited economic returns with even less diplomatic gains for China, sometimes not even so much as a sincere appreciation from Pyongyang.27 With its new bomb, North Korea has become the less inferior partner in the PRC-DPRK alliance and acquired significantly more bargaining, even extortion-like power over Beijing, as some PRC analysts have now openly acknowledged.28 More important, perhaps, China’s national interests and even national security have in fact suffered despite the rise of the Chinese economic and military might: China has now become the only country in the world with four nuclear powers at its border, and the DPRK-started nuclear proliferation would further undermine China’s power position and freedom of action in East Asia if the North Korean nuclear program continues to brew a chain reaction of an arms race, even a nuclear arms race, in the region. For Beijing, a nuclear Japan appears to be one of the biggest nightmares and perhaps the worst outcome of the DPRK bomb. Worse still, China has to only count on the goodwill of the United States to prevent that from happening.29 For all that, it is natural to see that China has been increasingly open in words and actions about its deep frustration with the nuclear North Koreans after 2012.30 But the political line of the three-Rs strategy against the United States remains clear and strong in guiding the Chinese policy, even after Pyongyang’s highly irritating acts in 2016.31
Chinese Views about the North Korean Bomb
The PRC has traditionally had its own peculiar views about nuclear weapons, although those views have been influenced over the years by the more internationally shared norms and perceptions.32 China’s attitude to and relationship with the NPT have also evolved over the decades, and it only formally joined the NPT in 1992, twenty-eight years after it tested its own first nuclear weapon.33 Just like the other legitimate nuclear powers, China gradually accepted the US-led NPT regime and developed its own export control of nuclear materials and technology.34 Moving away from the notion that nuclear weapons are usable in military conflicts to settle political disputes, Beijing has by the early twenty-first century accepted the general concept that nuclear weapons are mostly only tools of deterrence and symbols of international status and joined the NPT’s international effort to control weapons of mass destruction.35 However, periodically some Chinese analysts and military officers still openly call for more active and assertive “first use” of nuclear weapons for international conflicts, “just like other (conventional) weapons,” even for attacking another nuclear power like the United States.36 Some Chinese nuclear policy experts seem to still harbor strong doubts about the deterrence role of nuclear weapons.37 Such wanton and belligerent big talk, nonetheless, seems to have quite a following, especially among the so-called angry youth in Chinese cyberspace. In practice, the PRC has been constantly engaging in active programs to modernize its nuclear arsenal, especially its delivery systems and the related space, undersea, and information technologies.38
The North Korean bomb, which allegedly had early material and technological support from China (and later technological support from Pakistan), has aroused, therefore, a spectrum of different reviews in China. On the one end, some believe that the DPRK is just following the PRC playbook in developing the bomb for self-reliant provision of regime and national security and to raise its international power and stature. Given the shared ideological identification and the long-standing anti-American orientation of the DPRK, China should not force its only ally and comrade to cave into the American pressure to denuclearize. Some even argue for more vigorous support for the North Korean–professed anti-Americanism. On the other end, a perhaps stronger voice (especially inside the professional PRC foreign policy community) asserts that the North Korean bomb is a gravely serious challenge to Chinese power and security. China should adhere to the NPT, which is “in China’s fundamental interests”; Beijing should stop its ineffective “hesitance between maintaining stability and denuclearization” so as to assume a greater role and more responsibility; and China should employ all leverages, including “to normalize the PRC-DPRK relations,” a euphemism for discontinuing the Beijing-Pyongyang treaty alliance, for a thorough denuclearization of North Korea. Maintaining the status quo and “preventing another Korean War,” however, still remains the top concern to those calling for denuclearizing the DPRK.39 The Chinese netizens have also expressed significant disgust over North Korea’s “successful” nuclear “blackmailing” of China and the “dynastic paupers” in Pyongyang. In private, many Chinese have simply suggested to abandon the Kim regime and let it collapse.
