MCLC: Sino-DPRK relations

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Sino-DPRK relations
***********************************************************

Source: China Beat (12/23/11): http://www.thechinabeat.org/?p=4052

Bow Before the Portrait: Sino-North Korean Relations Enter the Kim Jong Un
Era
By Adam Cathcart

The pigs were being slaughtered in the streets when the news of Kim Jong
Il¹s death arrived in Dachuan, a small logging village in the mountains of
western Sichuan province. Over the immense and extended cacophony of the
blood-letting, the retired head of the local bank explained, with a bit of
apologetic joy, that the villagers were getting ready for Spring Festival,
then turned back to the news from Pyongyang, shaking his head at the
retrograde tendencies of China¹s Korean socialist brothers.

It was a fitting juxtaposition, watching events in North Korea amid the
production of reams of red pork with rich peasants in China. Meat, after
all, was the sine qua non of success for Kim Il Sung and his son, both of
whom proclaimed their magnanimous desire to make good on the promise of
³rice with meat soup² in every pot (and a tile roof for every rural
house). Yet, as even a cursory read of virtually any analysis or short
trip to the North Korean border with China can attest, the battle for
higher living standards‹as opposed to monuments‹in essentially every place
outside of the DPRK¹s model capital has been lost. Mao Zedong said he
could do without meat, making revolution with just grain and rifles, but
North Korea has ample rifles but no grain, and the revolution is dead.

Amid the welter of random, confusing, instructive, and occasionally cruel
responses to Kim Jong Il¹s death among Chinese, Mao Zedong¹s death in 1976
has been a touchstone. This particular parallel, encouraged by Chinese
state media, is significant because it implicitly holds out the hope that
a market-oriented North Korean Deng Xiaoping might yet emerge out of the
factions assumed to be maneuvering in Pyongyang. But North Korea is hardly
exiting the ³fractured rebellion² of a Cultural Revolution. The DPRK
remains instead in the thrall of a persistently centralized leadership
system in which Kim Il Sung and his son had purged, jailed, exiled, or
killed all the advocates of possible systemic alternatives. In Andrei
Lankov¹s phrase, the ³blade of state of state remains sharp enough to cut
off its diseased parts,² and gazing at the grizzled ranks of the Pyongyang
senior elite, it seems unlikely that some wholesale adoption of
Chinese-style market reforms is in the offing.

The Reluctant Embrace of Kim Jong Un

On December 21, Wen Jiabao went to the North Korean embassy in Beijing,
bowed to Kim Jong Il¹s portrait, and said: ³We believe that with the
Korean Workers¹ Party under the leadership of comrade Kim Jong Un, the
North Korean people will certainly powerfully pass through their grief,
pushing forward to new successes in socialist construction.² It was a turn
of events which but a few years earlier would have been seen as unlikely.
Since Kim Jong Il¹s stroke in 2008, and the rumors of Kim Jong Un¹s
existence as a viable successor to his father in early 2009, the CCP has
gone through a number of stances toward the idea, ending in the acceptance
of the successor. In the aftermath of the North Korean nuclear test of May
2009, Beijing loosened its grip on journalism about the DPRK in the
Chinese media, using the new latitude to serve the Party¹s foreign policy
purposes. Publications about the North Korean role in starting the Korean
War were suddenly acceptable, and, more importantly, a number of
unflattering portrayals of the ³weird² Kim family began to emerge. Chinese
public intellectuals like Zhu Feng and Shen Dingli speculated about rapid
changes in North Korea and the CCP made clear its desire, at the very
least, for North Korea to transition to a more collective leadership
centered in the Korean Workers¹ Party rather than in the enfeebled Kim
Jong Il or his relatively unknown successor.

However, after Kim Jong Un¹s formal unveiling at the September 2010 KWP
Congress in Pyongyang, the discourse shifted decisively toward a more
supportive line toward the ³young general.² Likenesses between Chinese and
North Korean political cultures were emphasized; in mass magazine
portrayals, CCP scholars encouraged Kim Jong Un to ³make his mark via some
achievements in writing about communist theory.²

Even Kim Jong Un¹s foreign experience was highlighted in Chinese media as
beneficial. It seemed that in some important ways, Kim Jong Un could be
used to send home the message to China¹s unreceptive youth: It may be fine
to spend a few years studying abroad and fall in love with Michael Jordan,
but when you come home, it¹s all about the Young Pioneers and Party
building. More importantly, the junior Kim¹s probable role in North Korean
attacks on the South Korean vessel ³Cheonan² in March 2010 and on
Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010 was downplayed in the PRC. South Korean
stories which asserted that Kim Jong Un had assumed control over North
Korea¹s northern border security, like most narratives focused on
refugees, did not enter the public discourse in China.

