BEIJING/DANDONG, CHINA – North Korea’s nuclear test Tuesday could push China to take a tougher stance against its longtime ally.
Beijing had earlier signaled a growing unhappiness with Pyongyang by agreeing to tightened U.N. sanctions after the North’s rocket launch in December, surprising China watchers with its unusually tough line and prompting harsh criticism from North Korea.
And while China isn’t expected to abandon its communist neighbor, it appears to be reassessing their ties a year after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took office. The question is for how long Beijing, itself in transition under new leader Xi Jinping, will continue to back Pyongyang’s nettlesome policies.
On Tuesday, China’s foreign minister called North Korea’s ambassador in for a dressing down and demanded Pyongyang cease making further threats, in a show of Beijing’s displeasure over its ally’s latest nuclear test. Yang Jiechi delivered a “stern representation” to Ji Jae Ryong and expressed China’s “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to the test, the ministry said in a statement posted to its website. It did not say if Ji made any response.
However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s initial statement was relatively mild and echoed almost word-for-word Beijing’s responses to North Korea’s first two nuclear tests, in 2006 and 2009.
“Perhaps Kim Jong Un thinks Xi Jinping will indulge him. Perhaps he’s in for a surprise,” said Richard Bush, director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
China is feeling spurned by Kim. Although Beijing welcomed his ascension after his father’s December 2011 death, maintaining flows of aid and investment, the young new ruler has ignored China’s interests in regional stability with his two rocket launches and nuclear test.
“At the start, China gave him (Kim) a warm welcome and, I think, some aid. But we got no gratitude. They take us for granted,” said Jin Canrong, an international affairs expert at Beijing’s Renmin University.
Yet China also sees the North as a crucial buffer against U.S. troops based in South Korea and Japan. It also deeply fears a regime collapse could send swarms of refugees across its border. For those reasons, Beijing is unlikely to cut Pyongyang adrift, even if it pushes its ally harder to end its nuclear provocations and reform its tattered economy.
“China’s not ready to turn the support to North Korea switch to ‘off’ at this stage,” said Roger Cavazos, a North Korea watcher at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability think tank.
Pyongyang’s apparent reluctance to reform its economy ranks among Beijing’s biggest frustrations, and the thorny nature of the bilateral relationship is on show along the frigid Yalu River, which forms part of the border Chinese troops crossed to rescue North Korean forces during the 1950-53 Korean War.
Last week, ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, dozens of North Korean trucks lined up at a customs checkpoint in the Chinese border city of Dandong, loaded with bags of rice, cooking oil, cheap electronics and other daily items that their country’s collapsed industry cannot produce enough of for its 24 million people.
Further south, a much-heralded North Korean economic zone on a pair of islands along the Yalu remains a field of untouched snow behind a newly erected border fence, more than 18 months after it was opened with great fanfare.
The Hwanggumphyong and Wihwa islands zone, one of two such establishments along the border, opened in June 2011, giving rise to hopes that China’s advice was having an impact on the North. Yet local residents say they’ve seen no progress since then, while work on a towering bridge nearby has slowed to a snail’s pace. Meanwhile, thickets of high-rise buildings remain unfinished and empty.
While Kim has made improving the economy a hallmark of his nascent rule, many analysts doubt he will go too far with reforms for fear that change could lead to a loss of control, in turn threatening his authoritarian rule.
“There’s nothing going on around here. North Korea is fine with taking Chinese aid and doing some trade, but its economy doesn’t seem to be changing at all,” said a Dandong businessman who trades with the North.
That leaves the new fence as the dominant feature along the border. The intimidating barrier seeks to block the flow of illegal border crossings, typically Koreans seeking food and work in China or an escape route to South Korea. It also symbolizes China’s fears of instability in North Korea, a steel barrier to contain the chaos.
China is widely credited with keeping its neighbor afloat. Yet it remains unclear how much influence Beijing has with Pyongyang, which despite its patron’s entreaties has refused to return to the Chinese-hosted six-nation talks on the Korean Peninsula’s nuclear disarmament.
In a sign of China’s rising pique, the Foreign Ministry recently took an unusual swipe at North Korea for spending on defense, rocket and nuclear programs instead of the economy. Chinese media outlets have also been running commentaries suggesting the nation’s interests need not be held hostage by its desire for stability in the North.
“If North Korea . . . carries out a third nuclear bomb test, it must pay a heavy price for it. The various kinds of aid it receives from China will be decreased for good reasons . . . we hope the Chinese government will warn North Korea in advance, so that they will not have other fantasies,” the Global Times said in a commentary last week.
The latest test may not be enough to push the new leadership into casting Pyongyang adrift, but Beijing may employ tougher measures, given that it has already upped the ante by agreeing to the tightened U.N. sanctions. If it does, North Korea can’t say it wasn’t warned.
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