On balance, the Chinese view about the North Korean bomb seems to be largely a compromise of some of those diverse opinions of the dilemma created by the North Korean bomb, a view still fundamentally dictated by the CCP’s political interests and objectives.40 In practice, Beijing is therefore seen wobbling with its ambivalent policy for stability of the status quo and also for denuclearization. The shadow of the three-Rs strategy is long and dark.41 As some PRC analysts have openly argued, the North Korean bomb may indeed be “violating China’s wish and interests . . . but it is a price [that] must be paid for China to support [North] Korea to oppose and check the United States,” since the security threat possessed by the North Korean bomb “is much larger to the United States than to China.” Furthermore, the existence of the DPRK, even nuclear armed, continues a strategic buffer between China and the United States and provides, more important, a “useful bargaining chip in the Sino-American game” as Washington “needs Chinese cooperation more” if Pyongyang continues to cause more trouble.42 Even though not many Chinese analysts have openly embraced the nuclear-stability logic advocated by Kenneth Waltz in the case of Iran,43 many Chinese do not object to the notion that nuclear weapons in the hands of the “good people” are not inherently evil. So, the Chinese policy toward the nuclear North Korea is just “how to control and manage” this strategic asset, rather than getting rid of it, let alone at a heavy cost to the CCP/PRC: risking the loss of the only treaty ally it has.44 Increasingly discussed behind closed doors by those worrying that China might actually be the first and real victim of the DPRK bomb or a North Korean nuclear disaster, however, this mainstream view remains intact after the events in 2016, as the Chinese official media insisted cynically that the Chinese would not be the “first victims” of the Pyongyang bomb anyway.45
The Chinese Catch-22: Between the North Korean Bomb and the United States
Grudgingly, Beijing has grown to “swallow the bitter fruit” and tacitly accept the nuclear North Korea despite its genuine wish and open rhetoric against the DPRK nuclear program, which could enhance the US-Japan alliance and even lead to nuclearization of the whole of East Asia.46 As a fellow authoritarian regime that went through frightening international isolation and gambled its own security and survival on developing nuclear weapons, the CCP/PRC seems to have a hard time logically dissuading its North Korean comrades from following suit. As the only treaty ally that services as a useful strategic buffer or asset and a rare ideological companion (the only after the US-Cuba rapprochement), North Korea’s existence itself is of considerable value to the PRC, especially to the CCP rulers in the eternal fight to resist and reduce the United States power. However, unlike most other patron-client relationships, the PRC-DPRK relationship has always featured a defiant Pyongyang and a maladroit Beijing. The repeated brutal purges of the DPRK top leadership by its ruler, such as the dramatic execution of Jang Song-taek in December 2013, have effectively limited, even rooted out, Chinese influence in Pyongyang.47 It is often not the dog that wags the tail but the other way around in the PRC-DPRK alliance.48 This is indeed a powerful, yet underexamined problem—even failure—of the overpoliticized Chinese foreign policy.
Therefore, caught between a rock (the CCP’s political interests of resisting the US-Japan alliance) and a hard place (China’s national interests of opposing the North Korean nuclear program), Beijing has little choice but to continue its seemingly useful policy of milking the situation for as much political gain as possible to help its rivalry with the United States and Japan, while leaving the status quo of Korean division and the North Korean bomb drifting, hoping for the best.49 This is arguably a clever albeit expedient political decision, but it incurs considerable and growing costs for China’s national interests, even national security, in a rather irresponsible way. China’s freedom of action is also affected, as its main geopolitical rival, the US-Japan alliance, gets to make empowering moves justified by the North Korean bomb, as reflected by the historic “groundbreaking upgrade” of the alliance in April 2015.50 The US “pivot to Asia” and efforts such as the “U.S.-Japan-ROK Trilateral Dialogue,” as well as the upgrades of military technologies by the American and Japanese militaries in the Western Pacific, may indeed “put China in an ever-shrinking security box.”51 The upgraded military ties among the United States, Japan, and India, exemplified by the Malabar exercises and sharing of military technology,52 further altered China’s security environment. The decision by South Korea to finally deploy the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, especially its X-Band radar, in the summer of 2016 is just one of such negative consequences Beijing dislikes ardently.53 Even Russia started to offer help with the North Korean space program, undermining China’s power over Pyongyang.54 The rising China is therefore interestingly and unfortunately confined on the Korean Peninsula by its only ally’s defiant, desperate, but rational—and seemingly effective—drive for regime survival through acquisition of the bomb. In order to check the United States, Beijing is now ironically checked by its perceived and professed strategic asset.
Empirically, the PRC keeps on playing its self-anointed role of the mediator and its pretended “neutral” role of the host for peace.55 On the one hand, China increasingly shows displeasure and disapproval of the North Korean bomb by promising more pressure on the defiant Pyongyang, especially after the highly infuriating North Korean tests in 2016.56 The PRC has indeed made some noticeable and potentially profound new gestures and actions: President Xi Jinping took a much-celebrated state visit to South Korea in July 2014 to toast the “special” and “traditional” Sino-Korean friendship but has largely turned a cold shoulder to North Korean leaders, changing a traditional routine of his predecessors who would visit Pyongyang before Seoul.57 Beijing has also openly joined some international sanctions on Pyongyang’s nuclear program, especially in the area of financial transactions. China indeed has lots more power over North Korea since it is the “largest and the dominant” foreign donor and patron,58 literally feeding the DPRK. Yet, without much genuine confidence about Seoul’s future strategic reorientation in the China-US competition as the trade-off, and also dreading the consequences of a collapsing DPRK with the bomb, Beijing seems to still have no strategic intention or political will to really apply its potentially decisive but likely one-shot pressure to seriously cripple North Korea into submission on the nuclear issue. Like what happened to another former ally, Albania, in the 1970s and 1980s, Beijing’s seemingly powerful leverage may well, once applied, have only a one-shot effect and then quickly force its beneficiary to run to the enemy’s camp (that of the United States) and become an open nemesis with lightning speed.59 Indeed, in the spring of 2016, some in Beijing had already circulated a supposed Japanese report based on an alleged DPRK “internal document” showing that Kim Jong-un “now hates China more than the U.S. and South Korea” and issued orders to “resist Chinese repression policies.”60 Enhancing rather than reducing American power in Northeast Asia, though it may not negatively impact China’s national interest, is categorically unacceptable to the CCP. Once again, the CCP’s political needs and calculus dictate the Chinese foreign policy. Perhaps also, Beijing seems to know what some American analysts have concluded: “North Korea was never serious about giving up a nuclear program . . . that it saw as vital to regime protection and internal legitimacy.”61
On the other hand, the negative consequences brought by the North Korean bomb on Chinese national interest and national security are now growing and have started to concern the Chinese foreign policy community and the increasingly nationalistic Chinese elites at large. It may have then started to affect the CCP’s political calculation centered on its regime survival and security. In 2013, a senior Chinese official and analyst, Deng Yuwen, who was the deputy editor of a major journal of the CCP’s Central Party School, characterized the DPRK as a “Kim Dynasty” that is now increasingly a major liability, even a lethal danger, for China and called for Beijing to “abandon” Pyongyang in favor of denuclearization and Korean unification.62 Despite that such views are in fact widely shared inside China, however, Beijing still curbs them publicly, in this case by penalizing Deng with a paid suspension.63 Nevertheless, Deng (lately a member of an “unofficial” think tank in Beijing) continued to publish overseas about a pending collapse of the DPRK in ten to fifteen years.64 Such occasionally open expression of harsh Chinese views, effective or not in influencing Pyongyang, signifies the mood in Beijing.
