[In the aftermath of North Korea’s third nuclear
test in February, China last week joined the United States to push for tougher
United Nations sanctions against the North. Although it remained to be seen
whether China would actually enforce the sanctions, its decision to support
them also raised the possibility that it might take even bolder steps against
its recalcitrant ally.]
By Jane Perlez
BEIJING
— China’s foreign minister
said Saturday that Beijing would not abandon North Korea, reiterating
China’s longstanding position that dialogue, not sanctions, is the best way to
persuade the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.
At a news conference during the National People’s
Congress, the foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, suggested that Chinese support for
tougher United Nations sanctions against North Korea should not be interpreted
as a basic change in China’s attitude.
“We always believe that sanctions are not the
end of the Security Council actions, nor are sanctions the fundamental way to
resolve the relevant issues,” said Mr. Yang, who addressed foreign policy
questions from Chinese and foreign reporters.
But the careful remarks masked the unparalleled
plain-spoken discussions among China’s officials and analysts about the value
of supporting North Korea even as it continues to develop nuclear weapons and
unleashes new threats to attack the United States and South Korea.
In the aftermath of North Korea’s third nuclear
test in February, China last week joined the United States to push for tougher
United Nations sanctions against the North. Although it remained to be seen
whether China would actually enforce the sanctions, its decision to support
them also raised the possibility that it might take even bolder steps against
its recalcitrant ally.
The clearest sign of China’s exasperation with
North Korea came Thursday at a side session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative
Conference, an advisory group to the government that was open to the
news media.
Delegates to the conference, according to a
senior Communist Party official, Qiu Yuanping, talked about whether to “keep or
dump” North Korea and debated whether China, as a major power, should “fight or
talk” with the North.
In the annals of Communist Party decorum, Ms.
Qiu’s description of the spirited debate was quite extraordinary. She made the
remarks in the presence of reporters at a session titled “Friendship with
Foreign Countries” that was attended by several Chinese ambassadors who were
visiting Beijing from their posts abroad.
As deputy director of the Communist Party’s
Central Foreign Affairs Office, a secretive body that gives foreign policy
advice to top leaders, Ms. Qiu usually opts for discretion. The admission by a
senior Communist Party official that North Korea is a nettlesome neighbor is
especially striking because China conducts its relations with North Korea
chiefly through the comradely auspices of the party, rather than the Foreign
Ministry.
Just days before Ms. Qiu’s remarks, a prominent
Communist Party analyst, Deng Yuwen, a deputy editor of Study Times, the
journal of the Central Party School of the Communist Party, wrote that China
should “give up” on North Korea.
Writing in The Financial Times late
last month, Mr. Deng asked what would happen if the United States
launched a pre-emptive attack on North Korea: “Would China not be obliged to
help North Korea based on our ‘alliance.’ Would that not be drawing fire upon
ourselves?”
Moreover, Mr. Deng wrote, there was no hope that
North Korea would overhaul its economy and become a normal country, a path
urged in the past several years by the Chinese government. Even if the North’s
new ruler, Kim Jong-un, wanted reform, the entrenched ruling elite “would
absolutely not allow him to do so,” because they know change would result in
the overthrow of the government, Mr. Deng said.
Mr. Deng’s analysis was widely read, in part,
because he has a habit of expressing provocative views that meld into the
mainstream. Last year, he wrote an article that appeared in the online version
of Caijing, a business
magazine, that said failures had outweighed achievements in the decade-long
rule of President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. After the article
appeared, the era of Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen was often referred to as the “lost
decade.”
For all the concern about North Korea since the
nuclear test in mid-February, there have been no concrete signs that China
plans to take any action against the North beyond the United Nations sanctions.
Traders in Jilin Province, which abuts North
Korea in northeastern China, said there was not a noticeable slowdown of goods
passing across the border. It is possible that there will be a crackdown on
smugglers, but that has not happened yet, said an official in the Yanbian
Prefecture in Jilin Province, where much of the smuggling takes place.
It is doubtful that China will reinforce the
United Nations sanctions by imposing penalties of its own, said Cai Jian, the
deputy director of the Center for
Korean Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
The biggest element of China’s trade with North
Korea is the export of oil that keeps the North Korean military going and its
creaky industrial base more or less functioning. “Oil will not be cut,” Mr. Cai
said. Chinese companies buy North Korean coal and iron ore, a trade that the
Chinese government has encouraged and that helps North Korea by generating hard
currency. Those imports are unlikely to be curbed.
The extent to which China will enforce the new
United Nations sanctions remains unclear, an expert on the North Korean
economy, Marcus Noland of the Peterson
Institute for International Economics in Washington, wrote in a
blog post. There are plenty of loopholes for China to exploit if it wanted to,
he noted.
The new restrictions against the North,
including efforts to block the opening of North Korean banks abroad if they
support weapons purchases, are limited by a “credible information” clause, Mr.
Noland wrote, which allows a government to say that it lacks the information
needed to assess the situation or apply the sanctions.
The support of the sanctions at the United
Nations are a fine balancing act by China, said Jia Qingguo, the associate dean
of the School of International Studies at Peking University.
China backed the new sanctions in the hope that
they would be sufficient to encourage North Korea to return to the negotiating
table to discuss denuclearization, but not so harsh that they would cause the
North’s collapse.
If that were to occur, American troops stationed
in South Korea could move north and help unite the Korean Peninsula under an
American umbrella, the last thing China would want, Mr. Jia said.
For now, China’s position on North Korea will
remain the same. “If China’s policy changes, it would be because of a North
Korean provocative act,” he said, “like another nuclear test, closer to China’s
borders.”
Bree Feng contributed research.a
