MCLC: China exerts influence over Korea

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: China exerts influence over Korea
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (12/20/11):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/world/asia/china-exerts-influence-nurture
d-over-decades.html?ref=asia

China Exerts Influence Nurtured Over Decades
By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING ‹ China, North Korea¹s foremost ally, appears to be moving quickly
to try to ensure stability in a crippled and isolated nation now facing a
leadership transition fraught with dangers.

According to former government officials and analysts, Chinese and
foreign, China¹s leaders had been hoping that Kim Jong-il, who died on
Saturday, would live for at least two or three more years to solidify the
succession process that he had begun with his youngest son, Kim Jong-un.
Uncertainty now looms, not only over whether the younger Kim can
consolidate his power in the face of competing elite factions, but also
over whether the elder Kim¹s economic initiatives, which had included
several visits to China to study it as a model for possible economic
reforms, will continue.

So, the analysts and former officials say, the Chinese are seeking to
deepen their influence over senior North Korean officials, particularly in
the military, and to use the channels they have kept open with North Korea
even as the West, frustrated over its nuclear intransigence, closed doors.
China¹s highest priority is one shared far more broadly: guarding against
a rise in tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula. That is a distinct
possibility if North Korean generals try to reinforce their hold on power
through aggression toward South Korea.

In its first approach to the government in Pyongyang since its leader¹s
death, China said on Tuesday that it was open to a visit by his son and
anointed successor.

After President Hu Jintao of China visited the North Korean Embassy in
Beijing to express his condolences, the Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokesman, Liu Weimin, was quoted by Reuters as saying: ³I want to add
that China and North Korea have always kept up high-level visits, and we
welcome the North Korean leader to visit at a convenient time to both
sides.² He did not elaborate.

³At this moment, China might provide the best chance of stability,² said
Robert Carlin, a former State Department official and fellow at Stanford
University who travels to North Korea.

³They want to be the best informed and have a modicum of influence and
have people consulting with them at this moment,² Mr. Carlin said. ³The
rest of us are deaf, dumb, blind and with our arms tied behind our backs.²

John Delury, a scholar of China and the two Koreas at Yonsei University in
Seoul, South Korea, said: ³Chinese diplomats are the only ones who can
pick up the phone and talk to North Korean counterparts about what is
going on, what to expect. This reveals the fatal weakness in Washington
and Seoul¹s over-reliance on sanctions over the past three years.²

The worries among some Chinese were evident. ³The death significantly
enhances uncertainty on the peninsula,² said Shi Yinhong, a professor of
international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. ³In my personal
view, the succession is very hastily arranged, and Kim Jong-un is very ill
prepared to take over.²

China values North Korea as a buffer state that keeps American troops in
South Korea at a distance, but relations between the two communist
countries have endured complicated twists in recent years. Chinese
officials were upset by North Korea¹s sudden shelling of Yeonpyeong Island
in South Korea last year, and have lobbied North Korea to refrain from
further military actions, analysts say. Earlier in 2010, China was put in
an awkward position when South Korea and the United States accused North
Korea of sinking the Cheonan, a South Korean warship, with a torpedo. The
United States pressured China to agree with its accusation, which China
refused to do. North Korea denied any involvement.

Those episodes, while increasing strains, have also made North Korea more
dependent on China. China and South Korea recently accounted for 55
percent to 80 percent of North Korea¹s trade, according to a paper
published this year by two scholars of North Korea at the Peter G.
Peterson Institute for International Economics, Stephan Haggard and Marcus
Noland. After the Cheonan sinking, most of North Korea¹s trade with South
Korea stopped, making China an even bigger partner.

Exact trade figures are difficult to pinpoint. A paper published in
December 2010 by theCongressional Research Service
<http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41043.pdf> estimated that in 2009,
exports from North Korea to China increased to $793 million, while Chinese
exports to the North slowed slightly to $1.9 billion. Chinese trade and
investment undercut the economic sanctions that the United States and
other nations imposed on North Korea to try to halt its nuclear program.

The trade can take many forms. Susan Shirk, a former State Department
official and professor of political science at the University of
California at San Diego, said she had spoken with a North Korean man in
Pyongyang in September who was conducting state-to-state trade with China.
She said the man worked for the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and he was
selling iron ore to China at the price that China pays to large trade
partners like Australia; in return, he was buying corn from China at the
price on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that day.

North Korean leaders are also trying to jump-start the languishing trade
zone of Rason on the Chinese border and to get Chinese businesses to
invest in tourism infrastructure, including a creaking cruise ship running
between Rason and the Mount Kumgang nature park.

³China and North Korea are locked in this dance of interdependency,² said
Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, an analyst based in Beijing for the
International Crisis Group. ³China is going to have to continue to be a
big benefactor and bankroll North Korea to a big extent.²

On Monday, as anxieties over North Korea¹s path bubbled to the surface in
Beijing, so did signs of mourning. People brought bouquets of white
flowers to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing and were allowed inside.
Police officers surrounding the building kept all others at a distance.
Asked about visas, a guard said, ³Come back next year.² The flag atop the
embassy roof was lowered to half-staff. One resident of Beijing with ties
to North Korea said telephone operators in Pyongyang were crying when he
got through to a call center there.

Evening newspapers in China ran front-page headlines
<http://www.globaltimes.cn/SPECIALCOVERAGE/KimJongIldies.aspx>. Xinhua,
the state news agency, cited a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, who
called Mr. Kim a ³great leader² and added, ³China and North Korea will
strive together to continue making positive contributions.²

There were some irreverent takes. Netease, a popular Internet portal, ran
a topics page <http://t.163.com/zt/pub/jinzhengrijf> with a headline
saying, ³Kim Jong-il¹s Death Shows the Importance of Losing Weight.² The
subtitle was even more subversive: ³A government is just like a human
body, in that neither can afford to be too fat.²

Michael Wines contributed reporting, and Li Bibo and Mia Lia contributed
research.