In reality, while continuing its shielding of Pyongyang on issues of human rights, Beijing has now shown more clearly that it opposes DPRK’s new nuclear tests. Geting rid of the North Korean bomb (or at least limiting the chain reactions that are likely to follow, without toppling the Pyongyang regime or driving it to defect to the United States) remains the top PRC diplomatic objective. And to make the United States and its allies do the heavy lifting is naturally smart thinking, even though that means Beijing has to grudgingly continue to rely on the credible “extended deterrence” provided by the US nuclear umbrella in Northeast Asia to prevent the easily accomplished Japanese and ROK nuclearization.65 Thus, Beijing has essentially urged the United States, and its allies, to also accept North Korea’s nuclear status and ideally share the Chinese burden of financially sustaining the DPRK so as to, hopefully, buy a possible denuclearization or at least nonproliferation and continue the status quo on the Korean Peninsula.66 The US policy since 2013 has shown that the Chinese effort may have been somewhat effective.67
To pursue the CCP’s political interest and China’s national interest, which are in conflict with regard to the issue of the North Korean nuclear program, Beijing is often visibly tiring of the DPRK and increasingly frustrated but still “unable to abandon” Pyongyang.68 This is especially true when China is yet to have its much craved “Rich Country and Strong Army” so as to rid the CCP of its eternal fear of regime nonsurvival.69 Stuck in its endless struggle to resist, reduce, and replace American power and American leadership, Beijing thus ironically allows and even finances the North Korean bomb, canceling much of the geopolitical gains made by the prosperous Chinese economy and the rapid buildup of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in East Asia. New ideas are often simply suppressed. For example, senior government analysts in Beijing have already openly warned against people who “use the [North] Korean issue” to smuggle in and instigate “a color revolution in China.”70 The CCP appears to be afraid that an honest and thorough nationalist reexamination of China’s failed policy about the North Korean bomb and criticisms of its Pyongyang comrades may start and inflame a nationalist political movement in China to threaten the party’s rule. Therefore, rational and even crafty for the CCP leadership, China’s policy toward the North Korean bomb has been mainly expedient and reactionary, clearly suboptimal to China’s national interest.
Conclusion
Just like elsewhere, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, where there seems to be a costly and consequential split in Chinese foreign policy between China’s national/people’s interest and Beijing’s political interest,71 in the Korean Peninsula there is also an impact on Chinese diplomacy of a divorce between China’s national interest and the CCP’s core mission of regime survival. Nourished by the surging calls of the PRC statist nationalism or patriotism, the rising Chinese power is already seen exercising a “new” leadership in East Asia as part of the overall strategic game with the United States. The CCP hopes to reduce and replace the dreaded American power in the region through acquiring deference and submission based on fear or courting, to be generated by achieving a power parity, even superiority, in the region versus the United States. This is further powered by the “important decision to build China into a great maritime power” made by the CCP leadership—an unspecified but grand new plan for the expansion of Chinese maritime presence and power.72 An outspoken spokesman of the PLA openly declared that the PRC must build up its military power as fast as it can so to “make foes suffer and give friends goodies” and that “only when we are not afraid of the United States anymore, other nations will then be afraid of us.”73
Unfortunately, however, China’s only treaty ally has come into the middle of that grand strategy for its own political interest. The nuclear North Korea has compromised Beijing’s new position of power and leadership. Between the North Korean nuclear bomb and the United States, Beijing has so far largely chosen Pyongyang, however resentfully, compromising and undermining its new power and freedom of action thus at the expense of China’s national interest. Without a major political change in China that lessens the CCP’s dictation of Chinese foreign policy or a major geopolitical shift such as a realignment in Northeast Asia, Beijing will continue to walk the tightwire of keeping the nuclear North Korea safe while dealing with the United States to hopefully deter Pyongyang’s further nuclear ambitions and especially prevent a chain reaction that may lead to a nuclear Japan. Total denuclearization of the DPRK now appears to be realistically a low priority for Beijing, even though Beijing and Moscow still repeat their wishes for more efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula through the largely defunct Six-Party Talks.74 To perhaps illustrate how Pyongyang thinks about the Chinese and Russians, however, Kim Jong-un did not attend the Russian military parade to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War II in May 2015, when Moscow could really have used a show of support from the North Koreans as it was being shunned by the West for its annexation of Crimea. Kim also refused to attend the Chinese version of that parade in Beijing in September 2015.
