[“Kim Jong Un managed to put on a great show and make progress on two of his most important foreign policy goals at the same time,” said Zhao Tong, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. Kim’s goals include boosting an anemic economy while holding on to his nuclear program as long as possible.]
By Anna Fifield
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People
take part in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of North Korea's
founding, in
Pyongyang, North Korea, in this undated photo released Sept.
10, 2018, by North
Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
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BEIJING
— North Korea’s national
spectacle over the weekend featured a performance of the popular Chinese folk song
“Love My China” and pleased President Trump by not parading nuclear missiles,
showing that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is no diplomatic dunce.
By including the song and literally holding
hands with a top Chinese official during a weekend of celebrations marking the
70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding, a smiling Kim sent a clear message
of comradely friendship to Beijing.
And by excluding nuclear-related hardware
from a huge parade held Sunday, the young North Korean leader also sent a message
that Trump immediately interpreted as “a big and very positive statement” on
denuclearization.
“Kim Jong Un managed to put on a great show
and make progress on two of his most important foreign policy goals at the same
time,” said Zhao Tong, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global
Policy in Beijing. Kim’s goals include boosting an anemic economy while holding
on to his nuclear program as long as possible.
“North Korea has great faith in the darkness
of humanity. So Kim Jong Un is making good use of the growing mistrust and
rivalry between the U.S. and a rising China,” he said.
Kim knows that Beijing worries he is getting
too close to Trump, while Washington continues to fret that China is acting as
a spoiler.
A multiplayer chess game is now being played
in Northeast Asia, revolving around North Korea. South Korea’s pro-engagement
President Moon Jae-in, who will travel to Pyongyang next week, is trying to
keep the momentum going in the diplomatic process he kicked off at the beginning
of the year. Japan’s conservative government, meanwhile, is poised to return to
a harder line if — or when, as it would say — the current denuclearization
effort falls through.
Kim is trying to play the parties off against
each other, said John Delury, a China specialist at Yonsei University in Seoul.
“When Kim makes a move like this, it gives him a lot of leverage over Seoul and
Washington,” he said.
Despite all the ups and downs since their
June meeting, Trump is hoping that Kim will make good on their agreement to
work toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a hope made apparent
in his Sunday tweets thanking “Chairman Kim.”
But Trump is also holding China’s feet to the
flames to make it happen by linking the North Korean problem with the trade war
festering between Beijing and Washington. Trump has cited China’s role in
propping up North Korea as part of the rationale for imposing punishing tariffs
on China.
“Always blaming China for negatively
influencing North Korea’s stance,” Hu Xijin, editor in chief of the Global
Times, Beijing’s main foreign affairs newspaper, said Monday when retweeting
the American president. “Now North Korea behaves better, shouldn’t China be
given credit?
For his part, Chinese President Xi Jinping,
who has met Kim three times this year, appears to want to return to an
equilibrium in which North Korea is quiet and he can concentrate on expanding
China’s international economic influence.
That is where China’s and North Korea’s
interests collide, however, analysts say.
Kim, having achieved a credible nuclear
program, is now moving on to the second track in the two-track strategy he laid
out in 2013: economic development. The economy was front and center at the
weekend’s celebrations, with parade floats extolling “economic construction”
and scientific advancement.
Xi did not attend the celebrations, perhaps
to avoid antagonizing Trump during a tense period in the trade war, but instead
sent a close aide as a special representative. Li Zhanshu, the third-ranking
official in China’s Communist Party, was greeted with cheering crowds when he
arrived in Pyongyang and was given the place of honor at Sunday’s parade.
He also delivered a warm letter from Xi to
Kim. “Comrade chairman” Kim has achieved important results in “social and
economic development,” Xi wrote. “I’m really pleased to see all this,” Xi said,
adding that he was “willing to work hand in hand” with Kim to “benefit both
countries.”
The show of unity continued Monday. Communist
Party ties have been “totally restored,” the Global Times declared.
[North Korea celebrates 70th birthday with
military parade — but no ICBMs ]
The big question now is what happens with the
sanctions imposed last year, both unilaterally and through the United Nations,
as part of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign.
As Trump threatened military action against
North Korea over its nuclear tests and numerous missile launches, China
overcame its usual reluctance to implement international sanctions against
North Korea and cracked down on border trade like never before.
Now, with diplomatic talks underway, albeit
in fits and starts, China has no need to continue blocking North Korean exports
of seafood, garments and coal.
“China’s position is that, because North
Korea has started to participate in denuclearization negotiations with a
positive attitude, the international community should ease some sanctions on
North Korea,” said Xuan Dongri, director of Institute of Northeast Asia Studies
at Yanbian University, near the Chinese border with North Korea.
The United States should agree to ease
sanctions to “establish a relationship of trust,” he said.
Reports from the border suggest that trade
has been returning this year, although it is not appearing in official
statistics. That would make sense, experts said, given that China has never
believed that sanctions are the right way to deal with North Korea anyway.
Regardless, relations between Beijing and
Pyongyang will continue to improve if North Korea makes progress on
denuclearization, said Jin Qiangyi, a North Korea expert also at Yanbian University.
“This is not just a political issue; it’s
crucial for the economic ties between North Korea and the three northeastern
provinces of China,” he said, referring to a region with a large ethnic Korean
population and an economy reliant on trade with North Korea.
But there can be no large-scale economic
cooperation between China and North Korea until the sanctions are lifted, Jin
said.
Indeed, said Adam Cathcart, an expert on
Chinese-North Korean relations at Leeds University, for all the effusive language
in the Chinese press, there were no indications that Xi was going to help Kim
with the economic development he now desperately needs if he is going to adhere
to his promise to improve the standard of living. There has been no mention of
investment or any other rewards for North Korea’s turn away from provocations
and toward diplomacy.
“China is not turning on the economic taps,”
Cathcart said. “There’s still a long way to go there.”
Yang Liu contributed to this report.
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