The CCP¹s evident nervousness about stability in North Korea, and its
protective stance toward the DPRK, means that no loud public doubts about
Kim Jong Un¹s inexperience are presently welcome. Suggestions that the
successor is incapable of leading, when allowed at all, are placed in the
mouths of foreign experts like the International Crisis Group¹s Daniel
Pinkston, and qualified with some implication that South Korean media
reports could all be false anyway.

North Korea appears to have made only a minor rhetorical concession to
Chinese pressure by referring to the idea of ³uniting around the Korean
Workers¹ Party and Comrade Kim Jong Un,² a phrase codified in the DPRK¹s
official response to the Chinese Foreign Ministry¹s initial statement of
regret at Kim Jong Il¹s death.
Economic and Cultural Exchanges

The legacy of Kim Jong Il¹s rapid‹one might almost say rushed‹advancement
of cooperation with China in 2010 and 2011 hangs in the balance, and the
CCP will be eager for cross-border trade and tourism to resume. A rather
explicit December 20 editorial in the Huanqiu Shibao, entitled ³China is
the Reliable Friend Upon Which North Korea Can Rely during Transition,²
stated: ³We suggest that as soon as it is appropriate, Chinese high-level
leaders go to North Korea, where they will intimately communicate with
North Korea¹s new leaders at this special time that Pyongyang can send a
distinct signal to the world [by taking the Chinese path].²

In the weeks prior to Kim Jong Il¹s death, China had been pressing for
more clarification and motion on the two new island trade zones in the
Yalu River near Sinuiju. While the Chinese side has been investing an
immense amount of money in construction of what is essentially a new city
outside of Dandong and a large new super-highway worthy bridge to the
DPRK, the North Pyong¹an leadership has been everything that privately
infuriates Chinese partners: uncommunicative, inaccessible, and (according
to the Daily NK) suddenly purged.

Far more promising is the development at Rason, on the far northeastern
edge of the Korean peninsula, where China has brought in an old Korea hand
named Tian Baozhu, a Kim Il Sung University graduate and former
Consul-General in Pusan, to set conditions for further Chinese investment
in this highly-desired port which finally offers eastern Jilin and
Heilongjiang provinces access to the sea and cheaper means of shipping
coal to ports like Shanghai. Rason remains a source of rumors from South
Korea and the active advocates of immediate North Korean collapse, who
often imply that China is not simply constructing the port but has secured
it with a few thousand PLA troops. Such impressions are unlikely to slow
the CCP in its push for more access and faster development of Chinese
business interests, particularly in the minerals sector, in North Korea.

Chinese cultural exchanges with North Korea have been, in the DPRK
context, incredibly extensive. The oft-maligned Korean Central News Agency
has opened up exchanges with Xinhua, performing arts delegations tour
across the Chinese mainland, and a Confucius Institute is open in
Pyongyang with some 800 students. Tourism to the DPRK, another area of
possible peril‹seven Chinese tourists and businessmen were killed in a
mysterious crash outside of Pyongyang on Thanksgiving Day‹is an area where
the Chinese side puts a great deal of stock and aims to develop further
from even remote cities like Qiqihar and Mudanjiang. The extent to which
the North Korean side remains committed to the speed and intensity of
these relationships is something which the Chinese government is
particularly keen to observe.

Border security on the northern frontier remains a complex and sensitive
issue, as well as military-to-military relations. The fact that eight
North Korean border guards were reputed to have run headlong into the
Liaoning hills in late November is not to be forgotten; the fact that
China was hosting the Japanese Self-Defense Forces Navy in Qingdao (of all
places) from December 19-23 is another area which under normal conditions
might cause strain on Sino-North Korean relations.

Kim Jong Il¹s death does not alter the fundamentals of the bilateral
relationship, but it does offer an opportunity to take stock of this most
fraught and significant relationship. The speed and intimacy with which it
continues is of interest to us all.

Adam Cathcart is Assistant Professor History at Pacific Lutheran
University in Tacoma, Washington and the editor of SinoNK.com.