Opportunities still exist, though, for the continuation of peace and stability in Northeast Asia. The overlap of China’s national interest and the CCP’s political interest with regard to the North Korean bomb may in fact emerge and grow to prompt more effective Chinese efforts for the NPT and denuclearization. An intersection of US and Chinese diplomatic objectives may also continue and affect this issue. A window of opportunity thus exists, and may even widen, for concerted action by the United States and China to seriously control the situation and to eventually get rid of the festering nuclear issue in Northeast Asia so as to prevent a nuclear chain reaction, which would be contrary to both American and Chinese interests.
Lately, Beijing seems to be firm on ensuring that the North Korean provocations stay under a safe limit. More skillful management of China’s ties with North Korea may help to deter Pyongyang and keep the North Korean bomb secured. Worried about their own regime survival in the same way, Beijing and Pyongyang may have a rather common sense about how to play the nuclear card safely in order to maximize political and economic benefits, without getting burned by a real military confrontation with the United States and its allies. The schizophrenic policy driven by the conflicting Chinese national interest versus the CCP’s political interest may continue. After gestures and moves to show displeasure about the DPRK provocations, Beijing soon made conciliatory and accommodating statements through the new Chinese ambassador to the DPRK, Li Jinjun, who incidentally was only allowed to meet Kim Jong-un more than two months after arriving on the job, a very unusually cold treatment of an envoy. After Xi Jinping visited Seoul in 2014, a top CCP leader, Liu Yunshan, went to Pyongyang in 2015. After joining the new UN sanctions punishing Pyongyang in March 2016, Beijing quickly acted to “protect” the DPRK from harsher-still US sanctions. The PRC may intend to have the best of both worlds: to prevent nuclear proliferation and a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia while continuing to resist and reduce American power through rebalancing and enhancing its ties with Pyongyang so as to “deepen cooperation” with its ideological comrade.75 Pyongyang, however, defiantly tested its “biggest” nuclear bomb on September 9, 2016.76 As expected, Beijing condemned the test but blamed all sides other than China and urged calm for “stability.”77
A diminution, even dismantling, of the US-ROK alliance (such as the idea proposed by some South Korean analysts “to limit the strategic flexibility of US forces stationed in South Korea, the most sensitive issue to China, to the objective of maintaining peace on and stability of the Korean Peninsula”78) and a new PRC-ROK united front (first in the name of “against Japan”) may effectively encourage many inside the PRC to adopt a new policy toward the DPRK and persuade Beijing to get really serious about the North Korean bomb and even support a ROK-led Korean unification. But, just as there are significant doubts about and opposition to a rapid Korean unification inside and outside South Korea itself,79 profound questions remain about if, what, and how the South Koreans would ever be willing to pay Beijing for getting rid of the North Korean bomb. An evident chain reaction of the North Korean bomb, such as serious attempts by Japan to follow suit, would also powerfully alter Beijing’s rationale. Much, of course, depends still on what transpires in China-US relations.80 To Chinese, the question is not if or whether the PRC should or would abandon North Korea—it is just a matter of right price and right timing.81 The CCP’s political interest, rather than China’s national interest, is the main—even sole—criterion. A keen observer noted in 2015 that the nuclear North Korea, with its concerned efforts to develop effective delivery systems such as submarine-launched ballistic missiles, has already infringed on China’s “core interests,” including its political interest of regime survival and security, and may thus change the game to cause Beijing to alter its failed policy toward Pyongyang.82 Given the analysis in this chapter, it is clear that the nuclear DPRK has indeed cost China in terms of its national interest and national security but has had so far relatively light impact on the real core interest of the PRC diplomacy: the political survival and power of the CCP served by the pursuit of the three-Rs strategy against the United States. If and when Beijing deems that the damages caused by the North Korean bomb to Chinese national interests and national security start to impair the CCP regime and reduce, even cancel, the payoff from upsetting and costing the United States in the region, China may then be fully expected to deal with North Korean denuclearization more seriously and aggressively. The catch is that, by that time, it may be way too late already, and the nuclear chain reaction may have already taken place in East Asia. For one thing, Seoul has finally decided to deploy THAAD, and Beijing has openly vented its anger and vowed to take actions of revenge.83
Last, of course, there is the danger that the North Korean nuclear issue may get out of control, given the inevitable misperceptions and miscalculations that have abundantly colored the history of East Asian international relations over the past century. If push comes to shove, an externally forced denuclearization could drive a desperate regime in Pyongyang to do desperate things,84 with uncertain but likely grave consequences for China’s national security, economic prosperity, and ultimately the CCP’s power.85 In that sense, the nuclear North Korea may have already acquired significant deterrence against and meaningful confinement of the mighty rising China, with just five nuclear tests and some rudimentary bombs and missiles.86 Chinese analysts have indeed acknowledged that and have started to suggest to Americans as well that they “treat the DPRK as a [legitimate] nuclear power” in any future denuclearization talks.87 That lesson, of course, could be easily picked up by China’s other neighbors and may materialize further to constitute more costs to be borne by the Chinese nation and the Chinese people for the continuation of the CCP/PRC political system.
