MCLC: souring on N. Korea

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: souring on N. Korea
***********************************************************

Source: NYT 
(2/16/13):http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/world/asia/some-chinese-are-sou
ring-on-being-north-koreas-best-friend.html

Some Chinese Are Souring on Being North Korea’s Best FriendEugene
Hoshiko/Associated Press
By JANE PERLEZ 

YANJI CITY, China — Beds shook and teacups clattered in this town
bordering North Korea, less than 100 miles from the site where the North
said it detonated a nuclear test that exploded midmorning in the midst of
Chinese New Year festivities.

“I’m worried about radiation,” said a 26-year-old woman as she served
customers in a bookstore here. “My family lives in the mountains close to
the border. They felt the bed shake on the day of the test. I have no idea
whether it is safe or not, though the government says it is.”

At home and abroad, China has long been regarded as North Korea’s best
friend, but at home that sense of fraternity appears to be souring as
ordinary people express anxiety about possible fallout from the test last
Tuesday. The fact that North Korea detonated the device on a special
Chinese holiday did not sit well, either.

Among Chinese officials, the mood toward the young North Korean leader,
Kim Jong-un, has also darkened. The Chinese government is reported by
analysts to be wrestling with what to do about a man who, in power for a
little more than a year, thumbed his nose at China by ignoring its appeals
not to conduct the country’s third nuclear test, and who shows no
gratitude for China’s largess as the main supplier of oil and food.

“The public does not want China to be the only friend of the North Korean
government, and we’re not even recognized by North Korea as a friend,”
said Jin Qiangyi, director of the Center for North and South Korea Studies
at Yanbian University in Yanji City. “For the first time the Chinese
government has felt the pressure of public opinion not to be too friendly
with North Korea.”

With its site near the border, Yanji City has long been a hub of North
Korean affairs inside China, and people here have a relatively good
understanding of their opaque and recalcitrant neighbor. This is often
where desperate defectors from the impoverished police state first seek
shelter, where legal and illegal cross-border trade thrives, and where
much of the population has roots in North Korea.

That familiarity breeds mixed attitudes. There is tolerance among some
toward the regime — mostly from those who profit financially. But there is
also great anger among many ethnic Korean Chinese about the almost
incalculable suffering of the people living under the Kim dynasty, which
relies on gulags to deal with even the glimmers of dissent and where years
of failed economic policies have left many people near the edge of
starvation.

The test detonated at Punggye-ri in northeastern North Korea last week was
considerably more powerful than its first nuclear test in 2006 and as
large as, or larger than, one in 2009, according to Western and Chinese
experts. It remained unclear whether the test was fueled by plutonium or
uranium; a uranium test would exacerbate tensions, suggesting the North
had a new and faster way of building its nuclear fuel stockpile.
But to some Chinese, the technicalities seem irrelevant.

In postings on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, people asked about
the possible dangers of radioactive fallout from a nuclear test. Many said
they were dissatisfied by assurances from the Ministry of Environmental
Protection that it had checked for radiation at various border areas after
the blast and announced that the levels were normal.

Those fears come amid growing uncertainties by some Chinese foreign policy
experts about the continued close relationship with North Korea. In the
aftermath of the test, a prominent Chinese political scientist with a
penchant for provocative ideas, Shen Dingli at Fudan University in
Shanghai, wrote on the Web site of Foreign Policy,
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/13/lips_and_teeth_china_nort
h_korea> based in Washington, that it was time for China “to cut its
losses and cut North Korea loose.”

Other experts suggested the test could worsen relations between the North
and China and urged China’s new leadership to consider taking a tougher
stance to curb the North’snuclear weapons
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/atomic_weapons/index.htm
l?inline=nyt-classifier> program, which appears to be advancing after some
early technical difficulties.

Such opinions, coupled with new worries among some ordinary Chinese
people, pose a problem for the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, according
to Mr. Jin, who often goes to Beijing to participate in policy discussions
about North Korea.

If China decides to go along with the United States’ calls for much more
stringent sanctions than exist now, there are fears among China’s policy
makers that the North’s government would collapse, possibly setting the
stage for mayhem on the border and a reunification of Korea as an American
ally. But if China maintains the status quo, it could face mounting
criticism among its own citizens.

If it decided to take a harder stance, China could punish North Korea by
curtailing its oil shipments, by far the major source of fuel in the
energy-starved North, Mr. Jin said.

The oil is piped from Dandong, southwest of here. China charges North
Korea the highest price of any country to which it exports oil, said Peter
Hayes, executive director of the Nautilus Institute
<http://nautilus.org/>, a San Francisco-based policy group that
specializes in North Korea. Despite the cost, those fuel shipments are
considered essential to the government’s survival, even as they possibly
create resentment in the North against its patron.

Another option for China would be to cut the trade of its own businessmen,
many of whom have become disillusioned by the tough deals that North Korea
imposes, including demanding that Chinese enterprises in the North build
their own roads and supply their own electricity.
Western analysts have acknowledged that United Nations sanctions cannot
force real change in North Korea as long as China continues its material
support.

The Chinese government had hoped that Mr. Kim would be more progressive
than his father and drop the North Korean policy called “military first,”
which means a heavy financial commitment for the nuclear program and the
army despite the nation’s dire economic conditions, analysts say. But Mr.
Kim has defied Chinese advice that he become an economic reformer,
settling instead for small pilot programs to free up commerce that
analysts say have not yet accomplished much.

Close to Yanji City there are five border crossings into North Korea.

At two of them, there was no sign of any traffic on Friday or Saturday.
The crossing at Quanhe had been closed for Chinese New Year until Friday
morning, and was closed again at the weekend for the birthday of Kim
Jong-il, the father of the current North Korean leader.

At the crossing at Tumen, Chinese couples strolled along the icy pathway
that marks a strip of no-man’s land that leads to the barbed wire of the
North Korean border. A single Chinese soldier stood at attention.

An elderly gentleman paid 50 cents at a stall for tourists to look through
a telescope aimed at the row of plain, low-rise buildings on the other
side and gray, snow streaked hills in the distance. Signs in English and
Chinese warned visitors about “no photography or shouting at Korea.”
Despite the lull in activity, cross-border legal and illegal trade amounts
to about $10 billion a year, said Mr. Jin, the policy expert on the North
at the university here.

The National Bureau of Statistics estimated that in the overall Chinese
economy, the cross-border trade with North Korea was so small it was not a
factor, he said. The trade’s importance is based, instead, on its
contribution to the stability of the North’s leadership, which not only
relies on Chinese investment, but also often turns a blind eye to
unauthorized shipments of food and other goods to help keep its suffering
people from considering revolt.

“China’s options have reached an impasse,” said Mr. Jin. “For now China
chooses to maintain the situation in North Korea, not because it wants to
prop up the North Korean government but because it doesn’t see another
choice.”

Mia Li contributed research.