“Chaos for Selfish Gains:” North Korea in East Asia

By | April 12, 2013 | No Comments

Xi Jinping, the Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, at the Boao Forum for Asia, in Hainan Province | Via Huanqiu

Xi Jinping, the Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, at the Boao Forum for Asia, in Hainan Province | Via Huanqiu

In October 1950, when Mao decided to send tens of thousands of Chinese soliders into North Korea, he did so with the following statement:

In order to support the Korean people’s war of liberation and to resist the attacks of U.S. imperialism and its running dogs, thereby safeguarding the interests of the people of Korea, China and all the other countries in the East, I herewith order the Chinese People’s Volunteers to march speedily to Korea and join the Korean comrades in fighting the aggressors and winning a glorious victory (Emphasis added).

Even as Mao was filling the valleys and mountainsides in the DPRK’s craggy inland province of Jagang, waiting for MacArthur to dutifully repeat Hideyoshi’s mistakes, the Chinese leader had the balance of power in Asia on his mind.

And why shouldn’t he have? Kim Il-sung’s instigation of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, had brought massive pressures on China, including American naval neutralization of the PRC’s efforts to retake Taiwan, the dispatch of US military advisors to Indochina, and the deployment of American and international armies fighting under the United Nations standard in Korea. China’s stand against “U.S. imperialism (Meidi)” in Korea was not simply to bail out Kim Il-song’s chestnuts, it was also to secure China’s position in the region and to rebuff the U.S. advance from Japan/Korea. Chinese leaders know they have a unique relationship with Pyongyang, but they also are keenly aware that when things go wrong on the peninsula, it can jeopardize China’s regional strategy.

The North Koreans have never been immune from awareness of China’s regional balancing. Even in the earliest years, the East Asia outlook from Pyongyang (see this piece in Review of Korean Studies) was surprisingly comprehensive. China’s balance inevitably impacts North Korea, and vice versa.

In one of the very few statements it has made in the past months that could be interpreted as a sop to China, the North Korean state media released this story:

WPK’s New Line Guarantees Peace in Asia-Pacific Region, Prosperity of Korean Nation: Rodong Sinmun

Pyongyang, April 5 (KCNA) — The Workers’ Party of Korea’s line on simultaneously pushing forward the economic construction and the building of nuclear force is the most just revolutionary line which guarantees the peace in the Asia-Pacific region and prosperity of the Korean nation, says Rodong Sinmun Friday in a bylined article.

The U.S. imperialists and south Korean puppet group of traitors are making desperate efforts, predicting that if the DPRK achieves economic prosperity backed by nuclear weapons, that will mean their failure of hostile policy toward the DPRK, the article notes, and goes on:

The U.S. moves have stemmed from its uneasiness that it cannot put the Asia-Pacific region under its control and, furthermore, not hold hegemony over the world unless it stifles the DPRK. This hard reality urgently requires the DPRK to simultaneously push forward the economic construction and the building of nuclear force. […]

The tragic incidents in different countries in recent years go to clearly prove that the DPRK’s option is very just. Some countries in Balkans and Middle East fell victims to interference and invasion by the U.S. and other Western forces. This is because they were not transparent in the stand of self-defense and neglected the building of defense capabilities. This shows that if one does not have strong muscle, one can neither defend the sovereignty of the country and the dignity of the nation nor achieve happiness and prosperity of the people.

As we will be arguing with the next version of our KCNA China File series, this kind of (relatively) conciliatory statement toward the PRC, even a tacit one, was exceedingly rare in the previous several months. While other analysts will focus on the above statement as an example of why North Korea plans not to go down the road of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, it is the message about stability in East Asia that really matters, and the timing that must be accounted for.

Which brings us to Xi Jinping’s statement (“Working Together Toward a Better Future for Asia and the World” [合作共同向着美好未来亚和世]: Renmin Ribao [人民日报] , April 7, 2013), delivered during the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum. Here is the relevant section:

Countries, whether big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, should all contribute theirshare to maintaining and enhancing peace. Rather than undercutting each other’sefforts, countries should complement each other and work for joint progress. The international community should advocate the vision of comprehensive security, common security and cooperative security so as to turn our global village into a big stage for common development, rather than an arena where gladiators fight each other. And no one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gains. With growing interaction among countries, it is inevitable that they encounter frictions here and there. What is important is that they should resolve differences through dialogue, consultation and peaceful negotiations in the larger interest of the sound growth of their relations.

Global media had a field day with Xi’s presumptive thrust at North Korea, but, as Austin Ramzy pointed outthe overseas edition of People’s Daily walked it back not long thereafter. Of course, no such corrective was issued in English. Irrespective of that, from Mao to Xi Jinping, the frustration with North Korea remains a constant, the need to integrate the DRPK — however “selfish” — into China’s defensive calculus for East Asia.

Blog by: Adam Cathcart

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