Notes
1. “Xi Zongshuji 15 pian wenzhang xitong chanshu ‘zhongguo meng’ ” [General Secretary Xi systematically elaborated ‘China Dream’ in 15 articles], June 19, 2013, http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/0619/c40531–21891787.html. For more on the official version of the China Dream, see CCP Central Document Studies Bureau, Xi Jinping guangyu shixian zhonghua minzu weida fuxing de zhongguo meng lunshu zhaibian[Selections of Xi Jinping’s words on realizing the China Dream for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation] (Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian, 2013). For an analysis of this China Dream, see Ming Wan, “Xi Jinping’s ‘China Dream’: Same Bed, Different Dreams?” Asian Forum, August 2, 2013.
2. David Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011); Robert Sutter, Chinese Foreign Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); John J. Mearsheimer, “Can China Rise Peacefully?” National Interest, October 25, 2014.
3. Ely Ratner, Elbridge Colby, Andrew Erickson, Zachary Hosford, and Alexander Sullivan, More Willing and Able: Charting China’s International Security Activism (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2015).
4. Sheila A. Smith, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
5. Shen Dingli, “Changing Security Environment in Northeast Asia and the Trust-Building Process on the Korean Peninsula,” in The Trust-Building Process and Korean Unification, ed. Choi Jinwook (Seoul: KINU, 2014): 89–110.
6. Yuan-kang Wang, Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
7. Steven Walt, “Dealing with a Chinese Monroe Doctrine,” New York Times, May 3, 2012.
8. The Beijing-Pyongyang military alliance is based on the PRC-DPRK Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance Treaty, first signed in 1961, automatically renewed twice, and currently effective until 2021.
9. For how the CCP repeatedly ceded Chinese territories for its regime survival and security, see M. Taylor Fravel, “Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation: Explaining China’s Compromises in Territorial Disputes,” International Security 30 (Fall 2005): 46–83. For how the Chinese foreign policy has always been shaped by the CCP’s domestic political agenda, see John W. Garver, China’s Quest: Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
10. Niall Ferguson, “What ‘Chimerica’ Hath Wrought,” American Interest, January–February 2009; Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 2009); Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (New York: Norton, 2011); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). For an Asian optimistic view, see Hoo Tiang Boon, “G2 or Chimerica? The Growing Institutionalisation of US-China Relations,” Eurasia Review, RSIS, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, no. 137, July 23, 2013.
11. Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
12. Fei-Ling Wang, “Resisting, Reducing, and Replacing: China’s Strategy and Policy towards the United States,” in China’s Domestic Politics and Foreign Policies, and Major Countries’ Strategies on China, ed. Jung-Ho Bae (Seoul: KINU, 2012), 155–86. For a later expansion of this thesis, see Fei-Ling Wang, “China’s Four-R Strategy toward the United States: Resisting, Reducing, Replacing and Reordering,” in Studies on China, ed. Mahendra Gaur (New Delhi: Foreign Policy Research Centre, 2015).
13. Author’s interview in Washington, May 2015.
14. Rosemary Foot and Andrew Walter, China, the United States, and Global Order (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
15. Fei-Ling Wang, “Beijing’s Incentive Structure: The Pursuit of Preservation, Prosperity, and Power,” in China Rising: Power and Motivation in Chinese Foreign Policy, ed. Yong Deng and Fei-Ling Wang (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Top PRC diplomats openly declare that China’s main foreign policy goal is indeed to safeguard its political system. Dai Binguo quoted in Li Jing, “Shoulun zhongmei jingji duihua” [First round of Sino-American economic dialogue], China News Agency, July 29, 2009; Wang Yi, “Shixi xinxing quanqiuzhili tixi de goujian ji zhidu jianshe” [Analyzing the building and institutional construction of a new type of global governance system], Guowai Lilun Dongtai, no. 8 (2013): 5–11.
16. Shen Zhihua, “Zhongchao guangxi jingtian neimu” [The shocking inside story of Sino-Korean relations], September 3, 2013, http://history.sina.com.cn/his/zl/2013–09–03/102952867.shtml.
17. Fei-Ling Wang, “Changing Views: Chinese Perception of the United States–South Korea Alliance,” in Problems of Post-Communism (formerly Problems of Communism) (July–August 1996): 25–34; Fei-Ling Wang, Tacit Acceptance and Watchful Eyes: Beijing’s Views about the U.S.-ROK Alliance (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, January 1997); Fei-Ling Wang, “Joining the Major Powers for the Status Quo: China’s Views and Policy on Korean Reunification,” Pacific Affairs 72 (Summer 1999): 167–85; Fei-Ling Wang, “Looking East: China’s Policy toward the Korean Peninsula,” in Engagement with North Korea: A Viable Alternative, ed. Sung Chull Kim and David C. Kang (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009), 47–72.
