China Influence On N Korea Overstated

by Antonaeta Bezlova

Image from N Korea web site

An opinion piece Friday in the Communist Party's flagship newspaper, the 'People's Daily', said that since the United States does not dare fight North Korea, it should talk to it.

It foresaw no room for mediation on the part of Beijing, as it placed the blame on Washington for its standoff with North Korea, which has been growing since Pyongyang admitted to a secret uranium-enrichment programme in October.

"It is not that the U.S. does not want to use force, but rather it fears the consequences will be unimaginable," said the 'People's Daily Online'.

"Judged from the international macro-environment, an inordinate intransigent U.S. attitude toward Korea is inappropriate," it continued. The paper said dialogue through diplomatic channels should be the way to solve the current standoff.

"Bush is well aware that subduing the opponent's troops without fighting a battle, as contained in the Master Sun's 'Art of War', is the best policy," the article concluded.

China has been looked upon as the only big-power player that could yield influence with its obstinate Stalinist neighbor, North Korea, but Beijing has been reticent to make a clear-cut stand how it could sway Pyongyang to comply with its international obligations.

While China shares the desire of United States, South Korea and Japan in averting a nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, Beijing's leverage over Pyongyang is far less than what appears.

"China advocates the non-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and the maintenance of its peace and stability," remarked Chinese President Jiang Zemin to visiting French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on Thursday. "Words, not weapons are the answer," the English-language 'China Daily' quoted Jiang as saying.

It is customary for Jiang to advocate a peaceful solution to the Korean nuclear problem. Yet like the remarks he made when meeting President George W Bush in Texas in October after the crisis broke out with Pyongyang's admission of its nuclear programme, Jiang does not elaborate on Beijing's means to resolve the impasse.

In fact, ever since China's late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping steered China on the road to market reforms and criticized the excesses of leadership cult in North Korea, relations between the two countries have lost much of their trumpeted ardor.

Once close ideological allies, over the past two decades China and North Korea have grown apart -- China reforming its state planned economy and opening to the outside world and North Korea falling into economic stagnation and political isolation.

The more China has evolved into being a normal global power, integrated into the international community and committed to playing a role in international politics, the more frustrated has Beijing become with the erratic and unreliable decisions coming from Pyongyang.

After establishing diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, Beijing lost even more ground in its attempt to persuade the North to duplicate China's economic reform and to stop relying on aid to prop its obsolete economy.

Another irritating factor for Beijing has been North Korea's refugees -- thousands of men, women and children, who, made desperate by the lack of food and fearing political persecution, have since 1996 crossed the frontier with China.

Beijing fears that a collapse of Kim Jong-il's regime may lead to millions more refugees at China's border. Beijing has repeatedly denied the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees permission to set up camps on the border, and has instead launched a manhunt for refugees, imprisoning those who shelter them.

Though frustrated with the North's mismanagement of its economy and aware of its limited influence on the current regime, China is committed to preserving the status quo on the peninsula by obstructing any attempts of the Untied States to topple Kim Jong-il.

Instead of blaming Kim's nuclear ambitions and deception of the international community, Chinese state-run media is pointing the finger at Bush's "axis of evil" theory as the main culprit for the current crisis.

"The hard-line attitude adopted by Washington toward the DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name) nuclear issue has done nothing but escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula," says Chinese analyst Hu Xuan in the 'China Daily'.

Critics say that Washington remains hardline despite the issuance Tuesday of a joint U.S.-Japan-South Korean communique in which Washington - after vowing for weeks not to talk to Pyongyang until it dismantled its nuclear weapons - said it was willing to "talk" to North Korea. Many U.S. analysts have said they doubt that Washington's statement means a real change in its position. Its offer of "talks" was flatly rejected by Pyongyang.

"The ball is in their court," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "We'd like to hear from North Korea about the steps they're taking to come back into compliance with international obligations so they will dismantle their nuclear weapons programme."

"Washington's blunt rejection of the DPRK's rejection for talks would be no help to a peaceful solution in the case. And some U.S. officials' sabre-rattling is especially detrimental to the international community's joint efforts in preventing a nuclear crisis in the peninsula," said another 'China Daily' commentary that urged Washington to recognize the North.

"What lies in the core of North Korea's nuclear issue is not Pyongyang's nuclear programme itself but the need to establish a new, adequate- to- the- new- international- situation relation between the North and the United States," said the newspaper 'Global Times', which is published by the 'People's Daily'.

Beijing has made clear that direct dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington is the only way out of the current impasse.

But while it can do little to influence Pyongyang to drop its nuclear intention before sitting at the negotiating table, China has not abandoned its ambitions to be part of any multilateral peacemaking action taken by South Korea, the United States, Japan and Russia.