18. Jung-Ho Bae, Young-Ho Park, Jae-Jeok Park, Dongsoo Kim, and Jangho Kim, The Perceptions of Northeast Asia’s Four States on Korean Unification (Seoul: KINU, 2014), 28–37; Liu Ming, Wang Cheng-zhi, and Cui Rong-wei, “Chinese Perspectives on the East Asian Security Environment and the Korean Peninsula,” in The Trust-Building Process and Korean Unification, ed. Choi Jinwook (Seoul: KINU, 2014), 69.
19. Xi Jinping, “Zai yaxin wuci waizhang huiyi kaimoshi shang de jianghua” (Speech at the opening ceremony of the 5th CICA Foreign Ministers Meeting), Xinhua, April 28, 2016.
20. Author’s interviews with Chinese officials, officers, and scholars, 2012–14.
21. Carla Freeman, ed., China and North Korea: Strategic and Policy Perspectives from a Changing China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
22. For example, Beijing reportedly lobbied Washington to lift the new sanctions so as not to really crush the North Koran economy. Michelle Nichols, Louis Charbonneau, and James Pearson, “Exclusive: U.N. Lifts North Korea Sanctions on Four Ships at China’s Request,” Reuters, March 22, 2016.
23. “Meinuying zhiwang jiang chaohe wenti waibao gei zhongguo” [The US should not count on outsourcing the Korean nuclear issue to China], Huanqiu Shibao, editorial, April 25, 2016.
24. Jayshree Bajoria and Beina Xu, “The Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s Nuclear Program,” CFR Backgrounders, September 30, 2013; Xiaodong Liang, “The Six-Party Talks at a Glance,” Arms Control Association, May 4, 2012, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/6partytalks.
25. Scott A. Snyder, “China’s Persistent Support for the Six-Party Talks,” Atlantic, September 19, 2013; Tony Munroe and Ben Blanchard, “North Korea’s Neighbors Push to Resume Six-Party Talks,” Reuters, March 26, 2015.
26. James Reilly, “The Curious Case of China’s Aid to North Korea,” Asian Survey 54 (November–December 2014): 1158–83.
27. Author’s interviews of Chinese diplomats and officials, 2012–13. PRC citizens have also started to complain openly about this: for example, “Zhongguo wei shemu hui yuanzhu bei chaoxian” [Why is China aiding North Korea?], July 23, 2007, http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-worldlook-155877–1.shtml.
28. “Chaoxian yinggai jiji di zouchu zhanlue gaoya” [(North) Korea should actively walk out the strategic pressure], Huanqiu Shibao, editorial, April 11, 2013; author’s interviews with Chinese analysts, 2016.
29. Author’s interviews of Chinese analysts and officials in 2010–15.
30. Jaewoo Choo, “China’s Frustration over North Korea: Editorial Analysis, Dec. 2012–April 2013,” Korean Journal of Security Affairs 18 (June 2013): 4–21.
31. David Francis, “Beijing Blasts New U.S. Sanctions on North Korea,” Foreign Policy, March 17, 2016.
32. Tong Zhao, “Trust-Building in the U.S.-Chinese Nuclear Relationship: Impact of Operational-Level Engagement,” PhD thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014.
33. Baogen Zhou, “Zhongguo yu hebukuosan jizhi de yizhong jiangou zhuyi fenxi” [China and the global nuclear nonproliferation regime: a constructivist analysis], Shijie Zhengzhi yu Jingji, no. 2 (2003): 23–27.
34. Li Bin & Zhao Tong eds., Lijie zhongguo hesiwei[Understanding Chinese nuclear thinking], (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian, 2016).
35. Li Bin and Xiao Tiefeng, “Congsheng hewuqi de zuoyong” [Rethinking the role of nuclear weapons], Waijiao Pinglun, no. 3 (2010): 3–9; Du Binwei, “Fangzhi hewuqi kuosan jizhi de pingxi yji chulu” [On the nuclear nonproliferation system and its solutions], Shehui Zhuyi Yanjiu, no. 2 (2010): 132–36.
36. The outspoken PLA major general Zhu Chenghu was noted by international observers for such assertions but has only got a mild reprimand. “Jiefangjun shaojiang hewu ximeilun de zhenxiang” [True story of PLA major general calling for attacking the US with nuclear weapons], Fenghuang Wang, September 5, 2015; “Zhu Chdnghu zao jiguo” [Zhu Chenghu is Reprimanded], Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, December 23, 2005. In an interview in 2013, Zhu confirmed to the author that he was mildly punished for his views regarding the use nuclear weapons against the United States.
37. Senior Chinese analysts speaking at the US-China Seminar on Chinese Nuclear Perspectives, Washington, May 12, 2015.
38. Lyle J. Goldstein and Andrew S. Erickson, China’s Nuclear Force Modernization (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2005); David E. Sanger and William J. Broadmay, “China Making Some Missiles More Powerful,” New York Times, May 17, 2015.
39. Zhang Tuosheng, “Chaohe wenti yu zhongguo zhengce” [(North) Korean nuclear issue and Chinese Policy], Guoji Anquan Yanjiu, no. 5 (2013): 52–64.
40. For an example of mainstream Chinese views, see Li Dunqiu, “Buneng ‘fangqi’ Chaoxian zhe 65nian de huoban” [Can’t “abandon” the 65-year partner (North) Korea], Huanqiu Shibao, Beijing, November 2, 2014; Cao Shigong, “Shi chaoxian wei baiynalang zhe que daju guan” [Those who think (North) Korea is an ungrateful wolf do not have macro views], Huanqiu Shibao, December 2, 2014; and Wang Hongguang, “Renhe huanhe bandao jushi de judong dou yingdang shou huanying” [Should welcome any move of détente on the peninsula], Huanqiu Shibao, January 27, 2015.
41. Gu Guoliang, “Cooperation and Differences between China and the U.S. in Handling the North Korean Nuclear Issue,” Korean Review 2 (May 2012): 63–80.
42. Zhou Huilai, “Zhongguo fangqi chaoxian hai weishi guozao” [It’s too early for China to abandon North Korea], Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, June 15, 2010.
43. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb: Nuclear Balancing Would Mean Stability,” Foreign Affairs 14 (2012).
44. Zhou, “Zhongguo fangqi chaoxian hai weishi guozao.”
45. “Meinuying zhiwang jiang chaohe wenti waibao gei zhongguo.”
46. Author’s interview of a Chinese senior military analyst, 2013.
47. Emily Rauhala, “Kim Jong-un’s Purge of His Uncle May Test Ties with China,” Time, December 9, 2013; “China Loses North Korea Link but May Welcome Purge,” South China Morning Post, December 12, 2013. Jang was rumored to be colluding with Beijing to plot against Kim Jong-un.
48. For an analysis of how North Korea has cleverly and effectively bargained and balanced against China in the post–Cold War era, see Ramon Pacheco Pardo and Jeffrey Reeves, “Weak Power Bargaining with China: Mongolia and North Korea in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of Contemporary China 23 (2014): 1152–73.
49. To a lesser extent, similar resistance to and accommodation of the hegemon by the rising powers are identified with regard to the Iranian nuclear issue. Moritz Pieper, “Chinese, Russian, and Turkish Policies in the Iranian Nuclear Dossier: Between Resistance to Hegemony and Hegemonic Accommodation,” Asian Journal of Peacemaking 2 (2014): 17–36.
50. The Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation, Department of Defense, Washington, April 27, 2015.
51. Donald S. Zagoria, “U.S.-Japan-ROK Trilateral Dialogue,” National Committee on American Foreign Policy, May 2012; Clint Richards, “X-Band and THAAD as Good as Anti-China Trilateral Defense Agreement?” Diplomat, October 24, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/10/x-band-and-thaad-as-good-as-anti-china-trilateral-defense-agreement/.
52. Rajat Pandit, “India, US and Japan to Kick Off Malabar Naval Exercise Tomorrow,” Times of India, July 23, 2014.
53. “China’s Objection of THAAD Deployment in S. Korea,” Vantage Point 38 (March 2015): 18–21; Teng Jianqun, “Why Is China Unhappy with the Deployment of THAAD in the ROK?,” Asan Forum, March 31, 2015, http://www.theasanforum.org/an-chinese-perspective/; Kang Seung-woo, “THAAD Decision Irreversible: Park,” Korean Times, Seoul, August 2, 2016.
54. Aaron Morrison, “Russia and North Korea Space Program,” International Business Times, April 17, 2015.
55. Beijing has constantly tried to persuade Seoul to hold summit talks with Pyongyang to stabilize the situations, for example, as revealed by former ROK president Lee Myung-bak’s memoir published in early 2015. Choe Sang-Hunjan, “North Korea Sought Talks and Attached a Hefty Price Tag, South’s Ex-Leader Says,” New York Times, January 30, 2015.
56. Michael R. Gordon, “China Set to Press North Korea Further on Nuclear Aims, Kerry Says,” New York Times, February 15, 2014; Anthony Kuhn, “Why China Supports New Sanctions against North Korea,” NPR, March 18, 2016.
57. North Korea network expert panel, “China Snubs North Korea with Leader’s Visit to South Korea,” Guardian, July 3, 2014. Yet, Beijing dispatched Liu Yunshan, a top leader, to attend Pyongyang’s big celebration for its party’s seventieth birthday the next year. Fenghuang xinwen (Phoenix news), http://news.ifeng.com/world/special/lysfwcx/, October 12, 2015.
58. Mark E. Manyin and Mary Beth D. Nikitin, “Foreign Assistance to North Korea,” Congressional Research Service, 2014.
59. Liu Zhihe, “Chaoxian: Xia yige albania?” [(North) Korea: The next Albania?], 21ccom.net, July 2, 2015, http://www.21ccom.net/articles/
world/zlwj/20150702126339_all.html.
60. Yue Cheng, “Jin Zhengen duihua chouheng chao meihan” [Kim Jong-un hates China more than US and South Korea], Duowei Xinwen, Beijing, http://global.dwnews.com/news/2016–03–27/59728176.html.
61. Sue Mi Terry and Max Boot, “The Wrong Lessons from North Korea: Avoiding a Nuclear Iran,” Foreign Affairs, April 22, 2015.
62. Deng Yuwen, “China Should Abandon North Korea,” Financial Times, February 27, 2013. Several Chinese analysts the author privately interviewed in 2013 and 2014 “agreed fully” with Deng, although some thought Deng had “just jumped the gun.”
63. Jane Perlez, “Chinese Editor Suspended for Article on North Korea,” New York Times, April 2, 2013.
64. Deng Yuwen, “Chaoxian bengkui de kenengxing jiqi fangshi” [The possibility and ways of a Korean collapse], Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, April 30, 2016.
65. Terence Roehrig, South Korea, Japan and the U.S. Nuclear Umbrella: Extended Deterrence and Nuclear Weapons in the Post–Cold War World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
66. Shannon Tiezzi, “China Responds to North Korea’s Nuclear Threat,” Diplomat, November 21, 2014, http://thediplomat.com/2014/11/china-responds-to-north-koreas-nuclear-threat/; “China Urges US to Accept North Korea’s ‘Olive Branch,’ ” Diplomat, January 17, 2015, http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/china-urges-us-to-accept-north-koreas-olive-branch/.
67. See Terence Roehrig’s chapter in this volume.
68. Julian Ryall, “Frustrated China Unable to Abandon North Korea,” Deutsche Welle, May 22, 2014, http://www.dw.com/en/frustrated-china-unable-to-abandon-north-korea/a-17652998.
69. Hu Jintao, “Meeting the PLA Delegation,” Xinhua and CCTV, March 12, 2011.
70. Ren Weidong, “Jingti jie chaoxian huati zuo zhongguo wenzhang” [Watch out for borrowing Korean topic for Chinese article], Huanqiu Shibao, October 13, 2014.
71. Fei-Ling Wang and Esi A. Elliot, “China in Africa: Presence, Perceptions and Prospects,” Journal of Contemporary China 23 (2014): 1012–32.
72. CCTV, “Xi Jinping: Tuidong haiyang qiangguo jianshe” [Xi Jinping: To push forward the construction of a maritime great power], CCTV news, Beijing, July 31, 2013.
73. PLA Navy major general Yang Yi quoted in Liu Bin et al., “Sijuji ganbu de ‘shijie guan’ ” [Worldviews of the bureau-level officials], Nanfang Zhoumu, Guangzhou, April 27, 2012.
74. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, “Zhonghua renmin gongheguo he erluosi lianbang guanyu shenhua quanmian zhenlue huoban guanxi, changdao hezuo gongyin de linahe shengming” [The joint communiqué by the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation on deepening comprehensive strategic partnership, promoting win-win cooperation], Moscow, May 8, 2015, http://www.mfa.gov.cn/chn//gxh/zlb/smgg/t1262144.htm.
75. Guo Yina and Lu Rui, “Chinese Ambassador to [North] Korea: China and [North] Korea Should Seize the Opportunity to Deepen Cooperation,” Xinhua, May 4, 2015.
76. “North Korea’s ‘Biggest’ Nuclear Test Sparks Global Outrage,” BBC News, September 9, 2016.
77. Xinhua Commentary, “Chaoxian heshiyan rang diqu jushi gengjia fuza” [Korean nuclear test further complicated the regional situation], Xinhua, September 9, 2016.
78. Chung Jae-jung, “Views on Contingency Plan of China under Xi Jinping’s Leadership for Abrupt Serious Development in North Korea,” Vantage Point 38 (April 2015): 40.
79. Sue Mi Terry, “A Korea Whole and Free: Why Unifying the Peninsula Won’t Be So Bad after All,” Foreign Affairs, July–August 2014; John Delury and Chung-in Moon, “A Reunified Theory: Should We Welcome the Collapse of North Korea?” Foreign Affairs, November–December 2014.
80. The United States, especially Congress, seems to be developing more new suspicions about Beijing regarding the latter’s NPT commitment. See Steven Mufson, “Obama’s Quiet Nuclear Deal with China Raises Proliferation Concerns,” Washington Post, May 10, 2015.
81. Zhou Huilai, “Zhongguo fangqi chaoxian hai weishiguozao” [It’s too early for China to abandon (North) Korea], Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore, June 15, 2010; Jane Perlez, “Chinese Annoyance with North Korea Bubbles to the Surface,” New York Times, December 21, 2014. The election of US President Donald Trump and the political scandal involving ROK President Park in late 2016 may indeed create more possibilities and even new openings for Beijing to reconsider its relationship with North Korea.
82. Xu Litai, “Bei han chufan zhongguo hexin liye” [North Korea offends China’s core interest], May 21, 2015, 21ccom, http://21ccom.net/articles/world/qqgc/20150518124817.html.
83. Jun Baoyan, “Zhongguo jundui jianjue baowei guojia liyi” [Chinese military resolutely protects national interests], Jiefangjun Bao, July 13, 2016.
84. See Michael D. Cohen’s chapter in this volume.
85. Chinese officials have started to openly voice this concern. Fu Yin, “People’s Congress Press Conference,” Xinhua, March 4, 2016.
86. See Sung Chull Kim’s chapter in this volume.
87. Senior Chinese scholars and military analysts from Beijing, speaking at the US-China Seminar on Chinese Nuclear Perspectives, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, May 12, 2015.